I ran into this guy at a party and he looked kind of familiar, like I knew him from someplace. He musta had the same idea, 'cause he comes over an' says, "Do I know you? Whereya from?"

"From here," I said.

"Yeah?" he says. "Whereja go to school?"

He told me he went to Lowell. I told him I went to a little Catholic school in the Mission, and we immediately recognized each other. We were both native San Franciscans and we were speaking in the San Francisco accent, unique to this city.

I wrote about this aspect of the city 25 years ago, and the piece circulated for years on the Internet, especially among San Franciscans of a certain age.

But now, the San Francisco accent is fading away, as rare these days as men wearing neckties to work or women dressing up to go downtown.

Many people - a lotta people, a hella lot - don't believe there is such a thing as a San Francisco accent. But there is one. Or there was.

Let me tellya about it. For one thing, San Franciscans talk fast and run their words together. They say "Dontcha" instead of "Don't you?" They say, "Youra" instead of "You are," and "I'm" instead of "I am," and "gonna" for "going to."

There are three different pronunciations for Portola, a neighborhood, a street and a Spanish explorer. There are two ways to pronounce Greenwich Street in North Beach. The big town to the south is called Sannazay, and even if it has close to a million people, it's not a city. There's only one.

Regional accents are dying out, changing. Ask any linguist.

I talked to the best linguist I know, Tom McGarvey, who used to own Red's Java House, back in the days when McGarvey's hair was red and the waterfront was full of tough guys.

He and his family grew up on Potrero Hill - which he calls "Potrera Hill" - when people raised chickens in the backyard, the streets were unpaved and everybody knew everybody.

McGarvey has the purest San Francisco accent going. "We was all broke when I was a kid," he'll say. He talks about selling newspapers down on Channel Creek to the crews of steam schooners. Talks about riding on the back fender of streetcars to avoid paying a fare. Talks about a city that has vanished.

He talks fast, dropping his g's - he's comin' and goin' and tawkin'

He was a merchant sailor for years. "People usta ask me, hey, what parta New Yawk you from?" The San Francisco accent sounded like New York to them.

McGarvey says he has a Potrero Hill accent, like a microclimate of words. It was different from other San Francisco accents. McGarvey thinks the local accents are vanishing. Look at Potrero Hill now, he says. Or listen.

There were other accents, depending on the neighborhood, and an African American San Francisco accent as well, with local slang and sometimes a hint of the south.

London Breed, a city supervisor born and raised in San Francisco, offers an example of a local African American expression. "Sometimes when we overhear someone talking very, very nicely on the phone, we'll say, 'Who are you cupcakin'?' "

Breed speaks standard American English, with a subtle touch of San Francisco. She says "lotta" for "a lot of" and "goin' " for "going." When asked where she went to school she says "Gal," which any San Franciscan identifies as Galileo High School.

Each neighborhood had an accent - the Mission, the Marina, the Sunset, Hunters Point - but the old accents are going away. Kids don't talk the old way, and new waves of people have flooded the city.

The new folks are not all techies, white guys from back East.

Roger Dong, whose family came to the city from China four generations ago, thinks at least half the new San Franciscans are Asians, with different accents of their own. Dan Jurafsky, a Stanford linguist, says white kids at school in the Sunset are picking up and using Chinese expressions in their daily talk.

And one day, the last old timer will fade away, with the ultimate San Francisco farewell: "See ya."