{"id":31035,"date":"2020-07-21T00:07:00","date_gmt":"2020-07-20T21:07:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/en.buradabiliyorum.com\/the-noo-yawk-accent-was-considered-posh-until-anti-semites-got-their-way\/"},"modified":"2020-07-21T00:07:00","modified_gmt":"2020-07-20T21:07:00","slug":"the-noo-yawk-accent-was-considered-posh-until-anti-semites-got-their-way","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/the-noo-yawk-accent-was-considered-posh-until-anti-semites-got-their-way\/","title":{"rendered":"#The \u2018Noo Yawk\u2019 accent was considered posh until anti-Semites got their way"},"content":{"rendered":"

“#The \u2018Noo Yawk\u2019 accent was considered posh until anti-Semites got their way<\/strong>”<\/p>\n

\n The traditional New York accent, or Brooklynese \u2014 the accent of Archie Bunker, Travis Bickle and Mona Lisa Vito, Marisa Tomei\u2019s fast-talking character in \u201cMy Cousin Vinny\u201d \u2014 was once regarded as the height of sophistication. In the new book \u201cYou Talkin\u2019 to Me?: The Unruly History of New York English\u201d (Oxford University Press; out Tuesday), E.J. White writes that the language variant, which contains more vowel sounds than any language in North America, was once \u201ca marker of upper-class speech,\u201d to the extent that F. Scott Fitzgerald described its speakers as having \u201cvoices full of money.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cIn the days when Mrs. Astor held balls in her home on Fifth Avenue, the sound identified posh speakers,\u201d writes White.<\/p>\n

The accent, derived from speech patterns in 18th-century London and defined by distinguished features such as not pronouncing our R\u2019s \u2014 which is known as nonrhotic speech \u2014 was a mark of prestige and accomplishment as recently as the mid-20th century.<\/p>\n

\u201cIf you grew up in New York or New England in the 1940s, you would have learned, either in public school or in private or finishing school, a cultivated accent known as \u2018General<\/a> American.\u2019 Like the New York accent, General American was nonrhotic,\u201d White writes.<\/p>\n

This New Yorkese was everywhere in America: spoken in movies<\/a>, in plays and on the radio \u2014 the most influential and most-listened to mass communication of the time.<\/p>\n

The accent was so prestigious that stars like Katharine Hepburn and Cary Grant studied it with speech coaches.<\/p>\n

The US\u2019s shift away from New Yorkese was slow and gradual. White believes that was largely driven by anti-Semitism.<\/p>\n

\u201cIn 1918, the Association of New England Deans, which included the presidents of Harvard and Yale, gathered to discuss what the Association called \u2014 not ominously at all \u2014 \u2018the Jewish problem,\u2019\u2009\u201d she writes.<\/p>\n

Their \u201cproblem\u201d was that the percentage of Jewish students at these schools was growing quickly.<\/p>\n

\u201cThe president of Harvard, Lawrence Lowell, argued that something had to be done about this \u2014 that if too many Jewish students enrolled at a given school, upper-class Protestants would send their sons elsewhere,\u201d White writes.<\/p>\n

To combat this, the Ivy League developed a gatekeeping system that is not only still in use today, but is also what White calls \u201cthe most recognizable feature of modern college admissions.\u201d<\/p>\n

\u201cStarting with Harvard, in 1922, colleges began to ask app<\/a>licants to fill out forms that included questions on \u2018Race and Color,\u2019 \u2018Religious Preference,\u2019 \u2018Maiden Name of Mother\u2019 and \u2018Birthplace of Father,\u2019\u2009\u201d she writes.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey asked for letters of reference from teachers and headmasters to attest to the applicant\u2019s \u2018aptitude and character.\u2019 Was the student an athlete? Was he leadership material? Was he agreeable? In short, they found ways of determining elements of an applicant\u2019s background that allowed them to enforce de facto ethnic quotas.\u201d<\/p>\n

\"\u201cYou<\/img>
\u201cYou Talkin\u2019 to Me?: The Unruly History of New York English\u201d<\/span>Courtesy<\/span><\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

As part of this effort, these schools also greatly expanded their recruitment into the West and South, and away from the Northeast, in an effort to decrease the percent of Jewish students at their schools.<\/p>\n

Elite institutions in general followed suit, and the result was a decades-long decline in popularity for the New York accent, as the sound of the Midwest became a new marker of the elite.<\/p>\n

\u201cWithin a few decades, news<\/a>casters, college graduates, and actors in film and television largely adhered to a rhotic standard \u2014 a standard that signified Americanness in large part by distinguishing itself from the speech of America\u2019s capital of immigration,\u201d White writes.<\/p>\n

\u201cAmericans sound the way they do because New Yorkers sound the way they do.\u201d<\/p>\n

The decline in prestige of the New York accent was reflected throughout pop culture, as it became a sign of bumbling, out-of-touch comic relief.<\/p>\n

At first, though, the accent also signified a crude form of cleverness. In the 1930s, Groucho Marx, who sounded very much like the New Yorker he was, became one of America\u2019s top comedia<\/a>ns by playing characters who were \u201cnot just comic and quick-witted, but pointedly lower class and pointedly ethnic.\u201d<\/p>\n

The following decade, Bugs Bunny, a cartoon character modeled in part after Marx, became a national treasure with similar sounds and attributes.<\/p>\n

White writes that the animators wanted Bugs to be a \u201ctough little stinker.\u201d To facilitate this, Mel Blanc, who voiced the character, made him a New Yorker.<\/p>\n

\u201cThey wanted a tough little character,\u201d Blanc said. \u201cSo, I thought maybe either someone who came from Brooklyn or The Bronx, which was the toughest-talking area in the world. And I thought, \u2018Why don\u2019t I put them both together?\u2019\u2009\u201d<\/p>\n

In subsequent years, though, the quick wit associated with the sound became deprioritized, as tough-talking New Yorkese characters often became either brutal, dumb, lower-class or simple comic relief.<\/p>\n

Case in point: Archie Bunker, who was a 1970s symbol of bigotry and ignorance. On \u201cLaw & Order,\u201d \u201cany character not wearing a suit is likely to have a Noo Yawk accent,\u201d White quotes linguistics author Thomas Bonfiglio.<\/p>\n

Even stories set in mystical or fictional worlds make use of this. \u201cGuardians of the Galaxy\u201d uses brash-talking Rocket Raccoon (voiced by Bradley Cooper) as its comic relief, and \u201cAladdin\u201d employs the same strategy for Gilbert Gottfried\u2019s Iago.<\/p>\n

\u201cStar Wars\u201d was even set for this initially, as, White writes, the early script drafts called for C-3PO to have \u201cthe cadences of a Bronx used-car dealer.\u201d It was only after British actor Anthony Daniels read for the role that George Lucas converted the droid to an English-butler type.<\/p>\n

The long-term result of all this is that today, the New York accent is the second-most-widely disliked in the country, according to polls, behind only the sound of the American South.<\/p>\n

It is also the only accent from such a prominent city that is shunned by its own speakers.<\/p>\n

\u201cNew York City is an anomaly among world-class cities,\u201d White writes.<\/p>\n

\u201cNormally, the variant that a nation takes as its standard language comes from its center of finance and culture. But in the United States, the national standard accent comes from the Midwest and the West. Rarely do speakers from a world-class city respond to their own speech with such suspicion.\u201d<\/p>\n

E.J. White includes in her book words and phrases that began right here in NYC and made their way into the popular lexicon, past and present. Here are some terms that became part of our common language after getting their start, as so many do, right here in New York City.<\/em><\/p>\n

Con man:<\/strong> From an 1849 New York Herald article about a swindler named William Thompson, referred to in the piece as a \u201cconfidence man\u201d due to his approaching strangers on the streets of Manhattan and asking, \u201cHave you confidence in me to trust me with your watch until tomorrow?\u201d People often did, and they never saw their watches again.<\/p>\n

Flea market:<\/strong> Takes its name from a public market that operated in lower Manhattan during the rural, swamp-like days of the city\u2019s origins. Originally known as the Vly Market, \u201cvly\u201d being the Dutch word for \u201cmarsh\u201d or \u201ccreek.\u201d<\/p>\n

Hooker:<\/strong> Derived from Corlears Hook, a section of Manhattan by the FDR Drive just south of the Williamsburg Bridge that housed \u201cthe majority of the city\u2019s brothels\u201d in the early 1800s.<\/p>\n

Phony:<\/strong> Possibly originated here by Irish police officers in the 1800s. Derived from the Irish \u201cfawney,\u201d meaning \u201cring,\u201d in reference to a common ring scam of the time.<\/p>\n

Shade:<\/strong> As in \u201cinsult,\u201d the word evolved from New York City\u2019s drag queen culture.<\/p>\n

Slumming:<\/strong> Reportedly created by Charles Dickens after he toured New York\u2019s horrifying, crime-infested Five Points neighborhood in 1842.<\/p>\n

Speakeasy:<\/strong> First heard in NYC during Prohibition to describe clandestine alcohol-serving clubs, it evolved from the British and Irish phrase \u201cspeak-softly shop,\u201d the term for an illegal club where one spoke softly so as not to be discovered.<\/p>\n

Window shopping:<\/strong> This evolved around 1875, shortly after the mid-19th-century invention of department stores in New York City.\n <\/div>\n

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Source<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“#The \u2018Noo Yawk\u2019 accent was considered posh until anti-Semites got their way” The traditional New York accent, or Brooklynese \u2014 the accent of Archie Bunker, Travis Bickle and Mona Lisa Vito, Marisa Tomei\u2019s fast-talking character in \u201cMy Cousin Vinny\u201d \u2014 was once regarded as the height of sophistication. In the new book \u201cYou Talkin\u2019 to…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":31036,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"fifu_image_url":"","fifu_image_alt":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[41621],"class_list":["post-31035","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-general","tag-the-noo-yawk-accent-was-considered-posh-until-anti-semites-got-their-way"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31035","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=31035"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/31035\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/31036"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=31035"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=31035"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/buradabiliyorum.com\/en\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=31035"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}