New Yawk and N'Orleans

[Gordon, Matthew J.]

Labov suggests the influence was antebellum and was based on commercial relations. He seems to have in mind a change-from-above model. Just because the "toidy-toid" feature is today associated with the lower end of the socioeconomic spectrum doesn't mean it wasn't a prestige feature 150 years ago (cf. the changing status of r-lessness in NYC).

Anyway the diphthong is not the most convincing evidence for an NO-NYC connection in Labov's article which is focussed on the short-a pattern. 

-----Original Message-----
From: American Dialect Society on behalf of Jonathan Lighter
Sent: Fri 9/16/2005 6:20 PM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject:      Re: New Yawk and N'Orleans
 
OK, Bill Labov is a whole lot smarter than I am and will remain so permanently. (I've tried my best, but no go.) But that must have been a hell of an influx to turn so many people into "New Yorkers."  Could he be referring to the Federal occupation of the proud Crescent City for three long years during the Late Unpleasantess ?  Even if he isn't, why would tens of thousands of otherwise normal folk emulate the presumably weird "Brooklyn diphthong"  etc. spoken by large numbers of "lower-class" Yankee trash ?

(Of course you mean the far-less-elitist "working-class," but we'll let that go this once :  I have been scolded for this myself, by a Ph.D. in English, having incautiously referred to streetwalkers outside the old Port Authority Bus Terminal as "lower-class." )

Surely a Yankee invasion, at whatever moment in history, could only have nudged tendencies that were (coincidentally ?) strong already.

JL