New York accent

The sound system of New York City English is popularly known as a New York accent. The New York metropolitan accent is one of the most recognizable accents of the United States, largely due to its popular stereotypes and portrayal in radio, film, and television. Several other common names exist for the accent based on specific location, such as a Bronx accent, Long Island accent, Brooklyn accent, or North Jersey accent. The following is an overview of the phonological structures and variations within the accent.

Vowels

Consonants

While the following consonantal features are central to the common stereotype of a "New York City accent", they are not entirely ubiquitous in New York City. By contrast, the vocalic (vowel) variations in pronunciation as described above are far more typical of New York City area speakers than the consonantal features listed below, which carry a much greater stigma than do the dialect's vocalic variations:

*Non-rhoticity (or ''r''-lessness): The traditional metropolitan New York accent is non-rhotic; in other words, the sound does not appear at the end of a syllable or immediately before a consonant. Thus, there is no in words like ''park'' (with the vowel rounded due to the low-back chain shift, though in earlier twentieth-century speakers), ''butter'' , or ''here'' . However, modern New York City English is variably rhotic for the most part. The New York City accent also varies between pronounced and silenced in similar phonetic environment, even in the same word when repeated. Non-rhotic speakers usually exhibit a linking or intrusive ''R'', similar to other non-rhotic dialect speakers.
* Rhoticity: In more modern times, the post-vocal /r/ has become more prominent. When Metro New Yorkers are more conscious of what they are saying, the /r/ is more evident in their speech. In terms of social stratification, the lower class tends to use rhoticity less than the upper and middle New York City classes. Also, rhoticity is noticeably based on age since younger generations will pronounce /r/ at the end of their sentences (coda position).
*Laminal alveolar consonants: The alveolar consonants , , , and may be articulated with the tongue blade rather than the tip. Wells (1982) indicates that this articulation may, in some cases, also involve affrication, producing and . Also and are often pronounced with the tongue touching the teeth rather than the alveolar ridge (just above the teeth), as is typical in most varieties of English. With , glottalization is reported to sometimes appear in a wider range of contexts in New York City speech than in other American dialects, appearing, for example, before syllabic (e.g., ''bottle'' ). At the same time, before a pause, a released final stop is often more common than a glottal stop in New York City accents than in General American ones; for example, ''bat'' as rather than .
**The universal usage of "dark L", , common throughout the U.S., is also typical of the New York City accent. Newman (2014) reports even in initial position to be relatively dark for all accents of the city except the accents of Latinos. However, in the mid-twentieth century, both dark and "not quite so 'dark'" variants of are reported. The latter occurs initially or in initial consonant clusters, pronounced with the point or blade of the tongue against the alveolar ridge, though this variant is not as "clear" as in British Received Pronunciation.Hubbell, Allan Forbes (1950)
''The pronunciation of English in New York City: consonants and vowel''
King's Crown Press.
**Also, is reported as commonly becoming postalveolar before , making a word like ''William'' for some speakers or even .
**Vocalization of : ''L''-vocalization is common in New York City though it is perhaps not as pervasive as in some other dialects. Like its fellow liquid , it may be vocalized when it appears finally or before a consonant (e.g., sell, milk).
* ''Th''-stopping: As in many other dialects, the interdental fricatives and are often realized as dental or alveolar stop consonants, famously like and , or affricates and . Labov (1966) found this alternation to vary by class with the non-fricative forms appearing more regularly in lower and working class speech. Unlike the reported changes with , the variation with and appears to be stable. Historical dialect documents suggest ''th''-stopping probably originated from the massive influence of immigrant German, Italian, Irish, and Yiddish speakers to the city starting in the mid-19th century.
*Reduction of to : Metro New Yorkers typically do not allow to precede ; this gives pronunciations like ''yuman'' and ''yooge'' for ''human'' and ''huge''.

Variability

Social and geographic variation

Despite common references to a "Bronx accent", "Brooklyn accent", "Long Island accent", etc., which reflect a popular belief that different boroughs or neighborhoods of the New York metropolitan area have different accents, linguistic research fails to reveal any features that vary internally within the dialect due to specific geographic differences.Becker, Kara, and Luiza Newlin-Lukowicz.
The Myth of the New York City Borough Accent: Evidence from Perception
. 24 Vol. Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania, Department of Linguistics, 2018. ProQuest. Web. 10 Oct. 2020. Impressions that the dialect varies geographically are likely a byproduct of class or ethnic variation, and even some of these assumptions are losing credibility in light of accent convergences among the current younger generations of various ethnic backgrounds. Speakers from Queens born in the 1990s and later are showing a cot–caught merger more than in other boroughs, though this too is likely class- or ethnic-based (or perhaps even part of a larger trend in the whole city) rather than location-based. Increasing levels of the cot–caught merger among these Queens natives also appeared correlated with the fact of their majority foreign parentage. A lowering of New York City's traditionally raised ''caught'' vowel is similarly taking place among younger residents of Manhattan's Lower East Side. This is seen most intensely among Western European (and Jewish) New Yorkers, fairly intensely among Latino and Asian New Yorkers, but not among African-American New Yorkers. Therefore, this reverses a trend documented amongst Western European Lower East Siders in the 20th century.

Ethnic variation

The classic New York City 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, within which there are degrees of ethnic variation. The variations of New York City English are a result of the waves of immigrants that settled in the city, from the earliest settlement by the Dutch and English, followed in the 19th century by the Irish and western Europeans (typically of French, German, and Scandinavian descent). Over time these collective influences combined to give New York City its distinctive accent.

Up until the immigration acts of 1920 and 1924 that restricted Asian as well as Southern and Eastern European immigration, many Eastern European Jewish and Italian immigrants, as well as some later immigrants, arrived and further affected the region's speech. Sociolinguistic research, which is ongoing, suggests that some differentiation between these last groups' speech may exist. For example, William Labov found that Jewish-American Metro New Yorkers were more likely than other groups to use the closest variants of (meaning towards ) and perhaps fully released final stops (for example, pronunciation of ''sent'' as rather than the more General American or ), while Italian-American Metro New Yorkers were more likely than other groups to use the closest variants of (meaning towards ). Labov also discusses Irish originating features being the most stigmatized. Still, Labov argues that these differences are relatively minor, more of degree than kind. All noted Euro-American groups share the relevant features.

One area likely to reveal robust patterns is New York City English among Orthodox Jews, overlapping with Yeshiva English, which can exist outside of the New York City metropolitan area as well. Such features include certain Yiddish grammatical contact features, such as topicalizations of direct objects (e.g., constructions such as ''Esther, she saw!'' or ''A dozen knishes, you bought!'') or the general replacement of with , as stereotyped in the eye-dialect phrase "Lawn Guyland" for "Long Island" ( rather than General American's ), strongly used among Lubavitcher Jews, but a stereotype for the New York City accent in general. There is also substantial use of Yiddish and particularly Hebrew words.

African American Metro New Yorkers typically speak a New York variant of African-American Vernacular English (AAVE), sharing the New York City accent's raised vowel.Fought, Carmen ''Language and Ethnicity'' Cambridge, UK; New York: Cambridge University Press 2006, p. 19 Many Latino New Yorkers speak a distinctly local ethnolect, New York Latino English, characterized by a varying mix of New York City English and AAVE features, along with some Spanish contact features. Asian American New Yorkers are not shown by studies to have any phonetic features that are overwhelmingly distinct. Anglo-American or Euro-American New Yorkers alone have been traditionally documented as using a phonetic split of as follows: before voiceless consonants but elsewhere.Newman, 2014, pp. 72-3.

References

Bibliography

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{{English dialects by continent

North American English
Accent
City colloquials