New York accent: Still talking the tawk?

Hollywood gangsters planned rub-outs in a city where hoodlums said "Toidy Toid and Toid." Archie Bunker confused "terlet" for "toilet" and called his long-suffering wife "Edit."

Does anybody really speak that way anymore? Did anyone ever, really? In the New York of 2008, where small shops and whole blocks meet the wrecking ball at every turn, is the New York accent on the way out, too, shamed into obsolescence as each generation adopts a kind of speech Ralph Kramden wouldn't recognize?

You can take that concern and just fuggedaboudit.

The New York accent is very much alive, linguists will happily tell you, but like all dialects -- and that's what our accent is -- it's changing. To be sure, it's been a long time since anyone called a toilet a "terlet." But many of us still drink "cawfee" and call our "fathas" on Father's Day. What's also true is that fewer of us, especially younger New Yorkers, are speaking this way in our increasingly mobile and diverse city. That said, you'd be mistaken to conclude that means New York talk is going the way of the Third Avenue El.

"The main picture is one of stability," said William Labov, a professor of linguistics at the University of Pennsylvania who conducted seminal studies of the New York accent in the 1960s. George Jochnowitz, an emeritus professor of linguistics at the College of Staten Island, agrees that it's "hanging on," but "that compared with certain other regional accents, it's hanging on less."

A big factor in its fading after World War II was shame, as stereotypes of old New York speech pushed us to sound more like everyone else. But that process is hardly complete, nor does it appear it ever will be. The accent's future, indeed, may rest with new immigrant groups who will carry on its traditions and no doubt add to them, according to linguists.

And if classic elements of New York speech are indeed hanging on, one reason may be that in this post-Seinfeld world, more of us have finally embraced the fact that we're "supposed" to talk this way -- our long-held aversion to stereotypes be damned.

"It's still a part of New York identity and in part is perpetuated by the outside world. And so there's a sense in which New Yorkers buy into that. So if people keep saying that we talk so differently, I guess we do, dammit why shouldn't we," joked Walt Wolfram, distinguished professor of English Linguistics at North Carolina State University.

An accent in flux

The New York accent is part of a broader East Coast way of speech, with major distinctions in places such as Boston and Philadelphia. Our accent fits like a glove in between these two geographic zones, and the forces buffeting it include immigration waves, the city's transient young population and New Yorkers' tendency to clean up their speech. So it should come as no surprise that if indeed any part of the city is sounding less like New York, it's Manhattan.

"New York more than a great many other places is subject to homogenization," Jochnowitz said, "And I think that has already happened in Manhattan, where kids growing up in most of the neighborhoods in Manhattan don't have New York accents anymore."

What they're hanging on to in Manhattan, Jochnowitz said, are certain pronunciation distinctions he feels are worth preserving.

"New Yorkers who may be losing their accents are not losing the distinction between Mary, marry and merry. That really seems to be very much alive," Jochnowitz said, speaking of the distinctions (cot and caught is another one) that are rarely seen outside the East Coast.

But when people think of New York, it's the classic elements of the accent they're talking about: The "aw" sounds, the dropped Rs after vowels and even the long-dead tortured verbal gymnastics like pronouncing "girl" as "goil."

And when New Yorkers speak of the accent, they often think about borough. If Manhattan portends a possibly defanged future for the accent, New York talk is faring better in the other boroughs, especially on Staten Island, Jochnowitz says, which in part by its isolation may preserve the accent better than any other place.

The borough factor

Kara Becker, a New York University doctoral candidate who recently completed studies on the accent, acknowledged that New Yorkers will tell you there are borough differences. But the research doesn't back it up.

"Linguistically we haven't been able to identify these borough differences. What we find is that we've got this New York City dialect that's accentuated by more working-class speakers. So depending on your occupation or your education, you may use more of these features, but it's not geographically distinct as far as we know," she said.

To be sure, there are neighborhood peculiarities.

Jochnowitz, for one, recalls distinctions that have faded in his native Brooklyn neighborhood.

Related topic galleries: Baltimore, Borough Park, Philadelphia (Philadelphia, Pennsylvania), Queens County, New York, King's County, Brooklyn (King's, New York)