>>Americans say pawsta? I have not heard that. Sounds like it could be Boston maybe, but they pronounce a lot of words funny <g>.
>
>When I first heard the name of the city the way the, ahem, natives pronounce it, it sounded "bwastun"... very similar to my local dialect back home. Which makes this a very small world indeed - you get two very different languages having a shared (sound of a) dialect.

I was born just outside of Boston and went to school there until I was 16.

My family had moved there from the midwest a couple of months before I was born.

My father threatened to slap me or my brothers if he ever heard us using a Boston accent (like IDEAR (idea) or CAAA (car) or LIBARY (library)). He had it out with an elementary school teacher who told my oldest brother that he wasn't pronouncing things correctly (and had to use a dictionary to prove how things were SUPPOSED to be pronounced).

I'm forever grateful! Nobody ever guesses I'm originally from BAASTON.