New York-New Jersey English
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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.
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Macrosocial Extensions
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 areas like Newark, Jersey City, Bayonne, Hoboken, and Fort Lee. 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.
African American New Yorkers often speak African American English (AAE), 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 AAE, features along with features of Spanish origin. Many East Asian American New Yorkers may also speak a recognizable variety.
Moreover, not even all European American New Yorkers use this variety. Upper-middle class European American New Yorkers from educated backgrounds often speak with less conspicuous accents; in particular, they use rhotic pronunciations instead of the less prestigious non-rhotic pronunciations, although they often maintain at least some of less stigmatized features.
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. Many others though, particularly those of Southern and Eastern European descent from the middle- and working-class, do tend to have varying degrees of what has been coined New Yorkese or Brooklynese, within their daily regular speech.
Within the context of the city, therefore the classic New York dialect marks a particular European American identity, one associated with individuals of working to middle class origins. Only, in the context of European American English generally, is “New York English” a geographic dialect.
Linguistic Features
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.
New York-New Jersey English is predominantly characterized by the following sounds and speech patterns:
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 , the corresponding vowel in Received Pronunciation; in the most extreme New York accents, it is even higher and possesses an inglide: . (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 has undergone [æ]-tensing to , or, in the most extreme accents, , 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 tense-lax neutralizations before medial that many other modern American accents possess:
- The vowels in marry , merry , and Mary are distinct.
- The vowels in furry and hurry are distinct
- Words like orange and forest are pronounced and 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 . 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 in bird even if they use nonrhotic pronunciations of beard, bared, bard, board, boor, and butter.
Consonants
- r-lessness The traditional New York–area 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 , butter , or here . This feature is losing ground; there are plenty of New Yorkers who have fully or partially rhotic English.
- 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 with the stops , 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.
- 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 appear does get pronounced before a vowel as a velar stop. This leads to the stereotype of ‘’Long Island’’ being pronounced as Lawn Guyland.
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’ll come Or She asked why don’t you want any instead of the standard She asked why you don’t want any.
Lexicon
There are numerous words used mainly in New York, mostly associated with immigrant languages. A few examples include:
- Guido: a sleazy young Italian-American male
- Guidette: a corruption of Guido meaning young stereotypical Italian-American female (think poofy hair)
- 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 (from the Spanish word)
- A new contribution, papichulo for a kind of suave ladies' man, is starting to spread.
History
Many people are curious about the origins of the dialect. In fact, they are diverse, and the source of many features is probably not recoverable. Labov has pointed out that the short a splitis found in southern England as mentioned above. Other features, such as the dental d's and t's may come from contact with languages such as Italian and Yiddish.
Internal Geographic Variation
It is often claimed that the dialect varies by neighborhood or borough, or that Lawn Guylanders speak in a particular manner. 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 be a byproduct of class and/or ethnic variation.
The New Jersey accent
Generally, the so-called Jersey accent or North Jersey accent spoken in northern New Jersey is somewhat closer to General American than the speech of New Yorkers, but still shares enough features with it that two can be considered together as a single dialect group for sociolinguistic purposes. Most colloquial greetings and expressions used in New York are also said by New Jerseyans and with the same frequency. However, aside from the areas immediately closest to New York, north Jersey speech is free of certain New York City features which are heavily stigmatized: the Jersey accent is usually rhotic and æ-tensing is less pronounced than in New York.
This accent 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 but not the dialect region. It includes cities such as Rutherford and Rahway.
Contrary to popular belief, no one in any part of New Jersey ever refers to their state as Joisey. This word is, in fact, a mistaken attempt by non-New Jersey residents to speak with a Jersey accent.
The Jersey Shore and Cape May Accent
The present accent of the Jersey Shore is heavily influenced by that of North Jersey, from which it was principally settled. However, prior to the influence of the tourism industry on the area, the situation was different.
It 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; people are moving away from Cape May and businesses are closing. New people are moving in with ordinary northern New Jersey accents. Within years the accent will disappear.
Related topics
External links
- Varieties of English: New York City phonology (http://www.ic.arizona.edu/~lsp/Northeast/NewYorkEnglish/nyphon.html) from the University of Arizona's Language Samples Project
- William Labov's webpage (http://www.ling.upenn.edu/phono_atlas/ICSLP4.html) There are links to many sites related to dialects, including references to his early work on New York dialect and the Atlas of North American English.
- [1] (http://www.ling.upenn.edu.phono-atlas/Icslp4.html) A paper by Labov on dialect diversity, including information on NY dialect phonology.
- The New York Latino English Project (http://qcpages.qc.edu/LCD/faculty/newman/NYLE.html) The site of the New York Latino English project, which studies the native English spoken by New York Latinos.