America is home to diverse regional accents; however, no accent is more exaggerated, mocked, misunderstood, and co-opted than the New York (Nu Yawk) accent (aksent). My first week teaching in a Florida school reminded me (yet again) that to some I talk funny. I was in front of my class speaking about a fundraising event the school was having to benefit the local humane society. It was called “Dancing for Cats and Dogs.” As I described the event, passing around permission slips and sign-up sheets, I noticed my 7th grade class snickering. “Mrs. Franco, what’s the name of the dance again?” the bolder kids asked, the shyer ones tittering behind their notebooks. “Dancing for Cats and Dogs,” I calmly repeated. More laughing ensued. Suddenly I heard “dawgs, dawgs dawgs…ha ha, ha.” Finally, one student blurted out, “Mrs. F, you talk funny!” Respectful as they try to be, kids that age tend to pick up on anything they deem “different” and have no filter when it comes to uninvited comments.
As my subject was Language Arts, it became a teachable moment to discuss accents, both foreign and domestic. The teasing morphed into a bonding moment for my class and me. Students from other locales who were reluctant to speak out for fear of ridicule found their voice and joined in the dialogue.
This is not the first time I was “called out” for my accent. In grad school, a professor advised me to work on enunciating my final r’s and stop substituting the “aw” sound for short “o” vowels so that I would sound proper when delivering an academic paper. With painful practice, I became what my prof called “bi-dialectal.” Eventually, I could stand and defend a thesis with flawless diction, yet on weekends when I phoned my sisters (sistaz) I slid back into the city talk I learned at home.
My mother, born and raised on Jerome Avenue in the Bronx would send us to the store with an oral shopping list consisting of “buddah” (butter) “sugah” (sugar) and “a pounda livawusht” (a pound of liverwurst). My dad, who came to America as a baby and was raised in Hell’s Kitchen, spoke a curious dialect of old and new world. Like Slip Mahoney from the Bowery Boys, peppered with Slovak expressions.
“I went food shoppin’ but got online behind some stadababas who were taking faeva to check da hell out.” Holidays with Daddy were hilarious: “Yous tree kids are gonna roon da Christmas tree if ya don’t hang the tinsel on straight.” And “Take off your babushka and siddown, the kobassi (kielbasa) is ready!”
(Note: Having or not having an accent is no indication of intelligence or character. My dad was smart, talented, and most of all kind. I would give anything to have him “holla” at me one more time.)
As for Queens, I never heard anyone call a toilet a “terlit” or oil as “earl” or pronounce their borough as “Queence”. When “All in the Family” premiered on TV in the seventies, the rest of the country thought New Yorkers said those things, along with calling their wives “dingbat.” None of my relations through marriage who hail from Queens talk nasal like Fran Drescher either. Imitation is the best form of flattery, however, so the Queens accent is another that spins through the exaggeration machine when portrayed on TV.
Long Island is widely known by the masses for a psychic with a huge poufy hairdo, the Amityville Horror, and the infamous Amy Fischer/Joey Buttafucco affair. That only tells part of the story of Long Island’s rich, diverse history. There are, though, some expressions that are distinct for that borough. If you say “Piano Man,” you can only mean one guy…Billy Joel. Those who live there have told me you live “On Long Island,” not “In Long Island”. I have yet to meet anyone from Long Island who calls it “LawnGuylin,” although some say a soft “aw” sound for short vowel “o” like those of us from the Bronx.
Some of the most brilliant, imaginative people hail from New York, but yes, the accent is a thing. Particularly the tendency for “non-rhotic” speech among certain city dwellers past and present.
The New York accent is so fascinating that in 1962 sociolinguist William Labov conducted a study by visiting several New York City Department stores. Saks 5th Avenue, Macy’s, and S. Klein, etc. Researchers asked for the location of an item that could only be found on the fourth floor of the store and noted how each salesclerk pronounced the words. The Saks workers properly enunciated Fourth Floor,” but at the less upscale shopping places, the shop girls said something to the likes of “Fawth Floah.” Exactly how I pronounced it most of my life.
That is not to say that all New Yorkers have an accent. My mother-in-law, a true “Irish Rose” raised in the neighborhood of St. John’s Place, Crown Heights, Brooklyn, speaks impeccable English. Not a vowel or consonant out of place! Early education and what you hear at home shapes how we speak. My late father in law, Dominican born but also raised in Brooklyn (Prospect Avenue) pronounced words like coffee “cawfee” and sausage “sawsige” just like me. My brother-in-law David made my accent our joke at Christmas. “Hey Gin, ya gonna make a tray of sawsige n’ peppas for Christmas Eve? Oh yeah, I was of cawse! My in-laws, aside from my late father-in-law, all speak like their mother and tease me affectionately, I think partially because my accent reminds them of their dad. Through our travels, however, accents can morph and evolve to our local surroundings.
My brother-in-law Vincent, raised in Hastings, New York, left home at age 20 and lived in Texas and Louisiana. He speaks “posh New York” like his mom, but thanks to a real estate career that had him shaking hands with many a southerner, he’s adopted a charming cowboy flair in that his speech has a slower, melodic flow. He calls women dear to him “Darlin.’” My own son, Tom, raised in Connecticut but surrounded by New York talk influence during his formative years, did not pick up my city speech.
Although he has lived in Austin for decades, he has yet to adopt a Texas accent, although he does drive a pickup truck and says he sometimes catches himself proclaiming that he’s fixin’ to do something. Perhaps because he’s of the younger generation, but most likely because he’s a product of an upscale Connecticut education and works as a computer programming analyst interfacing with colleagues from all over the globe, he’s, for the most part, maintained a proper patrician accent. Tom has also learned to slow down when speaking in order to be understood by his co-workers and clients. That rapid-fire rhythm of speaking is his inheritance from all his maternal relatives and me.
Compared to other parts of the nation, New Yorkers talk fast, amazingly fast. My niece, raised in Duchess County, New York by her Bronx-born mom and surrounded by city accents, moved to Florida after high school to attend college and never moved back. Now at age 40, when she returns to New York to visit her mother, she marvels at how quickly everyone speaks; it sounds positively staccato! She had to ask a few strangers to slow down so she could catch what they were saying! You can go home again, yes, but you might need an interpreter.
Which goes to show that language is a living, fluid thing. Recent studies replicating Labov’s research have made a startling discovery: The New York accent is diminishing over time across all economic strata and boroughs! From uptown to downtown, the “city accent” is fading. Some say it was the Irish, Italian, and Eastern European newcomers learning English who formed “New Yorkese” amid the influx of immigrants in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, so it seems plausible that new immigrants bring their own contributions to language formation.
So, I say to my fellow New Yorkers, past and present. Let them say you talk like Bugs Bunny, Joe Pesci, or Theresa Caputo. As a product of parents from two boroughs and spending my childhood in the South Bronx, I inherited quite the accent. It’s as much a part of me as my brown eyes. I’d like to go back and tell my Grad School professor that I’m proud of where I come from, and no, I won’t always put my r’s where they belong, and I will shamelessly order “cawfee.” After all, you can take the girl out of the Bronx, but I will always be “Ginny from the Block.”
