Pride, prejudice and the story of New York English
Some Americans look down on New York accents. New Yorkers don’t care
THE MOST effective form of birth control known to man, said Lewis Grizzard, is a Bronx accent. The late newspaper columnist from small-town Georgia enjoyed teasing northerners. But it is hardly just American southerners who take digs at New Yorkers’ English. “Coffee Talk”, a venerable sketch on “Saturday Night Live”, a long-running comedy show filmed in the city, featured few memorable jokes per se, instead leaning heavily on exaggerated vowels like those in “cawfee” and “tawk”. The accent itself was the punchline.
This article appeared in the Culture section of the print edition under the headline “Cawfee break”
From the September 19th 2020 edition
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