New York-New Jersey English

The variety of the English language spoken in the New York City and North Jersey region is often considered to be one of the most recognizable accents within American English. Template:Ref

1 Macrosocial Extensions
2 Linguistic Features
3 History
4 Celebrities with New York Accents
5 New Jersey Dialects
6 See also
- 6.1 External links
- 6.2 References

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Macrosocial Extensions

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Geographic factors

The dialect is closely confined to the geographically small but densely populated New York City Dialect Region, which consists of the city's five Boroughs, western and central Long Island, and certain neighboring New Jersey cities such as Newark, Jersey City, Bayonne, and Union City. However, the terms “New York English” and “New York dialect” are strictly speaking misnomers. The classic New York dialect is centered on middle and working class European Americans, and this racial group now accounts for less than half of the city’s population, although, the same "White Flight" that reduced their numbers in the city has led to expansion of the dialect in the outlaying areas to which they moved. Now, the most secure strongholds of the New York dialect are arguably the suburban areas of Nassau County, Suffolk County, northeastern and southwestern Queens, and parts of Northern New Jersey, although some strong New York dialect speakers do remain in urban sections of Queens, Staten Island, the Bronx, Brooklyn, and even Manhattan. It is often claimed that the dialect varies by neighborhood or borough, or that Lawn Guylanders speak in a particular manner. In particular, many 20th-century New Yorkers have claimed to perceive a difference between Brooklyn and Bronx accents. This may be true, although no published study has found any feature that varies in this way beyond local names. Impressions that the dialect changes may also be a byproduct of class and/or ethnic variation.

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Racial and Ethnic Factors

African American New Yorkers often speak African American Vernacular English (AAVE), though with some New York Dialect features, as do most children of Black Caribbean immigrants. Many Latinos speak another distinct ethnolect, New York Latino English, characterized by a varying mix of traditional New York dialect and AAVE features along with features of Portuguese and Spanish origin. There is a tendency for middle and upper middle class members of both groups to use more New York dialect features and lower income residents to use fewer. Many East Asian American and Middle Eastern New Yorkers may also speak a recognizable variety, though one much closer to standard American English. Thus, within the dialect region, the dialect is predominantly, though not exclusively, European American.

Some speakers claim that there are differences among speakers of European American New York English that break down along ethnic lines, particularly between the descendents of the Irish, Eastern European Jews, and Italians, the three main late 19th and early 20th Century immigrants. Evidence for this differentiation may be found in sociolinguistic research, in particular Labov's (1982), finding of differences in the rate and degree of the tensing and raising of (oh) and (aeh) of Italian American versus Jewish American New Yorkers. In the NPR interview linked below, Labov talks about Irish origin features being the most stigmatized. However, these differences are relatively minor, more of degree than kind. All groups share the relevant features. It is possible, of course, that there are substantial differences, but like geographic differences, these have not been found.

That said, Sam Chwat, a prominent speech therapist, shares the widely held belief of native New Yorkers that it is possible to make clear distinctions among the accents of different ethnic groups:

People talk about borough-defined New York accents, but, really, the different types of New York accents are ethnic," Mr. Chwat said. "You have the Jewish accent, as typified by Jackie Mason or Fran Drescher, the Italian accent -- Robert De Niro or Tony Danza. There's the Irish New York accent, like Rosie O'Donnell or Mayor Giuliani.[1]

One area that is likely to reveal robust patterns, however, is usage among Orthodox Jews, sometimes referred to as Yeshivish, for the parochial high schools members of this community attend. Such features include fully released final stops and certain Yiddish contact features, such as topicalizations of direct objects, (e.g., constructions such as Esther, she saw! or A dozen knishes, you bought! There is also substantial use of Yiddish and particularly Hebrew words. However, it could be argued that such features are not characteristic of New York dialect because they exist among Orthodox Jews in other dialect regions. Still, in combination with other New York dialect features they are characteristic of a specific local ethno-religious community. There is no research, however, establishing these facts in the New York Dialect literature.

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Social Class Factors

Nevertheless, not even all European American New Yorkers use this variety. Upper-middle class European American New Yorkers and suburban residents from educated backgrounds often speak with less conspicuous accents; in particular, many, though hardly all, use rhotic pronunciations instead of the less prestigious non-rhotic pronunciations while maintaining some less stigmatized features such as the low back chain shift and the short a split (see below).

Similarly, the children of professional white migrants from other parts of the US frequently do not have many New York dialect features, and as these two populations come to dominate the southern half of Manhattan and neighboring parts of Brooklyn, the dialect is retreating from their neighborhoods. Many teens attending expensive private prep schools are barely linguistically recognizable as New Yorkers. Nevertheless, many New Yorkers, particularly those of Southern and Eastern European descent from the middle- and working-class, retain varying degrees of what has been coined New Yorkese or Brooklynese, within their daily regular speech.

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Beyond New York

Many Jewish-Americans, both Ashkenazic and Sephardic, throughout the United States have some features of a New York accent. This is the case even among some Jewish-Americans who have never lived in New York or New Jersey. This phenomenon is somewhat parallel to the spread of African American Vernacular English to the rest of the United States from its original location in the US South. Because so many Jewish-Americans have a New York-sounding accent, some people may mistakenly believe that a New York accent is a "Jewish accent," when actually, non-jewish White New Yorkers have the same accent. Similarly, many Mafia films, most of them set in the 1940s, show many characters speaking English with a New York accent.

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Linguistic Features

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Pronunciation

See the article International Phonetic Alphabet for explanations of the phonetic symbols used, as indicated between square brackets. These represent actual pronunciations. The symbols in curved parentheses () are variables, in this case historical word classes that have different realizations between and within dialects. This system was developed by William Labov. A link to a site with an example text read in various accents, including New York, can be found under external links.

New York Dialect is predominantly characterized by the following sounds and speech patterns:

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Vowels

The low back chain shift The (oh) vowel sound of words like talk, law, cross, and coffee and the often homophonous (ohr) in core and more are tensed and usually raised, higher than its equivalent in many other U.S. dialects. This vowel is typically above Template:IPA, the corresponding vowel in Received Pronunciation; in the most extreme New York accents, it is even higher and possesses an inglide: Template:IPA. (ah) in father and (ahr) in car are tensed and move to a position abandoned by (oh). The result is that car is often similar to core in parts of New England. Some words not originally from this word class, such as on, god and Bob join the (ah) group. This shift is robust and has spread to many non European American New Yorkers.

The short a split There is a class of words, indicated with (aeh) with a historical "short a" vowel, including plan, class, and bad, where the historical Template:IPA has undergone [æ]-tensing to Template:IPA, or, in the most extreme accents, Template:IPA, accompanied by an inglide as with (oh). This class is similar to, but larger than, the class of words in which Received Pronunciation uses the so-called broad A.Other words, such as plaque clatter and bat,indicated as (ae), remain lax, with the result that bad and bat have different vowels. Versions of the short a split are found from Philadelphia to Southern New England.

pre-r distinctions New York accents lacks most of the mergers before medial Template:IPA that many other modern American accents possess:
- The vowels in marry Template:IPA, merry Template:IPA, and Mary Template:IPA are distinct.
- The vowels in furry Template:IPA and hurry Template:IPA are distinct
- Words like orange and forest are pronounced Template:IPA and Template:IPA with the same stressed vowel as pot, not with the same vowel as port as in much of the rest of the United States.

er/oy In the most old-fashioned and extreme New York–area accents, the vowel sounds of words like girl and of words like oil both become a diphthong Template:IPA. This is often misperceived by speakers of other accents as a "reversal" of the "er" and "oy" sounds, so that girl is pronounced "goil" and oil is pronounced "erl"; this leads to the caricature of New Yorkers saying things like "Joizey" and "terlet". This particular speech pattern is no longer very prevalent; the character Archie Bunker was a good example of a speaker who had this feature. Younger New Yorkers (born since about 1950) are likely to use a rhotic Template:IPA in bird even if they use nonrhotic pronunciations of beard, bared, bard, board, boor, and butter.

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Consonants

r-lessness The traditional New York–area accent is non-rhotic; in other words, the sound Template:IPA does not appear at the end of a syllable or immediately before a consonant. Thus, there is no Template:IPA in words like park Template:IPA (with vowel raised due to the low-back chain shift), butter Template:IPA, or here Template:IPA. This feature is slowly losing ground, as discussed above. Non-rhoticity now happens sometimes in New Yorkers with otherwise rhotic speech if r 's are located in unaccented syllables particularly in pre-vocalic position. Non-rhotic speakers usually exhibit an intrusive or linking r, similar to other non-rhotic dialect speakers.

Dark (l) onsets This feature has rarely been commented on but it is robust. A dark variant of (l) is used before vowels like the (l) used in most English after vowels. In other words, in New York dialect, the (l) is made before vowels with the tongue bunched towards the back of the mouth as it is after vowels. In much US English, the prevowel version has a light variant, with the tongue bunched more towards the front. In effect, this means that the beginning sound of lull and level approximates the final one.

Dentalization (t) and (d) are often pronounced with the tongue tip touching the teeth rather than the alveolar ridge (just above the teeth), as is typical in most varieties of English. Also, these sounds become affricates (sounds with a burst and then a substantial frication, (like ch) before r.

(dh/th) fortition Some speakers replace the dental fricatives Template:IPA with dental variants of stops Template:IPA, so that words like thing and this sound similar to "ting" and "dis". This feature is highly stigmatized and is becoming less and less frequent. However affricate pronunciations are common.

Intrusive g. In most varieties of English, the velar nasal (ng), written as ‘’ng’’ has no g sound in it. However, in strong versions of New York dialect, it appears that it does get pronounced before a vowel as a velar stop. This leads to the stereotype of ‘’Long Island’’ being pronounced as [[[Template:IPA]]] popularly written, Lawn Guyland.

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Syntax

Indirect questions The question order is preserved in indirect questions, at least those introduced by wh-words. He wanted to know when will he come instead of He wanted to know when he will come Or She asked why don’t you want any instead of the standard She asked why you don’t want any.

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Lexicon

There are numerous words used mainly in New York, mostly associated with immigrant languages. A few examples include:

Hero: the local name of the submarine sandwich, perhaps etymologically related to Greek gyro, though with a different meaning.
Bodega: the local name for a small market, known in other parts of the US as a convenience store. Its use is general for stores owned by Latinos, but it has been extended to stores owned by members of other immigrant groups such as Middle Easterners.
A new contribution, papichulo for a kind of suave ladies' man, is starting to spread.

A curious split in usage, reflective of the city's racial divide, involves the word punk. In the African American and Latino communities, the word tends to be used as a synomym for weak, someone unwilling or unable to defend her or usually himself or perhaps loser. That usage appears to descend from the AAVE meaning of male receptive participant in anal sex, a meaning which, in turn, may be largely lost among youth. Although this loser sense is expanding to younger European American and perhaps Asian American speakers with considerable contact with AAVE culture, an older usage, in which the term means youthful delinquent is probably still more common. Thus a newspaper article that refers to, say, some arrested muggers, as punks can have two different meanings to two different readers. Of course, the term also unambiguously means the follower of a particular musical and fashion peer cultural style (i.e. Punk rock).

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History

The origins of the dialect are diverse, and the source of many features is probably not recoverable. Labov has pointed out that the short a split is found in southern England as mentioned above. He also claims that the vocalization and subsequent loss of (r) was copied from the prestigious London pronunciation, and so it started among the upper classes in New York and only later moved down the socioeconomic scale. This aristocratic r-lessness can be heard, for instance, in recordings of Franklin Roosevelt. After WWII, the r-ful pronunciation became the prestige norm, and what was once the upper class pronunciation became a vernacular one.

Other vernacular pronunciations, such as the dental (d)'s and (t)'s may come from contact with languages such as Italian and Yiddish. Grammatical structures, such as the lack of inversion in indirect questions, have the flavor of contact with an immigrant language. As stated above, many words common in New York are of immigrant roots.

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Celebrities with New York Accents

Many celebrities have New York accents; a famous example of a very strong New York-New Jersey accent is often attributed to Joe Pesci, who was born in Newark. Others include Danny DeVito, Joe Paterno, Billy Joel, Jeff Velocci, Muhammad Hassan, Bruce Willis, Paul Heyman, Regis Philbin, Woody Allen, Howard Stern, Ray Romano, Fran Drescher, Jerry Seinfeld, Mel Brooks, Rodney Dangerfield, Bea Arthur, George Carlin, Gilbert Gottfried, Ed Koch, Rosie O'Donnell, Jennifer Lopez, Ben Stiller, Peter Gallagher, Penny Marshall, "Mistress" Juliya Chernetsky, Bruce Arena, Andy Milonakis, Wendy Kaufman ("The Snapple Lady"), Gabe Kaplan, Colin Quinn, Bugs Bunny, Al Goldstein, Cyndi Lauper, Robert Pastorelli, Carmine Giovinazzo, Joy Behar, Eddie Cahill, Ron Palillo, and Vanessa Ferlito. Sportscaster Al Michaels also speaks with a New York accent sometimes, despite attending high school in Los Angeles. Famous bands with New York accents include The Beastie Boys, The Ramones, The Velvet Underground, Anthrax, and M.O.D.

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New Jersey Dialects

For a small state, New Jersey is dialectally quite diverse, with two regions of the state ovelapping with other dialect areas, New York and Philadelphia, and several autochthonous dialects.

Generally, only the European American residents of areas immediately closest to New York City are New York dialect speakers.

European Americans in much of southern New Jersey generally speak with an accent that is closely related if not identical to the Philadelphia dialect. The southwestern section of New Jersey along the Deleware River is a suburb of Philadelphia as has large numbers of transplanted Philadelphians who moved to the growing area during Philadelphia's decline. The situtation is very similar to the Northern New Jersey-New York City relationship.

The so-called North Jersey accent spoken in northern New Jersey is found in the northeast quarter of New Jersey, and is basically the part of the state which is in New York City's metropolitan area, including cities such as Rutherford and Rahway. However, it is not part of the New York Dialect area. For instance, it is rhotic and lacks a short a split. NYC shibboleths such as hero are less used than the less regionally distinct sub (sandwich on baguette style bread). A curious example of a speaker of this dialect is the founder of variationist sociolinguistics William Labov.

The present accent of the Jersey Shore is heavily influenced by the populations of summer visitors from North Jersey, New York, and Philadelphia from which it was principally settled. However, prior to the influence of the tourism industry on the area, the situation was different. Presently the beachfront communities north of Atlantic City tend to have a heavy New York influence and those to the south have a Philadelphia influence due to the large number of residents from those areas who spend their summer "down the shore".

Cape May was first a Dutch town, which is still reflected in the Dutch names of some local businesses and streets. The only road to Cape May was from Philadelphia, so Philadelphia English mixed in with the Dutch. The Cape May accent is fading away now as more residents from North Jersey, New York and Philadelphia populate the area.

Contrary to popular belief, hardly anyone in any part of New Jersey refer to their state as Joisey. This word is generally a mistaken attempt by non-New Jersey residents to speak with a New Jersey accent.

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New York-New Jersey English

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Contents

Macrosocial Extensions

Geographic factors

Racial and Ethnic Factors

Social Class Factors

Beyond New York

Linguistic Features

Pronunciation

Vowels

Consonants

Syntax

Lexicon

History

Celebrities with New York Accents

New Jersey Dialects

See also

External links

References

Views

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