New York English (1664- ) is the dialect of English spoken in New York City and some of its suburbs.
- Home region: New York City, Long Island, north-eastern New Jersey.
- Speakers: about 14 million, among them: Al Pacino (pictured), Barbra Streisand, Chris Rock, Christopher Walken, Donald Trump, Jay-Z, Jerry Seinfeld, Nicki Minaj, Spike Lee, Whoopi Goldberg, Rosie Perez, Wendy Williams, Bernie Sanders, Sunny Hostin, and Woody Allen.
There are differences by:
- class – working-class, upper-middle-class;
- ethnicity – Black, Latino, Jewish, Italian;
- region – New York City, New Jersey, the Hamptons.
For example, “mischief night” is much better known in New Jersey than New York.
Accent: The “New Yawk” accent is the White working-class one. It is seen as being full of aw’s (New Yawk), oy’s (Joisey), th’s that become d’s (dem, dose) and dropped r’s (bigga). Some say it is fading, others not. It comes from a Dutch copy of a Wasp accent that came from New England. That Wasp accent is pretty much dead, but you can hear it in old recordings of Franklin Roosevelt.
Commonly among New Yorkers, according to dialect surveys (2013):
- Pronunciation:
- caramel – carra-mel;
- been – bin;
- crayon – cray-ahn;
- lawyer – loyer;
- mayonnaise – may-uh-naze;
- pecan – PEE-can;
- syrup – sir-up;
- pajamas – puh-JAH-muhz;
- route – root.
- Dialect words:
- soda – not pop, coke, soft drink or fizzy drink.
- sneakers – not tennis shoes, gymshoes, trainers or running shoes.
- you guys – not you all.
- traffic circle – not roundabout or rotary.
- water fountain – not drinking fountain.
- highway – not freeway or motorway.
- sunshower – raining when the sun shines.
That is pretty much how I speak: I score a 15 out of 16 (I say pecan as pih-CON).
Some words that seem to have come by way of New York English:
- Dutch: boss, Yankee, Santa Claus, waffle, cookie, coleslaw, caboose, sleigh, snoop, spook.
- Anglo: litterbug, speakeasy, newlywed, world war, knucklehead, doughnut, Labor Day, up the river (= in prison).
- Black: hip hop, rap (music), chilling, jive, blunt, Man!, light up (a cigarette), blow your top, the Big Apple, cool, reefer, chops.
- Yiddish: bottom line, big deal, for free, deli, klutz, low-life, mishmash, likewise (= me too), schlep, schmooze, So what?, How come?, What gives?, Enjoy!
- Italian: pizza.
- Spanish: barrio, bodega.
“Up the river” from New York was the infamous Sing Sing prison.
“Man!” was used by Blacks where Whites used “Boy!” (which has a racist meaning).
“Yankee” was a Dutch slur for Anglo Americans.
Conversational style:
According to linguist Deborah Tannen, New Yorkers compared to Californians:
- Talk louder and faster.
- Talk to be friendly.
- Will drop in and out of conversations they overhear.
- Do not silently listen but, to show interest, say stuff like “What?”, “Wow!”, “Oh, God!” or try to fill in or repeat your words.
- Will talk over the end of your sentence.
- Think that a pause of more than a half second is awkward.
- Tell stories with gestures, facial expressions and, to imitate dialogue, change of pitch.
- Share personal experiences expecting you to do the same to get to know you.
- Complain about “they”.
That all might seem like common sense to New Yorkers, but it can be off-putting to others.
Spoken example of New York English: Octavia Saint Laurent in “Paris is Burning” (1990):
– Abagond, 2014, 2018.
Sources: mainly PBS, Etymology Online (2014), AALBC, Business Insider (2013), Wikipedia (2014), Abagond (2011), “You Are What You Speak” (2011) by Robert Lane Greene, “The Adventure of English” (2011) by Melvyn Bragg.
See also:
Fugeddaboudit
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I grew up in NY through part of elem. school and then moved to the South, but I still pronounce many of my words like a NYer. I laughed at the caramel and pecan examples because I’d get self-conscious about how I said those words in Texas. I always got teased. Now I live California and I just don’t care anymore. A hybrid of states and proud. 🙂
Enjoyed the post!
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Ah gawd i’m spending so much time in the south lately i got this half ass southern thing goin on now, yous have a nice day dont sound right sometimes ya just gotta throw a yall in there, scary, i know
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Interesting post.
Apart from very obvious, drastic differences, such as NY compared to ‘Gone with the Wind’ type southern drawls, American accents and dialects are largely a mystery to me.
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Ha-ha, I was living and working in New York when The Scent of a Woman went to the screens. but I did not see it at that time.
Anyhow, as a stutterer, living in New York was a particular challenge to me. People found it very difficult to communicate with me. It was already a challenge in Washington, DC, but even a more stressful challenge in NYC.
Maybe it would be interesting to learn / discuss some of the impact and effect on other ethnic and language groups (eg, Puerto Rican, Irish, Chinese, Indian, Russian).
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A post on Black New York English v. non-New York black English would be interesting too.
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To be fair you only hear that ‘joisey’ or ‘hamboiguh’ like accent up north in dirty jers, as you get further south it turns more to a philly style, often, which is sort of ‘baltimore lite’?
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Maybe if i get my ass in gear i can talk about southern v. ebonics! Its kind of my thing, now.
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Interesting post. Love this movie Scent of a Woman. Al Pacino plays the blind guy who can dance good and he can tell what scent of perfume a woman is wearing.
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That is a great scene from that movie. Al Pacino *swoon*
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LOL! As a former New Yorker living in Arizona people here think my accent is fascinating. They can’t wait to hear what I say next. I myself don’t notice it. But I can tell a Brooklyn accent from a Queens, and a Harlermer from downtown Manhattan.
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New York accents or Texas accents with southern drawl.
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The New Yorker Accent sound so cute and thriller. It’s too much for me. They kinda sound like Italian with a hit of jazzy/hiphop/black english up there.
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I think immigrants and their immediate descendants have a stigma about speaking non-standard English, when they’re already perceived as not speaking English well. Also I don’t think millenials tend to be into regional speech patterns as much either.
No offense but I’ve heard Asian teens refer to the New Jersey / Brooklyn accent as an “old white guy” accent lolol.
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When I think of a New York accent, I remember a film called Bugsy Malone from way back. The American kids in that sounded like New Yorkers to me but I think it is supposed to be set in Chicago so I dont really know whether it was authenic NY or actually a Chicago accent.
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An interesting post, Abagond. A very close relative of mine lived in New York during the 1930’s and decades later, I could hear traces of that well-known NY accent in his voice. To my midwestern ears, ‘New York’, came out sounding like “New Yawk”‘. He would sometimes drop his r’s, use the phrase “alright already”, call cigarettes “shorts” and the front steps of any private residence the “stoop”.
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I love Rosie Perez’s NY (Brooklyn) Puerto-Rican accent in Do The Right Thing and White Men Can’t Jump.
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Michael Dunn Found Guilty Of First-Degree Murder In Killing Of Jordan Davis
(https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=F5s96aGPbwQ)
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Many of those pronunciations and habits are prevalent in new England too (carra-mel, bin, cray-ahn, loyer, root, soda, sneakers, you guys, highway, sunshower, talking to be friendly, saying stuff like “What?”, “Wow!”, “Oh, God!”, thinking that a pause of more than a half second is awkward, telling stories with gestures, facial expressions and, to imitate dialogue, changing pitch, etc.) However, we don’t have such an exaggerated “awww” sound (we just say “ah”). For example, Don and Dawn are pronounced the same, and so are cot and caught. We often drop our Rs but typically pronounce our THs clearly. We say SEER-up, rotary, and bubbler (though water fountain and sometimes drinking fountain are also used). I don’t think we talk as loud or as fast.
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I notice that many “Millennials” (hate that word) who move from New York to places like the West Coast or DC tend to drop their accents and conform to the general American TV speak. But give them enough time and the New Yorkan always comes out…I just said to a co-worker the other day, “I didn’t know you were from New York” and she seemed a bit surprised that I could tell.
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lol I love the way New Yorkers talk.
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yeah i met a hotel clerk in florida and i asked him where you from, the bronx? and he said how did you know
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OMG, I live in Ohio but I talk like this with a lot of Southern stuff thrown in. Replace you guys with y’all and that’s about right.
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Vox did an interesting video on Bernie Sanders’s (lower-middle-class 1950s Brooklyn Jewish) accent:
(https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=waeXBCUkuL8)
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