In the 1990s, South Baltimore native Gordon Beard compiled a series of phrasebooks to help bewildered travelers understand his city’s residents:

amblanz — ambulance

bobwar — barbed wire

corter — quarter

flare — flower

goff — golf

har — hire

keerful — careful

mare — mayor

neck store — next door

orning — awning

plooshin — pollution

roolty — royalty

twunny — twenty

varse — virus

warsh — wash

yewmid — humid

John Goodspeed, for 17 years a columnist at the Baltimore Evening Sun, had compiled his own list in the 1960s:

ahrsh — Irish

chowld — child

dayon — down

harrid — Howard

koor — car

larnix — larynx

nass — nice

owen — on

shares — showers

urshter — oyster

Apparently the confusion has persisted for decades. “The life of a Baltimore Army lieutenant may have been saved by Baltimore during the Battle of the Bulge in World War II,” Goodspeed once reported. “Military police suspected him of being a German spy in an American uniform, but an M.P. from Baltimore heard the lieutenant pronounce his home town as ‘Balamer’ and passed him as genuine. Only a native can say it that way.”