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The New York dialect of the English Language is spoken by most European American s who were raised in New York City and much of its metropolitan area including the lower Hudson Valley , western Long Island , and in Northeastern New Jersey . It is often considered to be one of the most recognizable accents within American English (Newman 2005). It is also often heard in many American Mobster films, based on how these mobster characters talk. The English Spoken In Northern New Jersey , although often confused with that of New York City, is distinct from the New York City dialect, though the New York dialect is spoken in some parts of New Jersey with close proximity to New York. Similarly, a variety of unrelated dialects are spoken in those parts of New York State outside the metropolitan area. MACROSOCIAL EXTENSIONS Geographic factors The New York dialect is closely confined to the geographically small but densely populated New York City Dialect Region, which consists of the city's Five Boroughs , the western half of Long Island , and the cities of Newark and Jersey City in New Jersey. 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 ethnic cluster 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 outlying areas to which they moved. Now, the most secure strongholds of the New York dialect are arguably the suburban areas of Nassau County , western Suffolk County , Westchester County , northeastern and southwestern Queens , and Staten Island , although some strong New York dialect speakers remain in urban sections of Queens , the Bronx , Brooklyn , and Manhattan . 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. Ethnic and racial factors The variations of the New York accent are a result of the layering of ethnic speech from the waves of immigrants that settled in the city, from the earliest settlement by the Dutch and English, followed in the 1800s by the Irish and Midwesterners (typically of French, German, Irish, Scandinavian, and Scottish descent). Over time these collective influences "ganged" together to give New York its distinctive accent. {Link without Title} From the turn of the century until about 1930, predominantly Italian and Eastern European Jewish immigrants, but also later Irish and others, arrived and further affected the region's speech. Sociolinguistic Research , which is ongoing, suggests some differentiation between these last groups' speech may exist, 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. These differences are relatively minor, more of degree than kind. All groups share the relevant features. It is possible that there are substantial differences, but like geographic differences, these have not been found. 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 Rudy Giuliani . Of course he's not Irish, but he speaks with a New York Irish speech pattern". One area that is likely to reveal robust patterns 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. 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. 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 Latino s 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. 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 speech. Beyond New York As a result of both a history of social and commercial contact between the two cities, as well as the influx of similar immigrant groups, the traditional dialect of New Orleans, Louisiana , known locally as Yat , bears numerous distinctive traces of influence from the New York dialect, including palatalization of the vowel, a similar split in the "short a" system, and fortition of . (See below for more information on these features.) Albany, New York and, to a lesser extent, Cincinnati, Ohio also display influence from the New York City dialect. 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 American 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 generally speak with the same accent. Similarly, many Mafia Films , most of them set in the 1940s , show many characters speaking English with a New York accent. LINGUISTIC FEATURES Pronunciation ''See the article International Phonetic Alphabet for explanations of the phonetic symbols used, as indicated between square brackets {Link without Title} .'' 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: Vowels
Consonants
Syntax
Lexicon There are numerous words used mainly in New York, mostly associated with immigrant languages. For instance, a "stoop" (from Dutch ), is the front steps of a building entrance. A curious split in usage, reflective of the city's racial differences, involves the word ''punk''. In the African American and Latino communities, the word tends to be used as a synonym for ''weak'', ''someone unwilling or unable to defend 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 ). One curious example of New York English is that New Yorkers stand "on line", whereas most other English speakers stand "in line". Some New Yorkers may say that they made a mistake "on accident," as opposed to "by accident". Small convenience stores are widely referred to as "bodegas," a Spanish term literally meaning "a liquor storehouse." Notable Speakers with the Accent The following famous people or characters are often seen as speaking with features typical of a New York accent. Most, but not all, are native New Yorkers (''see also'' 'Beyond New York' above):
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. SEE ALSO External links
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