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I remember reading that the old "Dose and Dems" type of speech, users of which are probably all now dead, came from the Dutch influence, since Dutch has no "th" sound.
Don't think it's Italian, though, since Italians are relative newcomers to the New York City scene, not much more than the last hundred years, and were sort of kept in their own conclaves since they weren't really considered white back then by the residents of northern European ancestry who preceded them.
The Italian influence is not in the accent but the articulation. New Yorkers speak quickly, with a kind of staccato to their form. In addition, where do you think "Ya know?" at the end of every sentence comes from, "Va bene?"
You are so wrong about this. I know a ton of white Brooklynites and Manhattanites under 40, none of them have "thick" accents. Asians generally sound neutral too.
The tiktok generation (zoomers) especially. They sound roughly the same from coast to coast.
I am the only one in my family with ANY New York accent and it is only slight. My ex-husband, also a native has a very neutral accent as does my daughter. My brother has NO accent. (Both my parents are not originally from NY, and my dad, his first language was not English. He learned English from the TV so his accent is pretty neutral aside from the occasional South Carolina inflection like Amand instead of Almond that rarely shows in his speech.)
I am the only one in my family with ANY New York accent and it is only slight. My ex-husband, also a native has a very neutral accent as does my daughter. My brother has NO accent. (Both my parents are not originally from NY, and my dad, his first language was not English. He learned English from the TV so his accent is pretty neutral aside from the occasional South Carolina inflection like Amand instead of Almond that rarely shows in his speech.)
If you have school age kids, I bet they sound like they could be from California.
I'm 25 and my accent is limited to certain things the way I say "brought" and "caught". Like heavy emphasis on the AW sound, if that makes sense.
The interaction I had earlier made me come back to this topic and this comment in particular. An Asian man (I would assume of Chinese descent), from a towing company in Southern Westchester County with the thickest and most stereotypical New York accent, like, you would close your eyes and think he was Italian-American, and I’ve met a bunch of people of East Asian descent from Brooklyn and Manhattan with similar accents, amongst them, a woman who lived in the projects in Brooklyn, a rather wealthy man living in Battery Park City and a pizzaiolo at a famous pizza spot in central Brooklyn, amongst others, and not all of them over 40.
That's interesting. The New York born Chinese I know sound either completely neutral, or sometimes they have a tinge of that New York "hood" accent that is associated more with black and Puerto Rican people.
I'll speak about myself (for what it's worth). I often get told consistently that I have "kind of" a British accent. I am not British by birth and have only been to England once as a tourist. I do have British ancestry from long ago, however. I grew up around people who often spoke in that mild "waspish" Mid-Atlantic accent, so that could be the reason why people say that. As far as NYC accents go, people up until the 1920s or so spoke with an accent that did resemble England. We are, after all, a country of English heritage despite what so many naysayers say. Everyone else, including the Irish Catholics who were poor as dirt and often illiterate like the Italian immigrants who came to our shores, came later.
The accent so many people associate with NYC I think is more (as others have said here) a working class ETHNIC White accent. Nobody on the Upper East Side talks like a Fonzarelli type or Constanza's mom. That's the accent I often hear in parts of Brooklyn and Staten Island. Ironically, those same people tend to say I sound "non-NY" when in reality, their accent is much newer than mine. In fact, when people sometimes say "oh you know, you kind of look British and have a British accent" I say, oh, no, that just means I speak English. YOU have an accent.
Up until recently, in NYC you could even tell if someone was Italian-American or Irish by the way they spoke English or the slang they used.
Nowadays, millennial uptalk is grating, annoying and the generic accent for most millennials. The only time I do tend to hear the "taaaawkkk and New Yaaaawkk" ethnic White working class accent is from some cops or civil servants/sanitation workers in outer boroughs.
Asian Americans I've noticed tend to speak in kind of an uptalk way, perhaps related to their languages of origin.
If you listen to recordings of Eleanor Roosevelt or FDR and then some 19th century recordings, you will find New Yorkers sounded pretty close to what is considered "British" today.
Has anyone ever heard former NJ Republican governor Thomas Kean speak? He actually has a very old school classic northeastern almost "patrician" sound.
That's the English sound I mostly grew up with. It's a shame that annoying nasal sounding uptalk is the order of the day, but like so many other things in America 2020, it's all part of our decline.
That's interesting. The New York born Chinese I know sound either completely neutral, or sometimes they have a tinge of that New York "hood" accent that is associated more with black and Puerto Rican people.
That NYC hood accent is very NYC to say the least. And funny, once again today, in the Bronx, an Asian man as i walked by him, who was telling a story of how he used to work for the precinct, again with a thick New York accent.
I'll speak about myself (for what it's worth). I often get told consistently that I have "kind of" a British accent. I am not British by birth and have only been to England once as a tourist. I do have British ancestry from long ago, however. I grew up around people who often spoke in that mild "waspish" Mid-Atlantic accent, so that could be the reason why people say that. As far as NYC accents go, people up until the 1920s or so spoke with an accent that did resemble England. We are, after all, a country of English heritage despite what so many naysayers say. Everyone else, including the Irish Catholics who were poor as dirt and often illiterate like the Italian immigrants who came to our shores, came later.
The accent so many people associate with NYC I think is more (as others have said here) a working class ETHNIC White accent. Nobody on the Upper East Side talks like a Fonzarelli type or Constanza's mom. That's the accent I often hear in parts of Brooklyn and Staten Island. Ironically, those same people tend to say I sound "non-NY" when in reality, their accent is much newer than mine. In fact, when people sometimes say "oh you know, you kind of look British and have a British accent" I say, oh, no, that just means I speak English. YOU have an accent.
Up until recently, in NYC you could even tell if someone was Italian-American or Irish by the way they spoke English or the slang they used.
Nowadays, millennial uptalk is grating, annoying and the generic accent for most millennials. The only time I do tend to hear the "taaaawkkk and New Yaaaawkk" ethnic White working class accent is from some cops or civil servants/sanitation workers in outer boroughs.
Asian Americans I've noticed tend to speak in kind of an uptalk way, perhaps related to their languages of origin.
If you listen to recordings of Eleanor Roosevelt or FDR and then some 19th century recordings, you will find New Yorkers sounded pretty close to what is considered "British" today.
Has anyone ever heard former NJ Republican governor Thomas Kean speak? He actually has a very old school classic northeastern almost "patrician" sound.
That's the English sound I mostly grew up with. It's a shame that annoying nasal sounding uptalk is the order of the day, but like so many other things in America 2020, it's all part of our decline.
Bernie Sanders is a stereotypical Brooklynite with a thick accent, and yes a lot of the New York accent has in common with Southern England, and also yes, these damn millennials....
That NYC hood accent is very NYC to say the least. And funny, once again today, in the Bronx, an Asian man as i walked by him, who was telling a story of how he used to work for the precinct, again with a thick New York accent.
Yes but it overlaps with the hood accent of New Jersey (North and Central Jersey at least) and New England too.
Yes but it overlaps with the hood accent of New Jersey (North and Central Jersey at least) and New England too.
Absolutely
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