Study of the New York Accent

larn of the immature York AccentAmanda BjorkWhy Do They Tawk Like Dat? A Brief Study of the unseas geniusd York city Accent reinvigorated York can easily be c anyed the biggest collection of villages in the arena, a melting pot of nearly on the whole the worlds cultures in one small place. For years, the immature York tensionfrom famous faces such(prenominal) as Rosie Perez to Spike Lee, Fran Drescher to Archie Bunkerhas been studied, extolled and derided (Bortolot, 2011). impudent Yorkers keep their idiomatic expressions, wherever they primarily whitethorn have come from, and the resulting sound(s) are what has come to constitute the globally recognized show found in the unique reinvigorated York City side of meat. in that respect are umteen different but recognizable characteristics and sounds that make up the famous dialect. many another(prenominal) of which whitethorn have surprising origins, and many whose origins may never be known. blow to popular belief, i n in the altogether York City, the origin and classification of accent has more ties to ethnicity than to a speakers specific geographical region (such as borough). Over the years and through the evolution of the raw(a) York accent, in that respect have been many varying reactions and responses to it, from wearing it proudly to attempts at un-learning it altogether. The New York City accent is a variation of the English quarrel that is spoken by many people in New York City and much of the surround metropolitan area. Pioneer American sociolinguist William Labov has done the most work on the specific subject and has described it as the most recognizable variety of sounds in American English. Overall, the New York accent is make up of all of the elements within the speaker and the city, and it has defined the language of New Yorkers for generations.First of all, to understand where the accent originated, we essential be familiar with some of the characteristic sounds that may ha ve gone previously unknown or unidentified as a New York characteristic. ground on years of research, American sociolinguist William Labov has concluded that the New York accent originated as a derivative of a British accent, specifically speakers from South London. But the many boldnesss of the accent have roots all over Europe. The New York accent is a non-rhotic accent, unlike most American accents, which simply means that the r is not usually pronounced, rightful(prenominal) as in most British varieties of English. There are sounds that we all recognize as part of the New York accent. Words and phrases such as schtreet (street), yaw mutha (your mother), and waduh (water) (Quinlan, 2013). The unique way that New Yorkers draw out their vowels is another important feature. New Yorkers are in any case guilty of the intrusive r. When the rs are throw offped, New Yorkers will frequently put them back in where they dont belong. For example, Linda may become Linder and there are ph rases like come heah and bring me a soder. Another distinct, and possibly the most recognizable, sound from the New York accent is the aw sound, such as in cawfee, tawk, or sawce (coffee, talk, sauce). New Yorkers tend to broaden the vowel a, for example, say awe-ful instead of awful. One may besides hear (or not hear) a dropped H in New York speech, for example, uge instead of huge and uman instead of human. The New York accent sometimes features TH pronounced as if it were a singular T or a D, wherein a word such as pathmark becomes pat-mark, or dese and dose for these and those. The only immigrant language that had the th sound in it was Greek, meaning all the other travelers to the New World had a hard time pronouncing the sound. Another interesting aspect of the accent is the fact that New York vowels can revision from one sound to another during pronunciation. These changing vowels are called diphthongs. This is believed to be part of the Irish tempt on the accent, as the Irish frequently switch the diphthong OI with ER or IR. Two of the most popular and recognizable examples are when the word oil sounds like earl and toilet sounds like terlet, although this practice has shown a sharp pedigree over the generations. Another characteristic of European set on the New York accent is the word youse. It is very rare to hear this outside of New York, and it is notion to be Italian influenced because there is a plural you in the Italian language but there is not in English. The New York accent also receives some influence from the Yiddish (Jewish) language, introducing the intrusive G. There is no soft G in Yiddish like there is in English, so the ing sound becomes ink (Tannen, 1981). For example, seeing is pronounced seeink, and doing is pronounced doink. Yiddish syntax is also different than in English, so its possible to hear phrases (in the New York accent) like a genius, he isnt.New York City is a melting pot of different cultures, immigrating from a ll over the world over the years. The origins of the New York City accent are diverse, and the fount of many features is probably not recoverable. William Labov has pointed out that many features were originally found in southern England as mentioned above. He also claims that the vocalization and subsequent neediness of r was copied from the prestigious London pronunciation, and so it started among the upper classes in New York and later spread to other socioeconomic classes. So it has been reasonably concluded that the New York Accent originated in and was brought here from London, in the simplest terms of explanation. In the 1800s, all major cities on the Eastern seaboard began to copy the British pronunciation saying caah instead of car and not pronouncing that final r as a consonant. New York did not imitate London directly. There were quite a hardly a(prenominal) changes in the vowels so that the New York City accent and dialect began to branch off in its own direction, whi le still drawing major influence from the London pattern of r-less speech. The East Coast is referred to as the r-less corridor by linguists, and other coastal cities have accents with features in common with New York, like Boston and Charleston, S.C. Those cities were colonised around the same time, and the speakers came from a certain place, South London, using a specific sounding type of British English. It cant quite be determined when the other prominent features melded into the accent we know today. After the British, the next generation of European immigrants to New York City (Irish, Germans, Jews, Eastern Europeans, Russians, and Italians) contributed their own respective features. The New York accent is less a result of which particular city or borough the speaker is from, than which country that ones forebears are from. It has been a common misconception (even by New Yorkers) that accent was related to borough that there was a Queens accent, or a Brooklyn accent, or a Man hattan accent. This is not really the case, as it would be whatever the lineage or ethnicity of the speaker was, like an Italian-New York accent, or Spanish-New York accent. The variations of the New York City accent are a result of layering ethnic speech with the influence from waves of immigration. Over time, the collective influences combined to give New York City (and surrounding areas) a distinct and recognizable accent. Sociolinguistic research, which is ongoing, suggests some differentiation between the accents of these groups may exist. There have been differences found in the rate and degree of speech of Italian-New Yorkers versus Jewish-New Yorkers (Mammen, 1936). The features of the New York accent from Irish origin are the most stigmatized, evidence macrocosm that those features have declined over the years. William Labov has argued that these differences are relatively minor. All European American groups share relevant and similar accent features of some kind. Many peo ple who name as Italian-American speak New Yorkese, Labov says, no matter where they live. Labov gave this example In Philadelphia, an r-pronouncing city, theres a certain amount of r-lessness among Italian-Americans. (Virginia, 2010) There are neighborhoods end-to-end the city that are predominantly a specific ethnic group, but they are not limited to any one borough so the accent cannot be classified that way. As can be taken from earlier in this essay, some of the other variations of the New York accent are Irish, Yiddish, even Russian and Arabic. So essentially, the New York accent is a product of evolution, ethnic roots, and immigration.Over the many years, there have been a myriad of varying responses to the New York accent. These reactions have been in the flesh(predicate) for New Yorkers, or even present in society via the portrayal of the accent in media (movies, television, etc.). In a study done on language and social strata, Labov wrote The term linguistic self-hatred is not too extreme to apply. People from New York and New jersey described their own speech as distorted, sloppy and horrible. (Virginia, 2010) Some New Yorkers even go so far as to take classes to lose or unlearn their accents. Labov also found (in better interviews) that only one third of New Yorkers liked their accent and most were under the impression that the other Americans dislike the accent in general (Tierney, 1995). Many professional-class New Yorkers from high socioeconomic backgrounds often make a concentrated effort to speak with less conspicuous accents for this reason and in order to be taken seriously in particular, many use rhotic pronunciations instead of the characteristic New York non-rhotic pronunciations, while maintaining some of the less stigmatized features of the accent. However, the common association of the New York accent with the working and middle class has also, since the latter half of the 20th century, warranted many upper class New Yorkers to re frain from speaking with a New York accent. Because of the accents humbler origins, generations of parents hoping their children would grow up to be doctors or lawyers and get out of the neighborhood, encouraged their children to leave it behind, deeming is lower class, ethnic, or crude. The New York accent has also often been associated with negative stereotypes, such as mobster, gangsters, criminals, and thugs. Portrayal of the accent in kind of a negative light (such as in television shows and movies) has made New Yorkers self-aware of their accents and not in a good way. The accent was even somewhat unpopular in Colonial times. People did not postulate to sound like New Yorkers, so the accent didnt spread like others did but remained nearly exclusive to New York City, and parts of New Jersey and Long Island. But there are two sides to this coin, as some New Yorkers wear and project their accents with pride, pride that comes with being from New York City. And there is expect fo r media, maybe instead of erasing longstanding regional and social distinctions, television will help preserve them (Virginia, 2010). Outside, the accent used to be stigmatized, but inside of New York City, its a positive thing. Being from New York matters, and people need to convey that message, and one way for them to convey that is through language (Bortolot, 2011). Up until 1945, it was considered distinguished to drop the r. President Franklin Delano Roosevelt, on his radio addresses We have nothing to fe-ah but fe-ah istelf. After World War II however, Americans stopped considering British English to be quite so prestigious. But the classic New York City accent is fading away. It has been mocked and stereotyped to the point that it has fallen out of favor in the majority. Contrary to the popular impression that accents are disappearing, sociolinguists say regional accents are remaining quite distinct even as they change. Rene Blake (a socio-cultural linguistics professor at NY U, specializing in New York City English) says that while the New York accent will never die, the meaning of the accent continues to evolve as the city does. Accent is an aspect of evolution (Quinlan, 2013).In conclusion, where did the famous and recognizable New York City accent come from? Well, in essence it came from the people. From the primaeval New Yorkers who chose to sound different. But it is not a difficult stretch to find out that the accent originated in London. Since the British colonized America, Im sure it could be argued that all of the native accents in America were originally were derived from British. But many of the characteristic sounds present in the New York accent can be traced back to their British counterparts with ease. However, as it turns out, there is more than one aspect of what makes up the New York City accent. The other main piece of the puzzle is ethnic roots or lineage. There are different varieties of the New York City accent that are based on e thnicity, due to the citys long standing reputation as the gateway to America, a true melting pot of people and cultures. There are Italian-New Yorkers, Spanish-New Yorkers, and Yiddish-New Yorkers that all have a unique sound all their own. That was just to name a few, but the list of different types of accents in New York City could go on for a significant time. Or maybe it couldnt, because there are a growing number of New Yorkers that have developed distaste for the way that they sound and wish to change their accents. While some New Yorkers have no problem with their accent or wield it proudly, a majority of them are looking down upon it so it has begun to fade out. But the accent will never die out and no matter how many habits New Yorkers consciously unlearn, they will still unconsciously say some things otherwise from the rest of the country (Tierney, 1995). Many New Yorkers are proud of their unique sound it continues to be spoken widely in the city today, even without ha rd class distinctions. The accent has many curious phonological features which stand out when compared to other accents. These features show how the accent has evolved into a unique type of speech which reflects the New York speakers and their citys history. New Yorkers with different backgrounds have continuously and will continue to shape their accents according to their needs this process of change will never stop as long as the accent continues to be used. Conversely, it remains to be seen whether the negative attitudes of those from other parts of the United States towards New York City speech will change in the future, and whether New Yorkers will continue to cherish the traditional, unique features of their accent. It is a strong symbol to and of New York City. And while some look down on the accent, there are just as many who see their speech and accent as an integral part of the citys identity. Thus, although New York City speech has a rather bad reputation within the Ameri ca, it is still valued and cherished by its speakers. Perhaps it is precisely this infamy that has partly caused the accent to be widely used and preserved among New Yorkers. Its also a New York state of mind they rebel, consciously or unconsciously, against the beliefs of the majority. Regardless, the accent is permanently ingrained in and connected to the thriving metropolis and will continue to grow and change as New York City does itself.ReferencesQuinlan, Heather. (Writer/Director). (2013). If These Knishes Could Talk The Story of the New York Accent Documentary. USA Canvas Kid Production Company.Tannen, D. (1981). New York Jewish Conversational Style. International Journal Of The Sociology Of Language, 1981(30), 133-149.Virginia,H. (2010). 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