hello my name is cormack and I live in Accent Hell
Foist ting ta remember is dat dese exents ain’t from mahdern times. New Yawk had a distinctive axent priah to Wuld Wah Two, and de newsies were woikin’ class, and thus had a more dramatic excent. De mos’ notable diffrents from mahdun axents is de stress on ‘ah’ as opposed ta ‘oh’ in words like ‘morals’ or ‘Florida’. So, Flahrida and mahrals. Ya hear dis in many comedic settin’s such as Space Balls, and it’s offen presented as a ‘Jewish accent’, used to caricature Jewish characters. Anuddah ting is a stress on a ha’d ‘i’ instead of a soft ‘ih’. For example, Eye-talians as opposed to Italians.
Second is de simplification and shortenin’ of words, ‘specially fahreign ones. Tink a’ ‘airplane’, which don’t apply hea but dat’s not important. Bein’ a complex woid, it’d likely go down to ‘aeplayn’, de r not presented and de ‘ay’ stressed over de n. ‘Course, dere’s de more well-known droppin’ ah final ‘r’s and ‘n’s. Dat’s borin’ and we’s ignorin’ it. Jus’ think ‘gonna’ instead of ‘going to’ in terms of shortenin’. Contractions, too, were another form of shortenin’.
De syntax, oh’ senence struc’cha, is annuda ‘portant factor. Offen times kids witout education, like de newsies, would switch up words by axxident. ‘Stead of ‘my dog’, for example, you’d get ‘me dog’. ‘She don’t like me’ over ‘she doesn’t like me’. ‘You is (youse)’ instead of ‘you are’. ‘Ain’t’, a’ course, was always popular. In soitin’ cases, ‘what’ may be used in place a’ ‘that’ or ‘who’, such as 'The guy what does that is no friend of mine’.
We gotta consider, howeva’, dat many newspapers, stories, and such on used an over-played accent as a way to delegitimize and make fun of de woikin’ poor. Jus’ as people today make fun of ‘redneck’ axxents, an exaggeration of excents was used to paint poor folks, ‘specially immigrants, as less intelligent or jokes. Though we can’t deny dat dey had accents, even more tick’ den dose of de wealthy, it ain’t fai’ ta’ write out accents as a caricature, as it only promotes xenophobia and classism. In udda woids, while I provided dis information ta’ you for de sake a’ knowin’, it ain’t right to write out accents of madern people, and an argument could be made dat writin’ out past accents ain’t much bedda, as in noimalizes de tendency as a whole.
If any of you can read that, I am impressed and terrified. Also, writing this almost killed me.
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