NY accent is dying out?

[Ben Zimmer]

On Sun, Jan 22, 2012 at 2:24 PM, Dan Goodman wrote:
>
> On 01/22/2012 01:10 PM, Paul Johnston wrote:
> >
> > When journalists say such-and-such a dialect is dying out, usually it
> > seems to me that what they're saying is that some (often unspecified)
> > features are receding, but the features that are retained are
> > ignored.  Sure, there are recessive features (the famous [@i] for
> > bird, third, church for one--and does anyone know who, if anyone,
> > uses it among the generation born about 1980 or so?).  Rhoticity is
> > becoming more common.  But last time I was in NYC (2009), you still
> > heard people, even young ones, asking for a cup of [kU at fi~ko at fi).
>
> When was it that the New York Times ran an article about NYC's dialect
> dying out?  I believe it got some notice on this mailing list.

Well, there was an article in amNewYork/Newsday in 2008:

http://www.newsday.com/long-island/new-york-accent-still-talking-the-tawk-1.878199
http://www.amnyinteractive.com/project/2008/NYC-Accent/

And the NYT City Room blog followed up:

http://cityroom.blogs.nytimes.com/2008/02/25/is-the-new-york-accent-disappearing/

--bgz

--
Ben Zimmer
http://benzimmer.com/

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