History
The origins of the dialect are diverse, and the source of many features is probably not recoverable. Labov has pointed out that the short-A split is found in southern England as mentioned above. He also claims that the vocalization and subsequent loss of (R) was copied from the prestigious London pronunciation, and so it started among the upper classes in New York and only later moved down the socioeconomic scale. This non-rhotic (R-less) aristocratic pronunciation can be heard, for instance, in recordings of Franklin D. Roosevelt. After WWII, the R-ful pronunciation (rhotic) became the prestige norm, and what was once the upper class pronunciation became a vernacular one.
Other vernacular pronunciations, such as the dental (D)s and (T)s may come from contact with languages such as Italian and Yiddish. Grammatical structures, such as the lack of inversion in indirect questions, have the flavor of contact with an immigrant language. As stated above, many words common in New York are of immigrant roots.
Read more about this topic: New York Dialect
Famous quotes containing the word history:
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—Tacitus (c. 55–117)
“For a transitory enchanted moment man must have held his breath in the presence of this continent, compelled into an aesthetic contemplation he neither understood nor desired, face to face for the last time in history with something commensurate to his capacity for wonder.”
—F. Scott Fitzgerald (1896–1940)
“There has never been in history another such culture as the Western civilization M a culture which has practiced the belief that the physical and social environment of man is subject to rational manipulation and that history is subject to the will and action of man; whereas central to the traditional cultures of the rivals of Western civilization, those of Africa and Asia, is a belief that it is environment that dominates man.”
—Ishmael Reed (b. 1938)