The origins of many of New York City English's diverse features are probably not recoverable. New York City English, largely with the same major pronunciation system popularly recognized today, was first reproduced in literature and scientifically documented in the 1890s.[5] It was then, and still mostly is, associated with ethnically diverse European-American native-English speakers. The entire Mid-Atlantic United States, including both New York City and the Delaware Valley (whose own distinct dialect centers around Philadelphia and Baltimore) shares certain key features, including a high/ɔ/ vowel with a glide (sometimes called the aww vowel) as well as a phonemic split of the short a vowel, /æ/ (making gas and gap, for example, have different vowels sounds)—New York City's split not identical though to Philadelphia's. Linguist William Labov has pointed out that a similarly structured (though differently pronounced) split is found today even in the southern accents of England; thus, a single common origin of this split may trace back to colonial-era England.[a]
New York City became an urban economic power in the eighteenth century, with the city's financial elites maintaining close ties with the British Empire even after the Revolutionary War. According to Labov, New York City speakers' loss of the r sound after vowels (incidentally, not found in the nearby Delaware Valley) began as a nineteenth-century imitation of the prestigious British feature, consistently starting among the upper classes in New York City before spreading to other socioeconomic classes.[6] After World War II, social perceptions reversed and r-preserving (rhotic) pronunciations became the new American prestige standard, rejecting East Coast and British accent features,[7] while postwar migrations transferred rhotic speakers directly to New York City from other regions of the country. The result is that non-rhoticity, which was once a high-status feature and later a city-wide feature, has been diminishing and now, since the mid-twentieth century onward, largely remains only among lower-status New Yorkers.[8] Today, New York City metropolitan accents are often rhotic or variably rhotic.
Other features of the dialect, such as the dental pronunciations of d and t, and related th-stopping, likely come from contact with foreign languages, particularly Italian and Yiddish, brought into New York City through its huge immigration waves of Europeans during the mid-to-late nineteenth century and twentieth century. Grammatical structures, such as the lack of inversion in indirect questions, similarly suggest contact with immigrant languages, plus several words common in the city are derived from such foreign languages.[9]
Influence on other dialects
Philadelphians born in the twentieth century exhibit a short-a split system that some linguists regard as a simplification of the very similar New York City short-a split.[10] Younger Philadelphians, however, are retreating from many of the traditional features shared in common with New York City.[11] Due to an influx of immigrants from New York City and neighboring New Jersey to southern Florida, some resident southern Floridians now speak with an accent reminiscent of a New York accent. Additionally, as a result of social and commercial contact between New Orleans, Louisiana and New York City,[12] the traditional accent of New Orleans, known locally as "Yat", bears distinctive similarities with the New York accent, including the (moribund) coil–curl merger, raising of the /ɔ/ vowel to [ɔə], a similar split in the short-a system, and th-stopping. Similarly, dialectal similarities suggest that older New York City English also influenced Cincinnati, Ohio and Albany, New York, whose older speakers in particular may still exhibit a short-a split system that linguists suggest is an expanded or generalized variant of the New York City short-a system. Certain New York City dialect features also understandably appear in New York Latino English.
Recent developments
Though William Labov argued in 2010 that the New York City accent is basically stable at the moment,[13] some recent studies have revealed a trend of recession in most features of the accent, especially among younger speakers from middle-class or higher backgrounds. Documented loss of New York City accent features includes the loss of the coil–curl merger (now almost completely extinct), non-rhoticity, and the extremely raised long vowel [ɔ] (as in talk, cough, or law). Researchers proposed that the motivation behind these recessive trends is the stigmatization of the typical New York City accent since the mid-1900s as being associated with a poorer or working-class background, often also corresponding with particular ethnic identities. While earlier projects detected trends of emphasizing New York City accents as part of a process of social identification, recent research attributes the loss of typical accent features to in-group ethnic distancing. In other words, many of the young generations of ethnic groups who formerly were the most representative speakers of the accent are currently avoiding its features to not stand out socially or ethnically.[14]
The pronunciation of New York City English, most popularly acknowledged by the term New York accent, is readily noticed and stereotyped, garnering considerable attention in American culture.[15] Some distinctive phonological features include its traditional dropping of r except before vowels, a short-a split system (in which, for example, the a in gas is not assonant to the a in gap), a highgliding/ɔ/ vowel (in words like talk, thought, all, etc. and thus an absence of the cot–caught merger),[15] absence of the Mary–marry–merry merger, and the highly stigmatized (and largely now-extinct) coil–curl merger.[16]
Vocabulary and grammar
These are some words or grammatical constructions used mainly in Greater New York City:
bodega/boʊˈdeɪgə/: a small neighborhood convenience store; used in recent decades, particularly in New York City though not on Long Island generally; it comes from Spanish, originally meaning "a wine storehouse" via the Puerto Rican Spanish term for "small store; corner store"; by extension, "bodega cats" is the term for the cats that inhabit such establishments.[17] These small stores may also be called delis, which is the short form of delicatessens.
bubkes/ˈbʌpkəs/: a worthless amount; little or nothing (from Yiddish; probably an abbreviation of kozebubkes, literally, "goat droppings")[18]
s(c)hmuck: an insulting term for an unlikeable man (from Yiddish shmok: "penis")[18]
The word punk tends to be used as a synonym for "weak", "someone unwilling or unable to defend himself" or perhaps "loser", though it appears to descend from an outdated New York African-American English meaning of male receptive participant in anal sex.[21]
Conversational styles
New York City speakers have some unique conversational styles. Linguistics professor Deborah Tannen notes in a New York Times article it has "an emphasis to involve the other person, rather than being considerate. It would be asking questions as a show of interest in the other person, whereas in other parts of [the] country, people don't ask because it might put the person on the spot." Metro New Yorkers "stand closer, talk louder, and leave shorter pauses between exchanges," Tannen said. "I call it 'cooperative overlap'. It's a way of showing interest and enthusiasm, but it's often mistaken for interrupting by people from elsewhere in the country." On the other hand, linguist William Labov demurs, "there's nothing known to linguists about 'normal New York City conversation.'"[22]
Notable speakers
The New York City accent has a strong presence in media; pioneer variationist sociolinguistWilliam Labov describes it as the most recognizable variety of North American English.[2] The following famous people are native New York City–area speakers—including some speakers of other varieties native to the region—that all demonstrate typical features of the New York City accent.
Many fictional characters in popular films and television shows have used New York City English, whether or not the actors portraying them are native speakers of the dialect. Some examples are listed below.
New York City English is confined to a geographically small but densely populated area of New York State including all five boroughs of New York City as well as many parts of Long Island; the dialect region spans all of Nassau County and some of Suffolk County.[4][206][207][208] Moreover, the English of the Hudson Valley forms a continuum of speakers who exhibit more features of New York City English the closer they are to the city itself;[209] some of the dialect's features may be heard as far north as the state capital of Albany.[210]
The following is a list of notable lifelong native speakers of the New York City English of northeastern New Jersey, regardless of their level of rhoticity:
^Labov, Ash & Boberg (2006), p. 173: "In NYC and the Mid-Atlantic region, short-a is split into a tense and lax class. There is reason to believe that the tense class /æh/ descends from the British /ah/ or 'broad-a' class."
Citations
^Morén, Bruce (2000). Distinctiveness, Coercion and Sonority: A Unified Theory of Weight. Routledge. p. 203.
^ abLabov, William (2006) [1966]. The Social Stratification of English in New York City (2nd ed.). Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. p. 18. ISBN0-521-82122-3.
^ abNewman, 2014, pp. 17–18: "Although small, the [dialect] region is certainly populous. The 2010 US Census gives the population of New York City at 8,175,133. Nassau County, which is entirely within the dialect region, adds 1,339,532. The remaining counties are only partly inside. They include Suffolk (1,493,350), Westchester (949,113), and Rockland (311,687) in New York State and Hudson (905,113) and Bergen (905,116) in New Jersey... Labov, et al. (2006) found that Newark, in Essex County, also had NYCE features."
^Sȩn, Ann L. (1979). "English in the Big Apple: Historical Backgrounds of New York City Speech". The English Journal. 68 (8): 52–55. doi:10.2307/815156. JSTOR815156.
^ abcNewman, Michael (2014). New York City English. De Gruyter Mouton, pp. 113-114
^ abcdeFrederic G. Cassidy; Frederic Gomes; Joan Houston Hall, eds. (2002). Dictionary of American Regional English. Vol. IV. Cambridge, Massachusetts: Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
^Spears, Arthur (1998). "African American language: Ideology and so-called obscenity". In Mufwene, Salikoko; Rickford, John; Bailey, Guy; Baugh, John (eds.). African American English: Structure, History, and Use. London: Routledge. pp. 226–250. ISBN0-415-11733-X.
^ abClancy, Tara (December 14, 2016). "My Queens accent got me a book deal (well, kind of)". Audible. Retrieved April 9, 2024. And even though brilliant writer Robert Caro and physicist Richard Feynman both have/had strong New York accents ...
^ abcdBortolot, Lana (August 12, 2011). "You Tawkin' to New Yawk?: Tracing the City's Mosaic of Accents". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved April 9, 2024. For years, the New York accent—from Rosie Perez to Spike Lee, Fran Drescher to Archie Bunker—has been studied, extolled and derided.
^Newman, Michael (October 5, 2015). "How a New York Accent Can Help You Get Ahead". nytimes.com. Retrieved August 18, 2023. Certainly, Mr. Trump is not the first conservative demagogue with our distinctive New York vowels. You can hear Bill O'Reilly, Michael Savage and Sean Hannity's New York origins in every diatribe.
^Winokur, Mark (2003). "The Marx Brothers and the Search for the Landsman". In Krutnik, Frank (ed.). Hollywood Comedians: The Film Reader. London; New York: Routledge. p. 114. ISBN978-0-415-23551-8.
^Vitello, Paul (December 26, 2011) "Lynn Samuels, a Brash Radio Talker, Dies at 69", The New York Times. Retrieved August 8, 2023. "Lynn Samuels, whose brash political opinions and unrestrained New York accent made her an unmistakable voice in the male-dominated world of political talk radio ... "
^Coe, Jonathan (September 1, 2022). "Second City by Richard Vinen — Birmingham's identity crisis". Financial Times. Retrieved April 9, 2024. 'We're in the heart of the West Midlands,' says the voice, its heavy New York accent reassuringly familiar ... The voice belongs to the American film star Telly Savalas ...
^Smith, Curt. Pull Up a Chair: The Vin Scully Story. Dulles, VA: Potomac Books, 2010.
^Hughes, Jazmine (June 20, 2019). "Judge Judy Is Still Judging You". The New York Times Magazine. The New York Times Company. Retrieved April 9, 2024. Her thick accent — she and Bernie Sanders graduated from the same Brooklyn high school, James Madison ...
^Silvers, Phil; Saffron, Robert (1973). "Me, an English Clergyman in Pride and Prejudice?". This Laugh Is on Me: The Phil Silvers Story. Englewood Cliffs, N.J.: Prentice-Hall. p. 86. ISBN978-0-13-919100-8.
^Wyman, Bill (January 19, 2021). "No One Was Safe from Phil Spector". Vulture. Retrieved April 9, 2024. Spector was quite short, with a weak chin and a pronounced, almost absurd Bronx accent. (His voice was in a Stan Freberg or 'I'm depraved on account I'm deprived!' vein.)
^Barry Wellman, "I was a Teenage Network Analyst: The Route from The Bronx to the Information Highway". Connections 17, 2 (October 1994): 28–45; Barry Wellman, "Through Life from the Bronx to Cyberspace". Aristeia, Fall, 2005: 24.
^Labov, William. 2010. Principles of Linguistic Change, V. 3: Cognitive and Cultural Factors. Cambridge/NY Cambridge University Press. Chapter 15, footnote 13. p.390 "Phonological Atlas of North America". Archived from the original on June 14, 2010. Retrieved June 18, 2010.
^Bakht, Maryam (2010). Lexical Variation and the Negotiation of Linguistic Style in a Long Island Middle School (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). New York University. OCLC776818137. ProQuest816707533.
^Olivo, Ann Marie (2013). The Strong Island Sound: Sociolinguistic Evidence for Emerging American Ethnicities (Unpublished doctoral dissertation). Rice University. hdl:1911/77390. OCLC953579514.
^Labov, William (2007). "Transmission and Diffusion". Language, June 2007. p. 17.
^"Archived copy"(PDF). Archived(PDF) from the original on March 4, 2012. Retrieved February 24, 2017.{{cite web}}: CS1 maint: archived copy as title (link)
^Corasaniti, Nick (April 27, 2018). "Mark Your Calendar: Danny DeVito Day Declared in Jersey". The New York Times. Retrieved December 27, 2024. Out of character, the actor, writer and director speaks with a thick, raspy New Jersey Italian accent, ...
^DeLong, Jessica (September 1, 2009). "Richard Kind Interview". Sarah's Backstage Pass. Retrieved April 9, 2024. ...there was that New Jersey accent I was hoping to hear.
^Kraszewski, Jon (2017). Reality TV. New York, NY: Routledge – Taylor & Francis. p. 71. ISBN978-0-415-74197-2. Although matchmaker Patti Stanger dresses in expensive designer clothes and drives luxury cars, she retains a working-class New Jersey accent from her childhood.
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