'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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[FindGod]

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

[jeremyshuster]

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

[ted]

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.

[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.

[BradThePitts]

Remember when NEW YORK newscasters had NEW YORK accents?

[mutechannel]

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 🤣

[TheKing]

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

[chuckiea]

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.

[LiogCeartas]

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

[jmarkb]

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

[asad_ali]

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

[Mikael]

As an English learner, I love New Yorker accent and this is the reason I try to speak with this accent. It is a bit similar to the British accent.

[monylounge]

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

[JP-]

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.

[mrmrso]

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.

[barbarabohr]

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

[nicholasricardo]

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

[mbayatab]

For those who still don’t know: not pronouncing “r” comes from British way of speaking

[stephenlyons]

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

[forrestgray]

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.