[aruanan]

Why the classic Noo Yawk accent is fading away

All we need to do to get regional accents back is to isolate by reducing travel and eliminating electronic communications. In the U.S. we talk about parts of the country separated by many hundreds or thousands of miles as having different accents.

In places like the Dominican Republic the north coast and the south coast, as well as the Cibao Valley, had distinct differences, and those differences, as great as any between the Midwest and Appalachia, were over distances that could be contained in almost any U.S. state. In the "uneducated" Spanish of the Cibao Valley, the "r" becomes "i" so "parque" becomes "paique" and "barba" becomes "baiba." In the capital (and I've heard it among Puerto Ricans, too), the "r" becomes "l" so "parque" becomes "palque" and "barba" becomes "balba."

[Scanian]

Yeah, I’m half Cuban and some of my Puerto Rican friends call me “Alturo” (I’m on the tall side, so that makes me chuckle. “Don Alturo” makes me feel old!). In Lares, PR, there is a Corsican influence so, you used to hear hear people saying “sa com e?” which is perfect Italian for “sabe cómo es?” and “lechi di poti” for “leche de pote.” And the Cubans of Havana are way different from the Cubans from the Santiago area, who are more like the folks from the eastern Caribbean. Isolation will do that for you.

I was an only child and my folks used to leave me in the crib with a dog in the room for company and a big console radio playing. After a while, people started saying, “hey, that kid talks like a radio announcer.” I guess I did. I liked big band music too.