Boston's famous drawl is on the verge of extinction, fearful locals say.

The classic Beantown accent - which generally silences the letter R - was made famous by the hit sitcom Cheers and Bostonian stars including Matt Damon, Ben Affleck and Mark Wahlberg.

But a shift in the city's demographic has disrupted how locals sound. Residents have sounded the alarm that the days of people saying 'Pahk yah cah in Hahvahd Yahd' could soon be over.

The reason could be how the city's demographics have changed, and how Boston's population will keep shifting over time.

In 1950, white people made up 95 percent of the New England city.

Their distinct dialect sounded more like Cliff Clavin and Carla Tortelli's banter on Cheers, which brought the accent to households across the US.

Fifty years later, Boston became a majority-minority city - meaning that less than 50 percent of residents are white.

'I think we are much more diverse and people are from all over the world living and working here,' Marjorie Feinstein-Whittaker, a communication consultant based in Boston, told CBS News. 'And I think it's just not as concentrated as it was at one time.'

The biggest tell for the Boston accent is that locals drop the letter R, turning Harvard into ‘Hahvahd.’

Other words affected include 'car', 'corner', 'counter', 'sister' and 'start.'

Linguists call this non-rhoticity, which is when individuals don’t pronounce that letter when it comes after a vowel.

That R sometimes pops back up in the local twang. Idea can flip into ‘idear,’ for instance.

However, the local accent is gradually disappearing. Boston's demographic change might be a driving factor.

About 47.8 percent of Boston's population is white nowadays, according to the US Census Bureau in 2024.

Some believe this shift could be driving the gradual disappearance of the local accent, although Feinstein-Whittaker said the local dialect would stick around.

"I think it will always be here just because there's something that people feel really proud about and I don't think it will be gone but I don't think it's as prevalent or as strong as it used to be," she told the outlet. 

The origins of the Boston accent could be traced back to when English settlers arrived in the area around the early 1600s.

At that time, disappearing the letter R was seen as a sign of prestige. That twang has stuck around to this day.

“Even today, 400 years later, we can still see that founder effect of the English in this region,’ James Stanford, a linguistics professor at Dartmouth College, told WBUR.

He said the dialect featured pieces ‘that other dialects of English don't have.’

“There's a local pride to it,’ Stanford said.

At one point, the Bostonian twang was voted the second sexiest accent in the US.

Now, locals have already raised their fears online about how the dialect is going away.

'My kids don't even know what a Boston accent is,' one user said on Reddit. 'A few of their older white teachers have had them, but none of the young ones or POC do.'

'It's just not something they encounter,' the parent added. 'I don't think I've heard a kid drop an R in over a decade.'

Another user said hearing a Boston accent was actually more probable closer to the outskirts of the Massachusetts capital.

'It's mostly blue collar white folk, most of whom don't really live in the city anymore,' he said.

Another agreed: 'You'll want to go into a more blue-collar suburb where the real townies hang out.

'This is where you'll hear the Boston accent to the point where people sound like cartoon characters.'