Why the classic Noo Yawk accent is fading away

NY Post ^ | February 6, 2010 | SHEILA McCLEAR

[Scanian]

The first thing theatergoers will notice about the revival of "A View of the Bridge," Arthur Miller's 1950s drama about a working-class Italian-American family in Red Hook, is that the characters are speaking a different language: Brooklynese. You got a problem with that!?

You can hear the mellifluous — some might say grating — dialect being celebrated on Broadway by Scarlett Johansson and Liev Schreiber. But that may be the only place. Linguists say features of the classic accent are heard less and less in the city itself, especially among the younger generation. Mocked and stereotyped, the long o's and w's have fallen out of favor, unless you're auditioning for a mob film.

Will old Noo Yawk become a museum piece, the subway token of language?

[HamiltonJay]

I doubt that they all ended up there, especially during the every pizza driver can make $20k a month as a mortgage broker we were overrun with em... They were more amusing than standing in strawberry fields and declaring John Lennon was nothing more than a hack commie musician.

[angcat]

We say “sangwitch” and “terlit” I still have my NY accent and so does my mom and sis. My kids were born in PA and they have a confused hick and NY accent.

[angcat]

This is all very confusing.