city of the rat?

I was scanning The New York Times on Friday when I found an interesting article on regional accents. This article tried to explain how Boston, Manhattan, Rochester, and Pittsburgh -- all cities close to each other in the Northeast -- developed such divergent accents. I've had plenty of arguments with "massholes" trying to explain why my (slight) upstate accent sounds nothing like how "dem New Yawk City" people talk. This article lays out a more coherent argument than I could in explaining those differences. (Though I'm sceptical of the article's assertion that the Chicago accent and the Rochester accent are the same. Sure, this area has a stronger affinity to Chicago than to NYC, but no one around here talks like Bill Swerski's Super Fans!)


The funniest thing about the article was the claim that the local name for Rochester was "Ratchester". Ratchester?? No, no, no. There are, indeed, some strange pronunciations for local place names. But the usual pronunciation for Rochester is "Rahhchester". There are the more cynical nicknames, such as Rottenchester. But even the cynics don't use the appellation of Ratchester. At least not yet...