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Bernie Sanders' accent, explained
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http://goo.gl/0bsAjO This year two major presidential candidates — Bernie Sanders and Donald Trump — speak with a New York City accent. And Queens College linguist Michael Newman thinks it might be good for their brand. Writing in the New York Times, he said:
"Americans have come to associate New Yorkers, and so New York accents, with saying what you mean, intense emotional talk and not worrying too much about whom you offend."
But the larger pattern outside this year's presidential race is that the New York City accent is stigmatized, and its most distinctive features are fading.
That's why Bernie Sanders provides such an interesting case study. He was born in 1941 and raised in a lower-middle-class household in a Jewish part of Brooklyn. Even though he's now spent more of his life in Vermont than in New York, his voice tells a story of his past and the past of nation's greatest city.
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3 Comments
ulysses1904Good post. I'm from New York and live in the South and my colleagues are amused when I say "Instawl the sawftware" instead of "instahl the sahftware".
I call it the "slanted A sound" and they speak with the "vertical A sound".
oritteropoFor all that Australians are prone to dropping sounds, we do generally pronounce the t's at the end of words (although perhaps we don't stress them quite as much as Bernie, see 3:10-3:40 in the vid).
Good post. I'm from New York and live in the South and my colleagues are amused when I say "Instawl the sawftware" instead of "instahl the sahftware".
I call it the "slanted A sound" and they speak with the "vertical A sound".
ulysses1904The bit about pop culture portraying New Yorkers as criminals, with the "stigma" leading some to intentionally lose their accents, that was pretty lame for an otherwise intelligent video. It gets presented as a researched fact when it sounds more like a ridiculous theory.
From my experience, current generations weaned on those movies shown in the clip would be more inclined to adopt that accent as just another affectation, tattoo, piercing, meme, avatar, email signature, sampling, bumper sticker.
And the bit about the accent losing favor after WWII, "as Americans were focused on their own identity, rather than maintaining ties to England". Sounds like something a college freshman would write at the last minute to fill out a 1000 word essay.
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