May 13, 2010 @ 5:28 am · Filed by Mark Liberman under Sociolinguistics
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This is (meant to be) funny rather than accurate:
[Via Joe.My.God.]
May 13, 2010 @ 5:28 am · Filed by Mark Liberman under Sociolinguistics
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stormboy said,
May 13, 2010 @ 7:09 am
Enjoyed the clip. I appreciate that this is humorous but is it really possible to identify where people come from in the city, based on accent? In London (England, not Ontario) it generally isn't. I've never been convinced about 'Sarf London', and 'Cockney' and its derivations are not confined to their original territory.
MattF said,
May 13, 2010 @ 9:05 am
The claim that Brooklyn natives "masticate their vowels" recalls an old joke:
Judge sees a man in the back of the courtroom eating a sandwich. Judge says, "I order the man in the back of the courtroom to cease masticating." However, the man continues eating his sandwich. The baliff then walks over to the man and says, "The judge ordered you to take your hands out of your pockets."
a soulless automaton said,
May 13, 2010 @ 9:23 am
LL readers may also enjoy this entertaining (and likewise inaccurate) overview of American accents in general, with associated personal stereotypes.
Warning: The linked site is extremely Not Safe For Productivity, use with care.
blahedo said,
May 13, 2010 @ 3:04 pm
Kind of funny, but the odd thing was that in the Brooklyn segment, the map they showed was actually of Queens.
Aaron Davies said,
May 20, 2010 @ 11:41 pm
@stormboy: yeah, more or less. the "more" being that to the extent that "traditional" (i.e. non(-recent)-immigrant) populations still live in the areas in question (the "less" being that they don't so much), their accents are alive and well and completely distinct. brooklyn in particular is very distinctive, and still very common.
btw, i heard once that mel blanc couldn't decide whether tough guys from the bronx were tougher than tough guys from queens, so bugs bunny's accent was supposed to be an amalgam of the two.
Barbara Malley said,
September 11, 2014 @ 2:51 pm
I thought it was not very accurate. The heading DID say it was meant to be more funny than accurate, but I was disappointed. I was born in Brooklyn, had lots of friends from the Bronx; now live in Manhattan. My parents were from the West village and my grandparents from the Lower East Side, so I've heard most of NYC accents frequently. I like doing plain Brooklyn, Brooklyn Jewish and Lower East side. I want to do Brooklyn Italian without imitating Robert de Niro. Oh well.