'New York City accent' may disappear

We all know the sound of a classic New York accent. The dialect, known for its elongated vowels and lack of R's is one of the most distinctive in the English language. But with more transplants settling into the city, the traditional accent seems to be slipping away.
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[@NigelNguyen_]

Cuz da city too expensive drove a fuckton of the real new yorkers out

[@sushles]

this. THIS.

[@kakishisfriend1126]

This! A lot fo the new yorkers now are from Midwest and west coast.

[@user-jz3lk1oo5e]

Nu yawk*

[@jeremyshuster9492]

I’m in Staten Island and pretty confident the accent isn’t going anywhere 😂😂

[@quanthebronxny3996]

Thank god at least one borough isn’t being gentrified

[@yes-qw6om]

what about brooklyn and manhattan

[@0truckmafk]

Statti' Oiyyyyylin!

[@grasmereguy5116]

@@0truckmafk Sta' Nylin

[@0truckmafk]

@@grasmereguy5116 lol noice

[@tedsperos1620]

This has been happening for decades. I first visited Manhattan in 1994 expecting everyone to sound like Robert De Niro in "Mean Streets" but they all sounded like Lindsey Lohan in "Mean Girls". Thank God on my last day I went to a deli for a sandwich and the girl behind the counter ordered my hot pastrami on rye sounding just like Fran Drescher.

[@yes-qw6om]

dude i just saw a scene of mean streets 30 mins ago

[@tedsperos1620]

@@yes-qw6om Excellent

[@tharamendoza6287]

If you wanna hear a genuine NY accent you gotta go to The Bronx, Brooklyn, Staten Island or Queens. Long Island and Westchester too. Manhattan has too many outsiders living in it so nobody has a NY accent over there

[@BloodNote]

​@@tharamendoza6287 I'm born and raised from Manhattan. I 100% have a NY accent.

[@xzcvzxvxcvz]

The old NYC is gone too. Aside from the city and the parts of Brooklyn they’re trying to make an extension of Manhattan, it doesn’t have the old NY feel. It’s starting to feel like every other city I’ve lived in, just much larger and more crowded.

[@yes-qw6om]

thats because we dont see italians on every block now

[@dangercat9188]

As someone originally from south Brooklyn, it's north Brooklyn that's becoming Manhatten 2.0 and um yea, ew lol. Idk what is the obsession with Brooklyn like, leave us alone dude 😂

[@HClbn]

The NY accent is alive in Florida

[@realandrewcinque22]

Sure is my grandparents has a heavy brooklyn accent i have a heavy long island accent

[@HClbn]

@@realandrewcinque22 what’s difference between Long Island accent and Brooklyn?

[@dangercat9188]

Idk why lots of new yorkers are moving there specifically. Eh, I refer cold weather so I'm staying up north.

[@dawnsstar5918]

@@HClbn Not much.

[@BradThePitts]

Remember when NEW YORK newscasters had NEW YORK accents?

[@mutechannel13]

Yea, it is disappearing. People out here are starting to talk more properly....but NY has been losing its own identity for a while....Funny thing people that moved out of NY still think they have their accent until someone from NY hears them talk 🤣

[@143f7]

Not necessarily, apart of NYCs identity IS the diversity.

[@stevemuzak8526]

@@143f7 Diversity means : bad english.

[@robroy6374]

@@stevemuzak8526 no

[@chuckiea7011]

​@@stevemuzak8526 Diversity doesn't mean bad English.

[@chuckiea7011]

But a lot of us do have our accents. It's people from out of the NY metro area that tells us that we have an accent when a lot of us think we don't.

[@chuckiea7011]

A lot of this is really ethnic based. An African American and Irish American from Brooklyn are going to sound extremely different. Like with the gentleman who's profession is in linguistics, the way that he says bar with the dropped "R" isn't the same way someone of African and Latin American descent would say bar because we would pronounce that R sound at the end of the word. I know, I'm African American and Latin American from The Bronx, I don't pronounce the word bar like the gentleman would and I'm a early millennial born in 1987 and lived in NYC until 2011. I also lived in two neighborhoods in Queens and collectively, I lived amongst African Americans, Africans, Puerto Ricans, Dominicans, Mexicans, Ecuadorians, Jamaicans, Haitians, Trinidadians, Colombians and none of them dropped the "R" in their vocabulary. I been to Flushing Queens numerous times and the Chinese and Koreans out there didn't do it either. But for people especially of Irish and definitely of Italian ancestry, I can agree that at least the ones I been around dropped the "R" in their vocabulary.

[@SuperShinobi95]

It all depends. It all boils down to who you grew up around. Im told i have a strong accent but more stereotypically irish/Italian and I’m African American or black. But my mother sounds more southern but that’s because she spent more time in the house than I did. It’s all about your associations.😅

[@angelsanchez4744]

Intresting you brought up Queens. I have a theory that it also has been on the decline because lots of the teachers are from Suffolk county and they themselves don’t have the accent like, NYC or Nassau. As a Queens native I had some Long Island teachers try to unteach my class our accents. I purposefully dropped my accent in middle school because I wanted to sound smarter , but then I brought it back in HS because I’d rather sound like I really sound. Lots of Hispanics and black folk in Queens have lost the accent. Virtually no white (even 2nd generation Italians) and Asians have it anymore. For reference I’m Ecuadorian and from Corona and Jamaica.

[@angelsanchez4744]

@@SuperShinobi95 I picked up Italian hand gestures from my black friends in Bed-Stuy. Funny how some things are passed down because of the neighborhood history.

[@grasmereguy5116]

I was going to make much the same comment, but you beat me to it by several months. But there are people with mixed accents, my father, who was Jewish but grew up among Brooklyniytes of Italian and Irish ancestry, was often perceived to be Italian; Congressman Charlie Rangel, who is of Puerto Rican and African American heritage, sounds very much like a Jewish New Yorker.

[@tharamendoza6287]

It depends

[@WiseAilbhean]

I noticed it disappearing around the height of reality tv and hipster explosions around 2006-

[@jmarkb92]

As someone from South Carolina, yes he has a New York accent 😂

[@mon3ylounge]

Just go to the hood, it’s very well alive

[@yes-qw6om]

thats not the original ny accent, the original ny accent is those dudes from lil italy in the 60s

[@mon3ylounge]

@@yes-qw6om says who lol black and brown people were already in NYC in the 60's and they had a smooth ass NYC accent

[@yes-qw6om]

@@mon3ylounge i know but it changed over time a bit

[@SamuelHendrix-kb8nn]

Blacks and Puerto Ricans got their accents from the White New Yorkers! Puerto Ricans/Dominicans have more of a Spanish accent than they do a New York accent.

[@LaurenAtTenn]

@@mon3yloungewhere do you think blacks got it from

[@asad_ali8]

I got casted to be a detective at a Murder Mystery Party. I decided to learn the NY accent for that role. Although I speak a little slow, but I am so happy that I am getting better at that and I intend to use that for other shows and keep naturalizing it. #ILoveNY

[@mrmrso228]

My grandmother (born and raised on LES, UES and eventually the Bronx) used to say terlit for toilet (and earl/oil, berl/boil). It's VERY rare to hear that anymore. So sad.

[@xzcvzxvxcvz]

I agree. I miss all the strong accents and it’s a shame. The NY feel is slowly going away

[@grasmereguy5116]

Last time I heard it was in the late 1980s, one of the school janitors used to talk that way. Archie Bunker also talked that way. I remember my grandfather (born 1901, died 1985) saying "Gotta get to woik!" but I don't think he said pronounced "oil" as "earl".

[@mrmrso228]

@@grasmereguy5116 LMAO my grandmother was born a little later, 1919. Will still find some old timers who speak like that but it's definitely a dying accent.

[@nicholasricardo8443]

My dad still says “yuge”, he was born in 1967 and lived in the Bronx and then moved to rockland.

[@TheKing75691]

New York English is disappearing from New York, English itself is disappearing from New York.....................

[@stephenlyons8589]

100% it is. I have been told i sound like a stereotypical ny gangster. I have a mix of brooklyn and heavy Long Island. My mother sounds like Fran dresser

[@yes-qw6om]

lets switch bodies

[@barbarabohr2900]

I am from Brooklyn NY , have lived in California since 1983 and my accent has never left me!!!😅

[@JP-1990]

I blame the fact that SO much of our media is based in or centered around California. More and more kids these days are sounding more like Californians because our films, tv, and most of all social media influencers are both literally and figuratively of California. On top of that, New York is becoming increasingly more of a temporary pit stop for people from around the world who have absolutely zero interest in assimilating, whether they be Afro-Carribeans, Pakistanis, or even just liberal hipsters who cant stand their midwestern town. This all might have been fun and cute around the turn of the 1900's, but nowadays as immigration is increasing in amount but decreasing in necessity, and now that we have the internet basically spreading cultures around like plant pollen, its becoming harder and harder for New York to maintain a cohesive identity and keep its roots in the ground.

[@davidfeliciano882]

Am the king of new York 🗽⛴🍎 I was born and raised in Staten Island I'm from the North Shore accent is my life and my reliability

[@aliceitty]

2:00!!! Love it!

[@Danny451]

Now only if we can make the Boston accent disappear too.

[@dawnsstar5918]

If Brooklyn accent is cement...... the Boston accent is concrete! I will get a Boston accent just from talking to them for more than 10 minutes. It's catching. Needless to say, they aren't going anywhere, just like the light Southern Belle and Hard Alabama accents of the South.

[@Danny451]

@@dawnsstar5918 Yes, the concweet.

[@forrestgray3528]

Another commenter mentioned this, but, like the emergence of Received Pronunciation in the UK, and to a lesser extent the adoption of the Transatlantic accent in some private schools and upper-crust institutions in the 20th century, there's a preferred mode of speaking taught, and emulated, in a lot of public schools. It's also, for better or worse, adopted to signal status in most major city centers (I have friends born and raised in Minneapolis, Louisville, and Charlotte who all have the same accent). Received Pronunciation in the UK, after all, was dubbed the "Public School Pronunciation", and was also a status signifier. When I moved from NY at the age of 5 to Long Island, it was mandated that I see a speech therapist weekly who focused on ridding me of my non-rhotic, NY accent. I saw this effect in a lot of pockets of LI, too, where the influx of Manhattanite families, who already had neutral accents, diluted the generational LI populations' accents, which only hastened the trends being promoted in our schools. In just one generation, most regional accents were almost completely wiped out where I grew up. You'd still hear it in pockets throughout the Island, but I noticed a pretty steep decline in its prevalence, especially among millennials.

[@weston06.]

That’s horrible. I absolutely hate it when the upper echelons deem a product of a regional culture, such as accent, as “lower-class” or “uneducated,” as though any accent that isn’t theirs is superior. Just like what happened with Scots - a unique language which developed from Scottish english, but the English suppressed it because it was deemed “unsophisticated.” Education has been weaponized to erase cultures all the time, and its disgusting. I hope native New Yorkers fight back against this erasure.

[@aheat3036]

Many of the Irish, Italian and German Americans who grew up in New York City had/have the New York accent but many have left the city for various reasons being replaced by immigrants and transplants!… The family atmosphere is mostly gone from New York City.

[@MissBanks777]

The last remnants of this accent still remains in Boston.

[@grasmereguy5116]

Different accent, similar in some respects, but different. It's called a Boston accent over there (oddly enough).

[@MissBanks777]

@@grasmereguy5116 when comparing accents all over the US the Boston accent is quite similar

[@grasmereguy5116]

@@MissBanks777 Okay, granted when compared to other accents like Midwestern or Southern or Pacific Northwest, sure, Boston and NYC accents share *some* features, but we still sound very different to each other and nobody from Boston would mistake a New Yorker for one of them. I'm a New Yorker and still have a bit of NY accent (though not as strong as my parents and not as strong as it used to be when I was a kid) and nobody from Boston would think I sound like them and I would recognize a Bostonian immediately. So basically Boston area and NYC area are both Northeastern USA accents and share what's called "non-rhoticity," in other words, we both drop out Rs at the end of and in the middle of words, and then we often add an R at the end of a word that had no R at the end, but only when it ends with a vowel and when another word with a vowel comes right after it (I don't do that much anymore, I used to do it apparently a lot when I was younger, and I also have a tape made when I was a kid talking like that, giving my bar mitzvah speech!). So both New Yorkers and Bostonians will say something " Cuba-*R* is an island in the Carribean" instead of "Cuba is an island in the Carribean," my father used to say he grew up on "Jamaicuhr Avenue" instead of "Jamaica Avenue" in Brooklyn (actually true). But people in London England do the same thing. So yeah, the New York City area, Boston, other places in New England like Providence Rhode Island and also across the pond in England do similar things, but nobody would confuse the three accents. Maybe all three have a few features that accents from Chicago or Los Angeles doesn't have, but really very different, NYC is NYC, Boston is Boston and London is London---plus all three places have different subvarieties. But anyway, like the video says, the accent is disappearing. I am born and raised in NYC, Brooklyn and Staten Island my whole life, 53 years, except for a couple of years in Israel and another year in California, and then I bounced around out west a bit, so I went through a phase in my 20s where I deliberately tried to sound not like a New Yorker (I wanted to get into acting and stuff for a while, that's why I went to live in Los Angeles with my older sister --aka my "olduh sistah") and then I thought I'd go into academics and went to grad school at NYU for a while, and was surrounded by all these smart young people from all over the US and the world and the whole NY accent seemed low class and provincial to me me back then in the early 1990s. I remember when I lived out west and people made fun of my accent, or at least kept on saying "Say cawfee!" and laughing. And now all these hipsters and yuppies from all over the place have taken over my poor old Brooklyn and our accent is almost gone! I have been trying to reclaim my NY accent, though! But I ain't from frikkin' Boston, that's a low blow! C'maaahn! Fuhgeddaboutit! (Or as they say in Ba'ahwstan, wicked pissah!)

[@MissBanks777]

@@grasmereguy5116 that’s a mouthful. I like how you said “Jamaica avenue” I always laughed at people who mispronounced it.

[@dawnsstar5918]

Boston? No, Massachusetts have a similar yet different accent. NY accent flows, where Boston is dry and monotone. Boston: " Stap tackin' to me and go pack the caa!! I have ta write tadays mileage" NY : Stop tawkin' to me and go pawk the cah!! I have to write t'days mileage"

[@davidfeliciano882]

Never say the action will be losing will be live on long life forever

[@icalotdonthide2646]

I love New York!!!

[@wandaritter5704]

I still have mine

[@DiscipleOfHeavyMeta1]

That would be a tragedy.

[@fernandosalas8589]

I live now in south Florida and have been told your from NY? i would say yes how did you know? they would say you have a New York accent.

[@brooklyn3299]

You can’t tell?

[@megatop412]

A few years ago I had some old family footage on Super 8 converted to digital and I was ASTONISHED at how heavy my NY accent was back in the day. My parents had thick NY accents. Now 35 years and two moves later it's mostly a south Jersey accent not as strong as native Philly folks, some of the midwest is still there from my time in IN, but the NY is mostly gone by this point. I remember girls digging the NY accent when I first moved to the Midwest, they probably thought they were talking to Vinnie Barbarino. I didn't have his dance moves unfortunately

[@Melissa0774]

Your super 8 had audio? What year was it from? I'm wondering because I had one of my dad from 1971 but it was silent and I just assumed it didn't have audio. The machine I used at my public library doesn't record audio. But now I'm wondering if maybe it did have audio and I just didn't realize it.

[@megatop412]

​@@Melissa0774 The OLD Super 8 clips had no audio but the later ones did. When I had everything converted they somehow figured out the timeline and we were watching clips with no sound for a while then all of a sudden there was audio

[@Melissa0774]

@@megatop412 Is 1971 to old to have audio? Who converted yours? I did mine myself with a machine they have at my local public library. My videos are on my youtube channel. One of them was from the 80's my grandmother did it with the same old camera and film.

[@mynameis8404]

Always loved Ny as kid...Never been there ❤

[@realandrewcinque22]

Im from long island we share the same styles from brooklyn n boston

[@Aabil11]

0:29 My man holding his new PS5 controller like a bauss

[@MissBanks777]

Social media has a lot to do with this ….

[@mactastic144]

Everyone has an accent.

[@luc0007]

I wish new englanders had that william Buckley accent

[@acethemc6633]

I’m in queens, trust me, this shits not goin nowhere

[@Blue-jd8jf]

Its not transplants or migrants....its that people are abandoning the NY accent because it sounds uneducated. Im from Los Angeles, and we get just as much transplants and migrants, yet Californian accent is quickly adopted by transplants and migrants. The problem is that New York accent is simply not a popular accent. And most New Yorkers readily abandon it and adopt a California accent too. If a LA girl moves to NY, she will not adopt the NY accent. Yet if a NY girl moves to LA, she will quickly adopt the LA valley girl accent

[@mikemccool7575]

Id take a ny accent any day over a socal

[@Blue-jd8jf]

@@mikemccool7575 yeah but the average American doesn't feel that way, especially New Yorkers who are the ones abandoning their own accents. Try to get a serious job with a nasaly NY, they will look over you. Socal accent dominantes the US media, and its clearly adopted by most Americans and even foreigners. Charlize Theron for example is successful because she learn to speak English fluently with a Californian accent. She would sound uneducated talking like a New Yorker accent

[@footz718]

This is crazy lol

[@user-fd6qd9nc4x]

Not as long as im around

[@wandaritter5704]

It I a already! People, NYers tell me I have one!

[@jg6007]

Ppl go to New York and pick up the accent not the other way around

[@ChrisPeck-niganma]

Noo Yawk tawk on its way out? Lawd have mercy, I be gettin' da vapors Honeychile!

[@Hn-gz5iw]

This happened with white flight

[@Tb1025]

Dude all this just not true. I’m from nyc, not even from an outer borough, and I promise you that the accent is very much alive. Also, what accent are u even referring to? There are countless accents and most of them are still alive. The only accent that is kinda dead is the one that say pronounces bird like “ boid”

[@Protantagonist]

I luv Nu Yok

[@JennaCandelier]

Lies. South brooklyn. Any hood. The end.

[@yes-qw6om]

im pretty sure they meant the original new york accent like how mobsters from lil italy in the 60s and before sounded like

[@lindasmith3978]

Hey, I’ve found your lost accent!

[@londadon_bx]

The British do not pronounce the last R either and they invented the damn thing. If anything we’re the closest to the original English😬

[@mrnounderscore1430]

Now whats wrong with new yorkers finally learning vocab😂😂

[@BradThePitts]

New Yorker's actually have an excellent vocabulary. It's just that they talk fast - and you're too slow and stupid to understand them 😂

[@bororobo3805]

0:38 What a stupid question. Everyone has an accent 🤦‍♂️

[@brooklyn3299]

What about vocal fry? I have it and idk why…

[@grasmereguy5116]

Get it removed ASAP! I've heard getting hit on the head with a shovel helps.

[@yes-qw6om]

hey it good for sounding like joe pesci@@grasmereguy5116

[@keefmeister77]

Nuevo York

[@extemporaneous4545]

Well, British people don't pronounce the final 'r' either.

[@carlito6038]

and that has something to do with this because?

[@extemporaneous4545]

​@@carlito6038Because there's nothing unique about it.

[@grasmereguy5116]

Depends which British peopole, in the West Country they do.

[@grasmereguy5116]

@@carlito6038 Actually, it's relevant because according to linguists the reason New Yorkers (and other East Coast cities) dropped their r's at the end and middle of words is that they were influenced by the accents in London, which do the same thing, but the sounds evolved differently here because of the different ethnic groups that settled in NYC, Dutch, Germans, Southern Italians, Eastern European Jews, African-Americans from the Southern USA and Spanish-speakers from the Caribbean (although London had some of those same immigrant groups as well, but in different proportions). The thing this story didn;t address is that there have traditionally been different NYCaccents depending on ethnicity, NYC Jews sound different thnan NYC Italians, who sound different from NYC Puertoi Ricans, who sound different than NYC Irish, who sound different than NYC Blacks (who might sound different from each other depending on whether their families origincally came from the Southern USA or someplace like Jamaica or Trinidad). There's all common NYC features like dropping the R at the beginning and end of words and saying things like "cot" (as in a folding bed) and "caught" (past tense of to catch) differentlym someone from Chgicago, for instance, will say "cot/caught" the same. But it's disappearing. I am Jewish, I have sort of a mixed Italian NYCaccent (raised in an Italian neighborhood on Staten Island) mixed with Jewish NYC inflections, but I tone it down or get rid of it when I need to, it comes out when I talk with other people with the cacent or I get agitated. My ex-stepdaughter (ex-wife's daughter), who is Mexican-American but raised in Brooklyn from the age of five, has no trace of an NYC accent at all, she sounds like a typical white California Valley Girl (even though she was born in LA and is of Mexican heritage, she doesn't have that Chicana/Chola accent). But nobody would guess she is essentially from Brooklyn. And none of her friends sound like they are from Brooklyn, at leasdt not the people I knew from Brooklyn growing up.

[@dawnsstar5918]

Well then, I can only conclude that original NY'ers pronunciations closest to the Queen's English!!🤣 Haha, and they think it sounds "uneducated"....hahaha!!

[@DarkAK2]

There's no such thing as 1 new york accent

[@BradThePitts]

While this is true, as a whole New-York-speak is definitely distinctive enough to be different than the rest of the country - and therefore also the entire world.

[@Bad.Pappy.Official]

C’mon man.

[@Damone7653]

Ich lieber mah maychin

[@greatwuta]

New York City accent died years ago

[@yes-qw6om]

people still have it, the old guys

[@d.asiatp]

nope its still out there broad and strong

[@SamuelHendrix-kb8nn]

People put on the accent when they need it but mostly they sound like the rest of America.

[@Mavenger1845]

@@d.asiatpno it isn’t

[@dawnsstar5918]

You haven't been around much, then.

[@QueensBronxNY]

NY is over with. Finally❕

[@wandaritter5704]

It was once the best city to live in! Hands down!

[@QueensBronxNY]

@@wandaritter5704 true

[@robroy6374]

@@wandaritter5704 yup.

[@joaquinmerlo4895]

FFFFFFAke newssssssss

[@LilGrimey5Star]

The “New York accent” isn’t the New York accent, it was only whites speaking like that and no one else, it became a stereotype in movies and shows that was never true

[@yes-qw6om]

that means its a new york accent, a white guy from texas and a white guy from new york would sound different plus it wasnt all whites it was mostly italian and some irish

[@LilGrimey5Star]

@@yes-qw6om clearly it's an Italian accent

[@yes-qw6om]

@@LilGrimey5Star yeah italian new york accent

[@ponuni]

@@yes-qw6om so stop claiming it as an ENTIRE new york accent. I seriously hated being associated with that wack ass accent. you italians make it your entire personality too that shit ain't cute.

[@dcttd8022]

As a lifetime New Yorker this is definitely false.

[@AidanTheLoverBoyOhDwyer]

:(

[@guillerodri6393]

That it a jews call emigrant n saying dont read. Like in hes jogs theya dont promuved that in thets n to segregating for money to. The tv n hes editorial not fpr each

[@redbull1737]

Thank god I don’t like New York accent

[@BradThePitts]

That's OK, most New Yorker's don't like you either!

[@AndriaaLeoLove]

News casters are so annoying.