Though I can’t say I’m crazy about the Philadelphia accent — or, for that matter, the accents of other places I’ve lived, like Boston’s, Minnesota’s, and Rochester’s — I really would hate to see it go.
I do like trying to identify where new acquaintances might be from. And the homogenization of regional accents just seems a loss. Maybe not a loss on the scale of endangered languages, but a part of a regional culture we’re likely to miss once it’s extinct like the heath hen.
This was in the NY Times recently: “The Philadelphia regional accent remains arguably the most distinctive, and least imitable, accent in North America. Let’s not argue about this. Ask anyone to do a Lawn Guyland accent or a charming Southern drawl and that person will approximate it. Same goes for a Texas twang or New Orleans yat, a Valley Girl totally omigod.
“Philly-South Jersey patois is a bit harder: No vowel escapes diphthongery, no hard consonant is safe from a mid-palate dent. Extra syllables pile up so as to avoid inconvenient tongue contact or mouth closure. If you forget to listen closely, the Philadelphia, or Filelfia, accent may sound like mumbled Mandarin without the tonal shifts.
“Some dialects can be transcribed onto the page, but the Philadelphia accent really has to be heard to be believed. And when an accent goes silent, so do its speakers. A recent study out of the University of Pennsylvania reported that, like many regional phenomena, the Philly sound is conforming more and more with the mainstream of Northern accents. And that’s a shame.
“The beauty of the Philly accent, and I should point out it’s mostly to whites that these sweeping statements apply, is its mashing-up of the Northern and Southern. Nowhere but in the Delaware Valley can you hear those rounded vowels — soda is sewda, house is hay-ouse — a clear influence from Baltimore and points south.”
More at the NY Times, here. The article is by Daniel Nester. (Nester? Not related to I.H. Nester, my Philadelphia father-in-law’s long ago employer? Now, that would be a small world.)
By the way, if you are interested in the Penn study, check out the National Public Radio interview: “Students of Penn linguistics professor Bill Labov have been walking around some 89 Philadelphia neighborhoods for four decades. At the school’s linguistics lab, they have shelves and shelves of recorded conversations from Philadelphians born in 1888 all the way to 1992.” More here.
Graphic: Jennifer Daniel
Can you identify the sawf pressel, the wooder, torsts (as in ” ‘Lannic city is too torsty ennymore”), a samalem, arnj juyce, a sennid cannle, a miskeeda, and the tayyin rowll (Italian roll)?
As a native Bostonian, now living in New York after a stints in RI and DC, I was particularly intrigued by the Baltimore accent. The accent sounds from the NY Times description like it might be similar to Philly (which I know nothing about, but love accents and regional variations)…off to read more! Thanks for a great post!
Thanks. Someone who helps people get rid of regional accents reblogged my post, which makes me wonder. Wouldn’t it be better to at least switch back and forth? I do hate to see them go.
Reblogged this on j&b speak easy.
Thanks for reblogging.
Thanks for the article.
Hi! Then there is the ubiquitous Have a grade A.
That one took me a minute. LOL!
A long time ago in another life, when I worked in a customer service call center for an automotive tool company, after a short time I could recognize the state a caller was from based on his accent (it was a he, 99% of the time–a mechanic calling to order a specialized tool). I’ve noticed that accents have generally flattened out since then. More and more people talk like the people they watch on television, rather than like their parents.
So even if someone felt a need to get rid of their accent (say, to be hired as a national TV host), switching at home to their local dialect wouldn’t help his or her kid learn it. But I imagine if the kid tried out for a play requiring the accent, s/he could instinctively do a serviceable job.
Once upon a time, I was a grad student teaching public speaking courses at Penn State, smack dab between Pittsburgh and Philly. With each student who got up to speak, I had to re-calibrate my ears and listening skills, depending which side of the state they came from! And central PA had its own distinct sound!
Wow. I didn’t know that.