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Any New England accent annoys me. My Lawnguyland accent is very obvious. When we travel out of town they know where I am from immediately. I say Cawfee, Cathlic, winda instead of window, Bumpa to bumpa instead of bumper to bumper. One thing I can't stand is people who speak what I call trailer park trash talk. You see it on cop shows a lot. For example:
"I aint dun nuthin wrong".
In the above example, I do say "cawfee", "cathlic" and "lawn guyland" but also do pronounce things like 'window' and 'bumper' correctly.
During all of my school years the others kids would tell me I had "a funny accent", no doubt the combined result of my dad's family being from Massachusetts originally (he was the first one not born there in almost 300 years, and spent his childhood in Pennsylvania instead), and also spending time regularly with an aunt who was British. She was a nanny in the UK but visited us about a half dozen times a year; when she did, I pretty much stuck to her like velcro and hung on her every word. So I grew up on Long Island hearing a mixture of Long Island/Boston suburb/central PA/London accents.
I gradually lost some percentage of the other accents as those speakers passed away but am definitely not 100% Long Island accent even so.
ETA: As far as accents that I find annoying, the only one that drives me up a wall is a deep-South accent. Even a single "y'all" will set my teeth on edge (or even worse, all y'all which will make me want to throw a vase against the wall a la Scarlett O'Hara, LOL)
Watch the made for tv Buttafuoco/Fisher movies and you'll see how the world perceives LI and it's accent.
What I think is happening is Long Islanders have now become synonymous with the typical working class/middle class New Yorker stereotype. The New York accent has always been spoken by the white working class, or more importantly, people who self-identify as such. Many decades ago NYC was chock full of them. Slowly over time, they radiated out to the suburbs, in all directions, bringing their accents with them. For many years, these suburbs were dominated by them. If you grew up in the NY suburbs in the 70s and 80s, all the parents of your HS classmates were from the city. But since then, the white working/middle class migration to the suburbs has slowed. The suburbs started to be populated by people native to the suburbs themselves. More and more of them went upscale - middle class to upper middle class; upper middle class to rich. Without the steady influx of NYC white working class people, the NY accent diminished. In NJ, which takes up a huge chunk of the suburban real estate, subsequent generations identified more with NJ than NY, and wanted to shed the accent. Accents are more intentional than people think. Rich wall street types with Ivy League degrees and no NY pedigrees started to populate many of the top NJ suburbs. Same thing with Westchester and CT - these two places have a very country club upscale vibe - the NY accent is not desired. It is dying in these areas. Rockland is a place where it is still strong, but Rockland is tiny and mostly cross-pollinates, and is confused for, NJ.
LI is different. The one place where there is still some middle class white migration to the suburbs is Brooklyn and Queens, and these people usually go to LI. LI is also ... an island, and when you live there you are sort of trapped by the city. Because of this, people without ties to LI (or without a spouse with ties to LI) don't move out there. They go to NJ, Westchester or CT. So LI is not seeing much influx of people without accents. Also because of this, people from LI don't often leave. So LI is kind of the last place that is still churning people with the white working/middle class accent.
Also, LI has a strong and clear identity. It being an island, it is clearly defined. It being landlocked by the city has given it its own "je ne sais quoi". The northern suburban areas lack this. There is no clear consensus on what this region is. The Hudson River is 3 miles wide and divides it in half. Rockland commingles more with NJ than any other NY area. Westchester has the same connection with CT. As such, Westchester and Rockland lack a singular identity similar to what LI has. The counties to the north are influenced by both NYC and areas even further NY (LI does not have this same non-NYC influence as you move away from the city - its an ocean out there). This LI identity includes, for the time being, the NY accent, and even as people may move up the social and economic ladder, they often want to identify as a white middle class New Yorker.
NYC is now mostly filled with people who don't have NY accents - rich people, students and young people from all over the country, and racial minorities/immigrants (who have accents, but not of NY).
The bottom line is that LI is now the home of the working class/middle class NY accents, and the stereotypes that come with it.
I agree with most of what was stated in the above post.
However, I don't usually think of the white working class accent that has become associated with Long Island as a Long Island accent. To me it is a NYC or NYC influenced accent (despite the subtle differences and debates between the Bronx and Brooklyn accents of yore). I remember meeting people, mostly from Suffolk County, who came from ancestral stock of generational Long Islanders. They sounded more like people who live in upstate New York, pronouncing their "Rs" and say "Or instead of "Aw." They did not sound like white working class NYC people like Walter Matthau. They still do exist, especially on the east end.
When I speak with a customer service rep from some other part of the country and we joke about New York, I generally get asked if I am Italian. This style of speech has become associated with New York area Italians because of the Butaffucos, Sopranos, De Niro, Al Paccino. When some major NYC catastrophe happens like Hurricane Sandy or 911, inevitably, some spokesperson from the NYPD, Con Edison. MTA, LIRR, FDNY, comes on the national news and explains the situation using a thick working-class unemotional New York accent; in my mind I call it the "cop" accent.
I agree with most of what was stated in the above post.
However, I don't usually think of the white working class accent that has become associated with Long Island as a Long Island accent. To me it is a NYC or NYC influenced accent (despite the subtle differences and debates between the Bronx and Brooklyn accents of yore). I remember meeting people, mostly from Suffolk County, who came from ancestral stock of generational Long Islanders. They sounded more like people who live in upstate New York, pronouncing their "Rs" and say "Or instead of "Aw." They did not sound like white working class NYC people like Walter Matthau. They still do exist, especially on the east end.
When I speak with a customer service rep from some other part of the country and we joke about New York, I generally get asked if I am Italian. This style of speech has become associated with New York area Italians because of the Butaffucos, Sopranos, De Niro, Al Paccino. When some major NYC catastrophe happens like Hurricane Sandy or 911, inevitably, some spokesperson from the NYPD, Con Edison. MTA, LIRR, FDNY, comes on the national news and explains the situation using a thick working-class unemotional New York accent; in my mind I call it the "cop" accent.
That is why I referred to at as a "NY accent" in my post. I never referred to it as a "LI accent".
the "Bawlmer" accent is horrific. It's close cousin is the Philly/South Jersey accent which isn't much better.
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