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Earlier this week, the Daily News ran a story about people looking to lose their New York accents. Sam Chwat, who founded New York Speech Improvement Services - and has worked with Julia Roberts and Andie MacDowell, and is even working with the cast of Glengarry Glen Ross for their Chicago accents - says many of his clients are trying to rid themselves of the "streetwise image of fast-talking New Yorkers."
"If you spend your life in a particular community, like New York's Irish, Jewish or Chinese communities, then there's no reason to speak any differently. But if you cross the border into new communities, then you sound different. People listen to how you speak, and they make judgments from that."Eh, judgments are made all around. Making fun of our cowpokey President's Texash twang, our neighbors' way up North saying "aboot," and noting that some New Englanders "pahk the cah." Gothamist's favorite movies of New Yorkers losing their accents are Working Girl and Radio Days: "Hawk! I heah da cannons rauw! Is it da king approachin'?"
If Gothamist has an accent, it's not so much a New York one but one where we're imcomprehensible because we slur too much. Wikipedia on the New York-New Jersey accent, the BBC has a Langwich Skool uv Noo Yawk, and a Columbia Review of Journalism story about Noo Yawk Tawk. Also, a story of matching a Brooklyn accent with a Long Island one at More Than Donuts.
Photograph of Kristina Saci's Brooklyn-inspired dishes. Home goods store Fishs Eddy opened a Brooklyn store last year, and Brooklyn Borough President Marty Markowitz asked if they would carry Brooklyn dishes. So Fishs Eddy sponsored a student competition at Pratt, asking students to design Brooklyn patterned dishes. First, second and third place winners will see their patterns in stores; Saci placed second.
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I think LIers and (most) NJers are the hicks of the north. Being from FL I'm used to white trash all around me. These are a different breed though. Not sure which is worse.
"...king approachin'" actually has a hard "g" at the end. More like "approachingha." Hee. Anyway - one of my all time favorie lines. Up there with any line from Lina Lamont.
I've always found it sad whenever I hear about somebody trying to lose their accent. Steinbeck has a great section in Travels with Charley about the loss of the regional accent and I have to agree that it's one of the major losses of character in America. He blamed the American freeway system, but I'd have to point the finger at radio and television. Well, that and the idiots of the world who have to stereotype everybody to feel superior.
PBS recently had a special called Do You Speak American? and talked about regional differences, language prejudice, etc. It was a little too short for the variety of topics covered, but interesting nonetheless.
I seem to pick up dialects from people around me - I have a mishmash of California, North Carolina and London. But I've managed not top pick up any of the NY accents. Just not my style.
I grew up in queens and went to college in new hampshire. during freshman orientation i had many gleeful requests from idahoans and the like to "say __" , the blank being coffee or dog. My first trip home was thanksgiving, and i remember thinking to myself, when did my best friend get a new york accent? and when did my mom?? then i realized that in that short time away my own accent had been flattened out by my daily contact with kids from california, idaho, and colorado. it was a sad day. luckily, i can always bring back my own ny accent by getting sufficiently soused.
There's this saying in ethnic communities that ____ group will never make it in the U.S. until they affect--or become--neutral/bland WASPs.
Stuff like this falls right in that mindset. People trying to lose their accent are really self-hating in a way. And it's really embarassing that technology and the modern age has brought us all closer in some ways. Yet people still flee from who they are as if it's a disease.
"Hark, I hear the cannons roar!" is one of the funniest lines in the movie, and it doesn't take much to set my wife and me bouncing it back and forth. "Raw, raw, raw!"
R J Keefe , i love you.
"and I kiiiiint stand im!" Ah Lina Lamont.
I also lament the passing of accents in America. Though some sound better to me than others- growing up in Montana, I'm so glad I never picked up that accent. At school- "oh, yah, git yer baig lunch now kids." But then there was this English lady who had the misfortune to end up in MT. She actually paid someone to give her accent *retention* lessons, so noone would forget whence she came. If getting rid of your accent is self-hating, what's paying to keep it a sign of?
My dad's lifelong friends in New Orleans have the coolest, smoothest accents ever. If I had that accent, I would pay someone to help me retain it!
"and I kiiiiint stand im!" Ah Lina Lamont.
I also lament the passing of accents in America. Though some sound better to me than others- growing up in Montana, I'm so glad I never picked up that accent. At school- "oh, yah, git yer baig lunch now kids." But then there was this English lady who had the misfortune to end up in MT. She actually paid someone to give her accent *retention* lessons, so noone would forget whence she came. If getting rid of your accent is self-hating, what's paying to keep it a sign of?
My dad's lifelong friends in New Orleans have the coolest, smoothest accents ever. If I could choose, I'd have that accent.
ok, ok I admit it. I'd pay. weird how it submitted my original and the revised one.
*ANYWAY...