are there some native NYC people that dont have a east coast accent? (New York: school, law)
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I just never understood what an accent is, because to be an accent there has to be some widely recognized version of "normal" speech--something that the accent is a variant on. But what is that "normal" in the U.S.? Has hanyone ever codified it or made it official in any way, like the BBC broadcasters mentioned above?
If not, you can listen to Elliot Spitzer, Rosie Perez, Charlie Rangel, and Joe Torre, and who's to say that one is "correct" English (New York or otherwise) and one is speaking with an accent?
There's no official American accent the way there's an official British one, but linguists have described a "Standard American English" or "General American" (I think the latter term was invented as a PC way to avoid the value judgement inherent in "standard") accent.
I really have no discernible accent. There used to be a teeny bit of Pennsylvania Dutch (uplift on the last syllable) but I managed to dumpp that during college. I've been the last 40 years in Manhattan and Jersey City and never picked up any of those accents which can be quite weid: adults tend not to pick up new accents.)
Nobody can tell where I'm from by my speech.
A language teacher I had said that most area accents can be detected by saying the three words: merry, Mary and marry. He said VERY few people say all three distinctively different.
I did, but only because of a SLIGHT accidental cheat. The year before a friend detected that I was saying he words fairy and ferry the same (only becasue I needed a ferry to get out of Chester PA) so I stamped out the bad habit. And of course that extended to merry and Mary. My teacher though I was faking becasue I was the only one in Eastern PA who prounced the two differently.
A couple of students actually pronounced the three words IDENTICALLY and could not recognize they were doing it. I had a freshman roommate from Northern new Jersey who pronounced LORE and LAW exaclty the same. and he denied it saying over and over: "One is pronounced lore and the other is pronounced lore." I think I made him do it 500 times, I got such a kick out of it.
I have a friend who grew up in Inwood (northern Manhattan). She loved to watch Law and Order. One day her young son watched with her, and he wanted to know which woman on the show was the one named Lauren Auder.
My husband is not originally from the US though he has lived in NYC for over 20 years.
At times, he'll get asked where his accent is from. His typical response is one of "shock" where he goes "I have an accent???"
(Like Men in Tights - "I have a mole??")
That's interesting. When I was a teenager, I had a friend whose mother was from Germany. I once said that I loved her mother's accent. She said, "My mother has an accent?" On the other hand, I have a friend with a Cuban mother, and when she's repeating something her mother said, she says it in her mom's Cuban accent and it's hilarious.
My father was born Austria just outside Vienna but enigrrated when he was 10, and he got into lots of fights during WW2 because of his "accent." I was amazed to hear about this much later because I never thought he had an accent.
But strangely every now and then I will meet a man who sounds a slight bit like my father, and lo and behold, they are always of Austrian ancestry.
I guess I was too close to it to hear it in my father and it was extremely subtle.
For anyone who is interested, the US is a linguistically rich place! American English Dialects
Look at all the accents from Illinois all the way up to New England. However, I think that due to New York's status as an international city and cultural center of the US, people from all these linguistic backgrounds move there, making it more likely that the traditional NY accent will become less prevalent as the years go on, though it certainly won't vanish completely.
have you ever met any native New Yorkers that dont really have the NYC accent?
just a neutral accent like California or west coast?
Of course. This isn't the south where everyone has an accent. Some people here speak very neutral. I would say a good amount. Especially in my school.
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