Pamela De Santis – English II, LM – Task 1B – March 23, 2009

New York and “The Bronx”

FORMAL DESCRIPTION OF THE VERBAL REPERTORY

People who come to the USA, in particular in New York, from other countries have difficulty in communicating with Americans because most speak British English (or other varieties of English), or have received their education (at school, for business) in that type of English called “neutral Nuclear English”, which is supposedly culturally neutral.

Here you are the most significant differences at the six levels of analysis.

A. Phonological realizations

VOWELS

The // vowel sound of words like talk, law, coffee, dog, lost are diphthongized in // while the // vowel sound becomeS // in words like stop, orange.

The / / vowel sound is pronounced as // in words like pride, find, Eliza, while the long vowel /:/ become // in Friday, night.

In the most old-fashioned and extreme New York area accents, the group of a vowel + consonant like ‘er’ // in perfect, search, is pronounced // with the lost of the ‘r’.

The same group ‘er’ becomeS // in final position with the lostS of ‘r’, as in teacher, father, mother, farmer.

CONSONANTS

The traditional New York area accent is non-rhotic, in other words, the sound // does not appear at the end of a syllable or immediately before a consonant. So, there is no // in words like park, butter, here.

Double consonants // in bottle, better, for example, are pronounced with a // sound and furthermore, some speakers replace the dental fricatives /,/ with dental variants of stops /,/; so that words like thing, that sound similar to //, //.

Finally, in the –ing form of words like feeling, dancing, ending, there is the lost of // and the nasalization of //.

B. Morphemic constructions

Not attested in the New York dialect.

Maybe, we can consider the use of the pronoun youse referred to plural “you”. EX: ‘youse guys’

That's correct: see http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/youse
You should, however, also mention General American morphemic constructions, like wanna.
New York dialect shares so many features of General American that both stand together in opposition to Southeast British English; they are not perceived as three distinct varieties.

C. Lexis

There are many words used mainly in New York, mostly associated with immigrant languages like stood (the front steps of a building entrance) and a curious split in usage involves the word punk that tends to be used as a synonym for weak, loser. Punk = “giovinastro imberbe” in 1930's gangster talk

In the New York area there are also some words that differ from the general American as dig (to understand, to like) (“dig” is 1960's hippy slang and now standard General American), kill ( a small river; ex: ‘Beaver Kill’); expressions like ‘on accident’ (American ‘on purpose) (ex: ‘I didn’t mean to; I did it on accident)’, regular coffee (10 oz. coffee with whole milk and two sugars), wait on line rather than wait in line.

These are the main characteristics (hem hem, there are more) of the New York’s lexis but, in general, the standard General American differs from the British one in many cases.

Here you are some examples:

- Standard American . . . . . movie, cookie, elevator, candy, apartment, yard, pants, subway, etc.

- British English . . . . . . . . . film, biscuits, lift, sweet, flat, garden, trousers, underground, etc.

D. Syntax

Word order of the original question is preserved in indirect questions, at least those introduced by wh-words, for example: He wanted to know when will he come instead of He wanted to know when he will come.

In particular, some fixed expressions that refer to greetings ‘formulae’, for example, show a different syntactic construction from British English, ex. Do you have the time? instead of What’s the time?, or they show a further verbal adjunction, ex. How are you doing? instead of How are you?.

E. Textual features

Not attested in the New York dialect. They are the same of as in Southeast British English.

Not entirely. William Labov has shown that inner city narratives have variations that distinguish them from mid-west narratives.

F. Normative pragmatic usage

In New York there is a particular idiomatic phrase that can be a source of misunderstanding if it is used outside of it: Take off your clothes for taking off your outer clothes as in the welcoming phrase ‘Come in and take off your clothes’.

Furthermore, relationships are sometimes confusing, in fact, it is not uncommon to hear phrases like ‘she’s my father’s wife’ (not necessarily the mother), or ‘he is my son’s father (not necessarily the husband).

Americans are direct and educated people, so if you happen to bump into someone or viceversa, you will promptly hear an ‘excuse me’ and when someone offer you something (and you want to accept), the answer is yes, please and not yes, thanks.

Finally, if the person you’re speaking with is having a hard time understanding, you may hear phrases like ‘pardon me’, ‘come again’, ‘I didn’t get you’.

LINKS FOR THIS TASKS:

http://www.immihelp.com/newcomer/indian-english-american-english-language-dictionary.html

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/New_York_dialect

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regional_vocabularies_of_American_English

‘How to Speak in a New York Dialect’ from http://www.youtube.com

[You did a good job in collecting the doxa, “what people say.” So that's enough for now. You're finished for this part.

Of course, as a student specializing in the (verbal) linguistic study of English, I would have expected citations from more than Wikipedia – in particular from scholar.google.com or from our university library which has a decent assortment reviews on traditional linguistics.

In any case, you seem to have a good basic idea of New York phonological and lexico-syntatic features. Enough to use some of these features as coat hooks (attaccapanni) on which to hang what you know and feel and want intentionally as a New Yorker. And that is the purpose of your research.]