Date:  Tue, 30 Nov 1993 20:43:31 EST

From:  David Bergdahl <bergdahl[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]OUVAXA.CATS.OHIOU.EDU>

Subject: loss of dialect distinctiveness



          Ohio University Electronic Communication





  Date: 30-Nov-1993 08:42pm EST



   To: Remote Addressee           ( _MX%"ADS-L[AT SYMBOL GOES HERE]UGA.CC.UGA.EDU )



  From: David Bergdahl               Dept: English

     BERGDAHL                 Tel No: (614) 593-2783



Subject: loss of dialect distinctiveness





In response to the remark about the loss of a distinctive NY-accent I offer the

following. Although I left Brooklyn in 1942 and moved to Nassau County I had an

identificable "Brooklyn" accent well into my youth. I remember in 1950--Mario

Lanza's song "Be My Love" was the big hit--at my aunt's house after church using

"Earl" for "Oil" and vice versa--my cousin Lois had a boyfriend named Oil who

worked in an earl station. But nobody at school remarked upon it. When the

great outmigration from the city started in the 1950's I was one of the

local--i.e. Long Island--kids rather than a city kid. So I know that as a kid I

had a strong dialect. Since 1958 when I went to college--and was teased by

upstate and Penn kids over my pronunciation of "coffee" &c.--I've lived outside

metropolitan NY, first in Syracuse, then Boston, then Syracuse again and for the

last 25 years SouthEast Ohio. My dialect has moderated, but Ohioans still

identify me as "eastern." Now this is a long preamble of a tale, but I had the

occasion this fall to visit my daughter Anya who's a grad student at Pratt

Institute in Brooklyn. Not only did I hear few "classic" Brooklyn accents but

my daughter's boyfriend--from LI--affirmed that the "classic" [or should I say

stereotypical?] dialect features aren't salient any more. Moreover, he couldn't

recognize my dialect as "native' to the area. Perhaps with a different ethnic make up, the "city dialect" founded on Irish, Jewish and

Italian immigrant pronunciations is already outdated. A decade ago I was told

by the English chair that the three largest ethnic groups at Queens College were Carribeans, Central

American Hispanics and Israelis. Maybe we should look to them for the new

accommodation model.



David Bergdahl Ohio University/Athens "Gateway to West Virginia"

BERGDAHL [AT SYMBOL GOES HERE] OUVAXA.CATS.OHIOU.EDU









Received: 30-Nov-1993 08:43pm