What about slang? Do you use slang that is specific to your school or community?
In “How Does a New Yawker Tawk?,” Jon Caramanica writes about the #BestNYAccent challenge on Instagram and features videos compiled by Noah Throop and Shane O’Neill:
What we think of as the distinctive New York accent is really a pool of accents, a stew that draws liberally from various communities: Italian, Jewish, Jamaican, Puerto Rican, Dominican, Irish and many more. Slang might come from Yiddish, or it might come from hip-hop.
But what was most striking watching the videos en masse — from every borough, from children and senior citizens, from dozens of ethnic and racial backgrounds — was just how much of what we think of as the New York accent is not about sonic specifics at all.
The New York accent, as it were, is both music and ideology, instantly recognizable as sound and almost physically palpable, too. It’s about the delivery, usually offered by someone leaning in to the conversation, some combination of excitement and bristly attitude. Sometimes it’s about the liberal sprinkling of sounds and catchphrases, the salt and pepper on a conversation that actually becomes the dominant flavor. Sometimes it’s the fluent cursing.
Mr. Caramanica shares some background about the contest:
The #BestNYAccent challenge was initiated by Nicolas Heller, a director of short films and a sort of unofficial liaison to New York City’s ample pool of eccentrics. In January, he posted on Instagram a list of the 100 best New York accents of all time, a mix of the legitimately famous and around-the-way favorites: Nas, Rhea Perlman, Cardi B, Luis Guzmán and so on. While recently sidelined with Covid-19-like symptoms, Heller decided to turn his preoccupation with the sound of New York into a social media challenge.
The contest received several hundred submissions and was viewed hundreds of thousands of times. Celebrities, trapped at home like everyone else, tapped in: Debi Mazar, Chazz Palminteri, The Kid Mero, Kathrine Narducci, John Joseph from the Cro-Mags and more. (No Rosie Perez, sadly.) Notionally, there was a winner: Charlie da Wolf, a foulmouthed septuagenarian from Williamsburg. But the robustness of the entries as a whole was revivifying.
The article continues:
It would be impolitic to say that the New York accent is the signature American accent. You could argue, though, that the New York accent is the accent of the current crisis. It’s there in the burly roundness of the words coming out of Gov. Andrew Cuomo’s mouth, or the acidity in the tone of Dr. Anthony Fauci, or the way President Trump scrapes all of his syllables together. (Senator Bernie Sanders’s howling woof counts here, too.)
For New Yorkers, that’s made the conversation around the coronavirus feel as local as the pandemic’s actual impact. Watching the news can feel like watching quarrels between grouchy neighbors.
Students, read the entire article, then tell us:
Do you think you have an accent? Do other people think you do?
How does your accent use tone, rhythm, tempo, slang and language? How much is your accent connected to your identity? Do you ever shift your accent, or way of speaking, based on who you are talking to or the setting you are in? What determines how much of yourself you show through your accent?
What regional expressions do you use when speaking? Do you think your way of expressing joy, anger or frustration is unique to the part of the country or world you come from? How does that show up in the way you speak?
This article focuses on pride about having an accent, but sometimes people are made fun of or discriminated against for having an accent. How have you seen accents honored and revered? Have you also seen accents mimicked or used to make fun of someone? Do you think it is OK for someone to mimic someone else’s accent?
In 2013, Josh Katz and Wilson Andrews created the “How Y’all, Youse and You Guys Talk” quiz, which produces a dialect map based on a participant’s responses. If you have the time, answer the 25 questions and examine the dialect map generated for you. How accurate is your dialect map to where you live, where you grew up and where your family comes from? Are you able to trace the influences that show why you speak the way you do?
Students 13 and older are invited to comment. All comments are moderated by the Learning Network staff, but please keep in mind that once your comment is accepted, it will be made public.
