Although this is not science related, I would like to talk about New York City english. I am from Canada so to hear a New York accent from one of my teammates was cool. I decided to do some research on it. There are several recognizable characteristics that make up for this accent. According to the American sociolinguist William Labov, is it has been said to be as the most recognizable variety of sounds in American English. William Labov went to Columbia University then Harvard college and is a doctoral student. Labov carried out a study of dialect patterns on the Lower East Side of New York City. He has concluded that the use of pronunciations (ex: dropping post-vocalic /r/) correlates with social class, ethnicity etc. To prove this, he went to three stores in New York City. The first one was the high-class Saks Fifth Avenue, the average priced Macy’s and finally the cheapest discount store in the city at the time of the experiment, S. Klein. He then asked directions to a department that was located on the fourth floor. He repeated “Excuse me?” so that he can hear their answer for a second time. He was trying to see if they would say “fourth” or “fawth” and “floor” or “flaw”. He found that 30 percent of the clerks at Saks pronounced all their r's, compared with 20 percent at Macy's and 4 percent at Klein's. It is evident that the higher you are socially and economically, the more likely you are to pronounce your r’s. This study was an amazing one, and revealed the true colors among New Yorkers. Additionally, it was found that the reason as to why those with a high social-economic status pronounced their “r’s” was due to the fact that it was brought from the prestigious London England pronunciation.
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