With only four hours separating Fenway Park and Yankees Stadium, fans of both teams regularly visit each other’s home field. The jeering and name-calling that ensues not only identifies the Red Sox from the Yankees fans, but can place where they grew up or what region they’ve spent the majority of their life. Although both clubs have fans spread throughout the United States, many are locals from either the Boston or New York City metropolitan area. With them come an array of vocabulary and pronunciations that form a speaker’s dialect. Boston and New York speech sounds similar, but differences become apparent when reviewing the unique phrases and words that make up the local lexicon as well as the attitudes expressed. This paper aims to approach the facets that make them unique, and strive for a better understanding of a topic that has piqued my interest for a long time. As much of this data was collected from the 1950’s through the 1980’s, personal observations will also be used to attest to the longevity and validity of the data.
Similar to the usage of “pop” in replacement of the word “soda” in some parts of the country, Bostonians and New Yorkers have their unique way of describing things. The Internet allows easy access to a multitude of localisms, especially for the New England region, where Adam Gaffin’s “The Wicked Good Guide to Boston English” lists Beantown colloquialisms in alphabetical order. Wicked, for instance, is comparable to the adverb “very” and is used as an intensifier. If a native New Yorker were to hear the phrase “that was wicked pissa” they would be more likely to think of the current Broadway musical of the same name than a word used to emphasize just how cool something is. Some other definitions unique to the Boston area include “Barnies” for Harvard students, “Chowderhead” for a stupid person and “Spuckie” for a hero sandwich. The double meaning of “stoop” in New York would confuse Bostonians. For most Americans it means to lower oneself, whether figuratively or literally, but in New York it has come to mean the area outside of a home where people congregate. As “stoop” derives from the Dutch, who were first to settle in the state during the Colonial Times, it is no surprise that there are quite a few remnants of its culture found with names such as Van Dam Street, the Vanderbilt House and Dekalb Avenue. Comparable to a “chowderhead” is New York’s “bachagaloop”, an Americanized Italian expression representative of the city’s large Italian community.
New York Mayor Michael Bloomberg had to brush-up on his New Yorkisms, including what a stoop in the Big Apple really means when he ran for mayor in 2001. A billionaire businessman originally from Boston, his speech was closely analyzed by both linguists and voters alike. He moved to the Big Apple over forty years earlier yet still maintained traces of his former speech community. William Labov, a name that comes up quite often as he is considered the father of linguistics, provided New York Times columnist Sam Roberts insight on the difference between his 2002 and 2006 inaugural addresses, noting that in the latter address he was very careful to pronounce his “r”. The first difference in speech then would be the higher percentage of New Yorkers using a post-vocalic ‘r’ over their Bostonian counterparts. As a newly elected official Mr. Bloomberg talked about his “fatha”, but four years down the line preferred for the people
Example of post-vocalic r in New York but not Boston speech
Word New York Boston
Bar
B (r vocalized)
B (r vowel not heard)
who elected him to hear about his “father.” Professor William Kretzschmar affirms that educated speakers in New York are more apt to stigmatize the loss of r’s than their
educated Boston counterparts.2 Although not further explained by the linguistics professor, a working guess is the legendary status of pronouncing”Harvahd.”
This pronunciation is an example of the broad /a/, a sound characterized in words such as “half” and “bath” and originating in British Received Pronunciation. The broad /a/ stands in contrast to the short /a/ tensing found in the speech of some New Yorkers. For example, where the Bostonian refers to their “ont” the New Yorker calls up their “aent” for her birthday. Another distinction to be made before pressing onward is the rounded /o/ found in the speech of some Boston natives, where the lips are rounded in words such as “hot” and “top.”
Popular culture is not short on material to highlight facets of the Boston and New York dialects. Good Will Hunting comes to mind as a recent movie with a distinct Boston flavor. Matt Damon’s character, a janitor, stands up to a pretentious graduate student at a bar;”You dropped $150 grand awn an education you could have gawtten fur a dawla fifty in late chaghes at the public library” he says to the awe of onlookers impressed with his wordiness as he outlines the views of several texts One of his friends notes afterwards “my boy is wicked smaht” using one of the Boston colloquialisms. Typical of the Boston tongue, Damon drops the “r” where it follows a vowel and uses the rounded /o/ in the place of a short /o/ in the words “on”, “gotten” and “dollar.” The blond graduate student does not speak with any recognizable accent, placing him as either a transplant from outside the dialect region or a local who has learned to stigmatize the local speech.
Stigmatized speech is something linguists have been studying for decades. William Labov went to three department stores in the 1960’s to determine that social class plays a significant role in whether or not one drops the r in New York City. Floor walkers and retail workers at the two more high-scale department stores were more apt to use prestige speech than employees of the more working-class Klein’s. He also found a higher proportion of workers at Saks putting in the r than at Macy’s, a fact he posits has to do with “the shift from the influence of the New England prestige pattern (r-less) to the Midwestern prestige pattern (r-full)(317.)”
Martha Laferriere’s late 1970’s study shows that ethnicity, not necessarily social class, is the main factor in determining if one uses stigmatized speech in Boston. In this case, the stigmatized speech is pronunciation of a word like “short” the same as “shot.” For purposes of staying faithful to her study, the phonetic symbol used for stigmatized speech is She interviewed Italian, Irish and Jewish speakers native to the area in three different contexts: casual, formal and reading. Her test subjects came from all different educational backgrounds, from high school through professional school graduates, and ages fifteen to seventy. Interestingly enough, a few of the Italian and Jewish speakers considered the Boston dialect an Irish trademark. The Irish had the most erratic difference in stigmatized speech versus standard, as respondents talking in casual speech under the age of twenty used stigmatized speech 80% of the time, only for it to decrease to around 2% around the time of college and graduate school. In the later years, the stigmatized trademark climbed upwards to nearly 100%. In terms of formal speech the Irish and well as the Jewish speakers made a good attempt at putting in the r, with the Jewish speakers at the highest success rate. Damon’s character, presumably Irish, has no qualms about dropping the r, whereas his counterpart, if native to the area, succeeds in ridding that part of his identity. The result for the Italians is something quite different, and will be explored later using an individual example.
The New York identity is exemplified as well as parodied more frequently, with shows such as “The Nanny” adding an exaggerated nasal flair to the working-class Queens girl. The big shtick of the film My Cousin Vinny is the small Alabama townspeople trying to understand what Joe Pesci is saying. In one particular courtroom scene he is addressing his clients as two “yutes” who were at the wrong place at the wrong time. “Yutes?” the judge asks Pesci’s character quizzically. “Yes your honor, yutes.” After asking what that term means, Pesci corrects himself, saying with strong emphasis “two youths.”
Pesci’s speech reminds one of the older mob films of the 1950’s, roughly when Thomas Hubbell analyzed the curl/coil variant in New York City pronunciation. In this study, he found that in some speakers the word “curl” is homophonous to the word “coil”, an adenoidal sound. According to Hubbell, even the most educated New Yorkers possess at least one variant in their speech. (372) However, this was written over fourty years ago and is a pattern of speech that is dying out with some of the older generation that spoke it. In other words, the speech of characters like Archie Bunker in All in the Family is celebrated for its sentimental value more than relevancy.
The International Dialect of English Archives, based at the University of Kansas, is a special collection of recordings encompassing speakers of many different dialects of the language from all over the United States. Started in 1997, those wishing to be involved in the study were asked to record themselves reading one of two passages in their local speech and send it to the school’s Department of Theatre and Film to facilitate with actors learning regional accents. Of all the recordings, I chose four that exemplified the different characteristics of Boston and New York speech that are currently in discussion. All four participants read a short passage entitled “Comma Gets A Cure” about a goose that is inflicted with foot-and-mouth disease and has to undergo expensive treatment to the displeasure of the new zookeeper. The passage is chosen for two reasons: it’s an example of a humorous text that is meant to set the speaker at ease. In LaFerriere’s data she discovered that out of the three ethnic groups the Irish speakers were least conscious of their speech when reading something funny. Secondly, there is a prevalence of r-words and double consonants, the latter of which is also overlooked when urban speakers talk fast.
Interestingly enough, two of the speakers seemed self-conscious of how they talk, whether it was making sure to enunciate every word or put in the r. The other two, one being the only male and the other a middle-aged woman spoke in a stereotypical fashion without the slightest care of how they sounded. It is worth taking a look at each and figuring out what this means in terms of the other studies.
The youngest sample is from a college senior from Dorchester, a neighborhood on the outskirts of Boston. The opening sentences of the passage contains the word “letter” twice; and in the first instance she drops the r but makes sure to include it in the second. There is also a “dahg” in the passage that is more susceptible to the disease the goose contracts, and as a result of the diagnosis the goose lets loose and runs around in the “yahd.” There is also a second instance of inconsistency unrelated to her “letter” but equally notable. The girl speaks with a schwa /ae/ in her pronunciation of “sanitary” but upon talking about her “aunt” in the miniature autobiography that follows, uses the broad /a/ of British received pronunciation. She recalls picking up a lot of r’s going to school in the suburbs, where she didn’t want to stick out with her distinctive speech amongst peers who spoke in what is known as “General American.” When addressing a group of people she doesn’t know very well, she is also more conscious of how she sounds and tries to put in her r’s to show them that she is educated, but back at home the old habits return and she speaks in her heavy Boston accent.
Boston
New York
Caught/Cot homophonous
Caught (dipthongized)/Cot distinct
Her contemporary is a New York woman in her late 20’s who grew up in Smithtown, in an area that former Queens College linguistics professor Arthur Bronstein refers to as “the outer core of New York City.” (18) He argues that as one goes further away from the core, their dialect becomes weaker and they move more to the standard speech. This woman has slight indicators of a New York dialect, as she tries to cover them up by slowing down her reading of the passage and purposely enunciating her t’s and r’s. In her version of “letter” she makes it clear that the word is a double consonant and pronounces it as such. However I did notice that instead of pronouncing the /k/ in “asked” she pronounces it as a New Yorker word, “assed.” Upon coming to the word “futile” she struggles with trying to sound correct, repeating it several times until the second syllable sounds like “tile” rather than “tul.” “I never say that word,” she adds with a chuckle.
The two participants who speak with confidence regardless of how they sound are a little older and experienced in life. Going back to Laferriere, who noted that Italians spoke in the stigmatized speech 85% of the time for both casual and formal speech, is a former marine from Sommerville, just outside of Boston. Unlike his local female counterpart, there is a complete absence of r. He has a raised /a/, so words like “here” sound more like “heah.” While in the Marines he did a lot of travelling, and spent time in San Diego and Texas as an MP and teacher, respectively. Regarding his accent he has a lot to say on the subject, including the importance of Hollywood getting it down the right way. He praises Good Will Hunting for the authenticity of the dialect, and feels that only natives to the area should portray characters from his city. He has a sense of humor about how outsiders perceive him, and reflected on a time when in California he ordered from a drive-thru. His order consisted of “a large coffee with cream and sugar” which he was asked to repeat. Without hesitation he ran the simple order through a second time, only to be asked to drive up to the window and greeted with a few employees amused by his accent.
When we think of a stereotypical New York dialect sometimes Fran Drescher. She epitomizes the New York Jewish gal, whether or not her nasal accent is believable or not. I chose a Jewish woman as my fourth sample because she represents the stereotype perfectly. In the Boston study the Jewish speakers were found to have the least amount of stigmatized speech, but my impression of New York Jewish speakers has always been the contrast. This woman did not betray my personal findings about the phonology of Jewish women in the Big Apple. Like the Sommerville man, she does not put in the r. There is a diphthongized sound heard in most words with the short /o/ like “dog”, which she says as “dawg.” She is originally from “Lawn Guyland” but also spent periods of time in Queens, moves she was displeased about because she did not like the thought of living in a city atmosphere. The fact that Yiddish is her first language plays a big factor in the large difference in speech between her and her Long Island counterpart from Smithtown, as Yiddish is comprised of a sound system unique to its speakers.
It has already been established how speakers feel about their own dialect, but how they view the speech of other dialect areas is something else to add to the discussion. Perceptual dialectology is a term introduced by researchers that aims to establish how residents of dialect areas view speakers outside of their dialect boundary. Some striking conclusions were reached after a study that took place in Boston, especially considering the commonality of people outside of the Northeast who consider all of New England or the Northeast as possessing traces of a Boston dialect. Asked to draw a map labeling their opinion of different dialect regions, one Boston woman identified the New York area as having a “harsh” sound. (Hartley, 390) This criticism is further established when the participants were asked to rate their labeled dialect regions for correctness and pleasantness on a scale from one to seven, seven being the most correct or pleasant. On average, the Bostonians in the study rated New Yorkers as scoring a three on pleasantness, while evaluating themselves evenly split between a high seven and a low four. If New York and Boston are supposed to be very similar, the fact that half of the surveyed feel their dialect is vastly superior is a telling sign that some do not feel this way. However, this latest rivalry is not completely mutual. Bronstein identifies those outside of the New York dialect region who believe that the best New York City speech comes from individuals who sound like they own real estate in the Beacon Hill neighborhood of Boston. New Yorkers aware of this belief, he suggests, can’t find a reason to disagree.
It has been established that New Yorkers use the post-vocalic r more often than their Eastern New England counterparts, as well as the However, one thing that ties both communities together is the fact that any changes that take place in phonetics stays local. Neither city has been affected by the Northern Cities Chain Shift, a phenomenon that has taken place in Rochester and westward around the Great Lakes since the 1950’s The point of the tongue that forms the vowel moves higher up in the mouth, producing a raised vowel. An example is the fronting of the short /o/ so that a word such as “block” sounds indistinguishable from “black.” (In another example, the word “happened” has its /ae/ raised to sound like “heahppened.” A dialect area with a small population will merge with a regional dialect of a larger surrounding area rather than become more standardized. Since Boston and New York are large cities, they are not in danger of being “taken over” or influenced by another dialect region.
Having grown up in New York City and visited Boston, I believe that both cities have a rich linguistic culture and that change is taking place at a fast rate. The MTA releases recorded subway announcements in order to alert passengers of service changes, and a few weeks ago on my way to my second job I heard one particular directive that all “Manhattan bound” trains were running on the express track. Normally this would go unnoticed, but the way the recording pronounced the word “Manhattan” was highly unusual. It is a word with a glottal stop, so that the t’s are voiceless. Riders wishing to go into ManhaTTAn were to wait for their train at the express track. I think the word was deliberately over-enunciated to get people’s attention, but a linguist might have a different theory. Going back to those Bostonians in the perceptual dialectology survey, the MTA could be sending a message that New Yorkers do not speak unpleasant or harsh. On a trip to Boston while riding their “T” I came across the opposite: the conductor announced we were arriving at PaHk Street. Given the data made available in this paper, it can be concluded that New Yorkers really are further ahead of their Eastern New England peers when it comes to speaking the standard form. The arrogance held by some of the Bostonians surveyed and the linguistic respect given to the their upper class by New York speakers is just a twist of irony in a region flooded with competition.
Works Cited
Bronstein, Arthur. “Let’s Take Another Look at New York City Speech.” American Speech Vol. 37, No. 1 (Winter 1962) pp.13-26
Gaffin, Adam. The Wicked Good Guide to Boston English
Hartley, Leslie. “The Consequences of Conflicting Stereotypes: Bostonian Perceptions of U.S. Dialects.” American Speech Vol. 80, No.4, (Winter 2005) pp.388-405
Hubbell, Alan. “Curl and Coil in New York City.” American Speech Vol. 15, No.4 (Winter 1940) pp. 372-376
IDEA-The International Dialects of English Archive Dept. Of Theatre and Film.;U of Kansas, Lawrence. 1997
Labov, William. The Social Stratification of ® in New York City Deparment Stores.” Dialect and Language Variation pp. 304-329
Laferriere, Martha. “Ethnicity in Phonological Variation and Change.” Dialect and Language Variation pp. 428-445
Roberts, Sam. “Mayor’s Accent Deserts Boston for New York.” The New York Times on the Web 16 January 2006 http://web.lexix-nexis.com.ez-proxy.brooklyn.cuny.edu:2048/universe/document?_m=d8ee4.
Siegel, Robert. “American Accent Undergoing Great Vowel Shift: Interview with William Labov.” All Things Considered NPR. 16 February 2006 http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5220090
