WT New Yawk

 

This is a picture that my 5 year old made for me upon my return home from a weekend away.  The spelling was completely atrocious and the only thing spelled correctly was “I love you”.  🙂

 

 

She’s in Kindergarten so I’m ok with it but there are times where I just feel bad that it’s not easier for her.  In retrospect, the way she spells things is hilarious because it’s exactly as she hears herself saying it, which makes me wonder, WHERE DO ACCENTS COME FROM?

What is it that causes people to say things differently?  Why do some people from the South Shaw of Looong Eyeland have deeper accents than the people on the Nawth Shaw?  Location Location Location.  We are products of our environments.

Being that I was born and raised on Long Island, the south shaw no less, you would think that I would have a strong accent.  Howeva, when people axe me where I’m from and I tell them, they always say to me ‘How come you don’t have an accent?’    My response is that my mum is British so I was raised to speak part proper and part Brooklynese (my dads side).  When I say ‘proper’, please don’t confuse that with appropriate.  If you’ve ever met my mother, you know that there was no shortage of curse words that come out of her mouth.  They just sound better when pronounced with an English accent.  Bloody Hell and Fuck Off were never in short supply around my house while growing up (and currently)…. in case anyone was wondering where I get it from…. thanks momma.

Back to New Yawkers.  Being one myself, albeit one without an accent, I find it hard to deal with people on a business level that sound like they work for the mafia.  Do some people enhance it to sound tough?  Do women exaggerate it to sound more… ummm…. jewish?  Oh my gawd?

I was standing behind a well dressed man in line the other day (looked like a lawyer) at Birch (hands down best coffee in NYC) while placing his order for Cawfy, no shugah.  Followed by ‘lemme get dat deir bagel with buttah’.  (I’m sooo not kidding or exaggerating)  Not that the Boston or the southern accent is that much better but New Yawkers get the worst wrap of all – and if you ask me, for good reason.  It’s not hot, it’s not sexy. Sometimes we just sound like a bunch of morons – no offense to Joey Tribbiani from friends. *Note that I said ‘we’ as not to offend anyone(not that some of you even realize you sound like that).

With a little shout out to the other side of the pond…. we should all make a little more effort to speak more eloquently when speaking to our children(maybe they will learn to spell correctly at a younger age) as well as when conducting ourselves in a business environment.   And for those that just don’t give a shit what you sound like… you might as well pick yourself up some of this really cute line of Brooklynese ceramics at Fishs Eddy.