sublime movie critique

Last night I watched the Martin Scorsese film "The Departed." Good movie. Very good, in fact. Fun for me, too, as it was filmed in many of my old haunts from the college days.

I've got to hand it to that little booger Leonardo DiCaprio. He nailed the South Boston and south-of- Boston accent. Matt Damon, himself a native, supposedly, overdid his version of a Southie accent again, coming off like a Rhode Islander, which, as we all know, sounds as bad or worse than a New York accent. I guess they didn't teach that part of the accent in the acting classes way up there in Rockport, next to New Hampshire.
Mark Wahlberg sounded hilarious. His accent was spot-on, and the creative and frequent cursing made me forget that I was floating around in the Delaware river watching the movie. I guess growing up in Southie, being only half-Irish and 4 feet tall must have made him fairly tough as a kid.
Anyhow, good movie. made me feel like I was home.

My reason for writing this? I know that I have a heavy, heavy South Shore accent. And my wife obviously does not, being Brazilian. Anyhow, my wife's English language skills have really started growing exponentially, and now she's writing quite a bit in English, but she writes phonetically, as a native Portuguese speaker would. So when she writes me that her 'cah' needs a new battery, and that I need to get rid of the 'bumpa sticka' on my truck, I know that it's time for me to talk to her about the particulars (pronounced 'pa-tick-u-lah's) of the Boston accent. The funny thing is, Brazilian's don't really use the letter 'ah' either... which is pronounced 'eye-tha', thank you. My Brother-In-Law's name, Ricardo, is pronounced 'heecahdo.' I'm hoping that this will be an easy lesson. For now, I am enjoying the hilarious misuse of English in her text messages and emails. Makes me homesick more than anything.