WHADSA
madda wid da way Noo Yawkers tawk? Nuttin', brudda, 'cept dat
dey wud be da foist to tell you dat dey tawk wid a unique accent.
This accent is as New York as cheesecake or the Empire State Building.
New Yorkese, or the accent Americans in most parts of the country
love to ridicule, is probably the first distinctively New York
sound that assaults one's ears upon arriving in the city.
It may sound familiar, if you are a movie fanatic or a TV junkie,
you may have heard it from its more notable speakers such as Robert
De Niro, Woody Allen, Tony Danza, Fran Drescher, Rosie O'Donnell
or Bugs Bunny.
You know you're in
New York by the way people pronounce (or don't pronounce) their
"r"s; the way "oi"s and "er"s are
interchanged; and the way the "th" is uttered as "t"
or "d".
George Jochnowitz,
professor of linguistics at the College of Staten Island, said
one major characteristic of the New York accent or dialect is
R-lessness. "The r is frequently not pronounced at the end
of a word, as in 'better;' or before a consonant, as in 'hard,'"
said Jochnowitz, who grew up in Brooklyn's Borough Park.
So instead of 'better,'
New Yorkers would say 'bettuh,' and instead of hard, they would
say 'hahd.' "The
phrase 'Caught in court' would sound like 'Coht in coht,"
Jochnowitz said.
But New Yorkers do pronounce the "r"—it's just
in the wrong words. They add the letter at the end of words such
as "idear" (idea) and "sofer" (sofa), said
Robert Hendrickson, author of the book New Yawk Tawk: A Dictionary
of New York City Expressions.
The dialect's most noticeable peculiarity is the reversal of the
diphthong "oi" and "er" sounds, according
to Hendrickson . "The er sound changes in words like nerve,
pearl, girl and murder to noive, poil, goil and moider. Conversely,
the oi sound changes in words like boil and oyster so that we
are left with berl and erster," he wrote in the book's introduction.
So in New York, you have to know that "Toity-toid ohn Toid"
is an address on Thirty Third (Street) and Third (Avenue).
New Yorkers are also notorious for saying "fadduh,"
"muddah," "bruddah," "sistah," and
"dem," "dese" and "dat," because
of their tendency to substitute "d" and "t"
for the diphthong "th." The list above actually should
actually read "father," "mother," "brother,"
"sister," and "them," "these" and"
that."
It is not uncommon to hear New Yorkers pronounce "Long Island"
as "Lung
Guylin." Jochnowitz
said in New Yorkese, the letter g is pronounced in an ng cluster.
Another example is the word "singer." "A lot of
New Yorkers pronounce it as 'sing-ger,'" he said.
In New York, you hail a "kee-ab" (cab), you bring a
"bee-ag" (bag) and you're "bee-ad" (bad),
linguistics professor William Labov, formerly from Columbia University
and now at the University of Pennsylvania, has written in his
studies.
Other important traits of New Yorkese, according to Hendrickson,
are the "aw" sound in words like "tawk" (talk),
"fawk" (fork), and of course, "Noo Yawk";
the omission of the letter d in contractions such as "didn't,"
transforming it into "dint"; and contractions such as
"shudda" (should have), "wuntcha" (won't you),
"smattuhr" (what's the matter) and "juhhimee"
(did you hear me).
Dere is moh, actually, but maybe youvadanuff. Anyway, assawayigoze.
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