To all you New Yawkers...

Diamond Member Joined: Nov 30 2006 Posts: 2595

NY is ah-range and Flahrida.

When people say "I don't have a NY accent" what they mean is, "I don't sound like Fran Drescher." Very few New Yorkers erase it completely and a linguist would be able to tell. For example, you don't say cawfee, but you also don't say cahfee (in linguistics, this is the cot/caught merger, and I have watched New Yorkers dissolve into laughter when hearing a Californian say "I cot the ball."). It's still aw, just soft. Marry, merry, and Mary are still 3 different words (ditto Aaron and Erin; it confuses me that people think they are the same name in the Midwest). Say cat. Now say cab or ball. Same vowel? If you have a NY accent, not. (This is one that people who work on their accents are most likely to lose; the other vowels stay distinct, because they're commonplace throughout the Northeast.)

I moved out of town and I caught myself saying Florida, but Aaron and Erin are still different names Smile

Posted: Fri, Aug 03 2012, 9:16 am Post subject: re: To all you New Yawkers...

For some, cat and ball have the same vowel??
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"You will have many many children and make successful shidduchim beh", rebbetzin Esther Jungreis
"It's all cultural, disagree respectfully", me

Silver Member Joined: May 18 2011 Posts: 620

Well, even within Judaism, there are cultural linguistic differences that some could find strange. For example, before I met many Syrians/Sephardim, I had heard "Sha-BOT" Shalom, (Like Sha-Bottle) but never "Sha-Bat" (Like Sha-Batman) and it always threw me off. I could be wrong, but I've found that's a pronunciation that many Sephardi people use even if they aren't necessarily from the NY area. Now, I hear it all the time -- still sounds funny to me, but the fact that I say "Sha-bus" sounds strange to them too, so whatever. Smile

Diamond Member Joined: Nov 30 2006 Posts: 2595

Gold Member Joined: Sep 12 2011 Posts: 1926

Diamond Member Joined: Dec 18 2005 Posts: 2927

I knew a preschool morah who used to complain about all the kids coming in with spanish accents.

Posted: Sun, Aug 05 2012, 6:59 pm Post subject: re: To all you New Yawkers...

I lived in the Big Apple for over 50 years and have no idea what many of you are talking about. Maybe you're talking quasi-chassidish brooklyn, not New York. Manhattanites neither drop the T in Manhattan (pronounced manHAT'n, not manhaTTAN--I never heard ANYONE call it that) nor put undue emphasis on T's and D's. ChassiDim do that. Manhattanites call them Chassiddim with a soft blurred D just this side of a rolled R. They also wawlk the dawg and stop for chawcolate, But the frum Brooklyn accent, I can't even mimic it! I recognize it, it's unmistakable, but for the life of me I can't do it. Thank G-d. Folks from FFolkestone are surprised to learn I'm a native New Yorker, seeing as I don't have the accent. They're wrong, of course--I do have the accent, slightly modified thanks to mussar from a michigander, marriage to a midwesterner, a semester of speech in college, and a lot of hard work remembering to respect the letter R at the end of a word . What I don't have is the stereotypical BROOKLYN accent that non-New Yorkers think is THE New York accent.

I'm probably doomed to revert eventually to my native tongue., though. I recently caught myself tawking to my mothah, something that hasn't happened since sixth grade.

Platinum Member Joined: May 07 2008 Posts: 8962

What perplexes me is how quickly a third-generation American-born lad from Dubuque suddenly forgets how to speak English and starts to sound like a greenhorn bocher from BP when he enrolls in an Eastern black-hat yeshiva. Kind of like Cockney rock stars who speak an unintelligible London-slum patois when interviewed but haaaaoooowl abaaaauuuut haaaaooow they laaaoooost mah gal an' mah bagel an' mah truuuhck to a durn durty low-daaaaooown sneak.

Diamond Member Joined: Oct 25 2007 Posts: 4846