NYC and New Orleans

[Matthew Gordon]

Michael Montgomery asked me to post the following for him:
__

Dear All

There is at least one scholarly article on the
subject.  Here is the reference and an annotation from
my bibliography on Southern English.  It¹s been twenty
years since I read it, so I don¹t recall anything else
about it.  Iberger¹s thesis is that the influence went
the other way - a southern seed planted in Yankeedom.

My own hypothesis is that in the 19th century various
ports from New England to New Orleans were much more
closely connected than today or to their own
hinterlands then.

Michael Montgomery

Berger, Marshall D. 1980. New York City and the
antebellum South: the Maritime connection.
Perspectives on American English, ed. by J. L.
Dillard, 135-41. The Hague: Mouton. Same as Word
31.47-54 (1980). Argues that fronted and r-less
pronunciation of vowels in New York in words like
_first_ resulted from close contact the city had with
cotton ports of Charleston, Savannah, Mobile, and New
Orleans in antebellum period.