Is The Lower East Side's Accent Disappearing?

from Randolph Pfaff's flickr

New research contends that it's not just the Lower East Side's distinctive architecture and character that are in danger — but also the neighborhood's unique dialect. Younger LES residents whose families have lived in the neighborhood for decades no longer speak with the recognizable inflection of older generations, according to a New York University linguistics student.

In 1966, a linguist determined that Lower East Side residents had a unique way of saying words like "bought" and "daughter" that involved "pushing the vowels up and into the back of the throat," according to Fox News. While that raised inflection is still common among older residents of the neighborhood, younger residents no longer use it. "The 'raised bought' of older speakers is not produced by those younger," said Kara Becker, who interviewed 64 native speakers and analyzed thousands of vowel sounds in their speech. In 2008, Becker determined that the city's accents differ more between social classes than they do between boroughs. [via EV Grieve]

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By Ben Muessig in News on January 21, 2010 4:55 PM

Comments [rss]

Papercutninja

in other news, the LES accent is now peppered with "gosh, golly and donchaknow" and most women sound like Sarah Palin.

SP

Puuuhleeze. Gothamist is among the first to hype gentrification trend:, lounges, restos, $3000 handbags. Go fuck yourselves. Find some other study to paraphrase, assholes.

jaycjay

Inaccurately paraphrase, to be... accurate. Because again, neither the article nor the study was about the LES, but you'd never know that if you just read the Gothamist version.

Tower18

As was mentioned, there's nothing geographically significant about the LES. If the accent of those that live there is disappearing, it's because the SOCIAL CLASS of those who had the accent is disappearing from the LES, which we all know to be true. Distinctive accents (or at least what we generally think of) tend to come from native-born, ethnic white, working class men. NY women can have it as well, but are usually missing some features.

My old Italian landlord in Brooklyn says "thoid", but the "th" is never pronounced with breath. The tongue touches the roof of the mouth right behind the teeth, but you don't blow.

theLtrain

An NYU student discovered the Lower East Side is changing.

MidC Frank

The new NY accent is like, well, you know, like, well kinda like the accent where we like come from. Like.

guitaristanyc

Don't forget to add your question marks for a more authentic representation of the current NYC dialect:

"The new NY accent(?) is like, well, you know(?), like, well kinda like the accent(?) where we like come from(?) Like(?)"

penetrode

welcome to 2010, I hope had a nice hibernation...

penetrode

oops comment was directed at the article writer not you midcfrank...

thefacts

When it comes to NYC accents, there several: the Irish, the Italian, the Jewish (with some distinction between the Sephardic and the Ashkinazy), the African-American, etc. The accent is still heard in the boroughs, but the only people I know who speak with a NYC in Manhattan are at least 40 years old.

The last time I heard anyone say thoid or toirlert was an old-timer in Gpt about ten years ago. He was sitting on a johnny pump at the time.

jaycjay

The article actually identifies it as Labov's Atlas of North American English. And yes, there's actually no mention of specific LES dialect there or in the linked article; in fact the article refers to it as an accent that "set New Yorkers apart for decades." It doesn't say that it set Lower East Siders apart from other New Yorkers.

The LES is just just the part of the city Kara Becker used to find people to interview.

NannyState

Oh my goowaahd.

Awesomer

The 1966 study alluded to in this is probably William Labov's book The Social Stratification of English in New York City. Labov was speaking of the entire NYC metropolitan area, not the Lower East Side; he has always maintained (and no one knows better than him) that there is no geographic variation in the dialects of the NYC area. Thus, the "LES dialect" isn't disappearing; it never existed. Meanwhile, the claim that newcomers to the city don't have the local dialect is extremely unsurprising.