Los Angeles herald., 1892-12-14
NEW yoRK,s DIALECT.
Absurd Though It Is, 1t Is Taught In
the Public Schools.

Absurd Though It Is, 1t Is Taught In
the Public schools.
How many persons know that New
York city has q dialect all its own, and
one that it maintains in purity by teach
ing it in the public schools? Many per-
sons have commented en- the precision
with which New Yorker can spot a
stranger the instant the stranger under-
takes to pronounce the name of the prin-
cipal streets in the town. We call it
Broadway, emphasizing the last sylla-
BILE very strongly. 1t appears to be quite
a trick to do this, and it is evidently an
unnatural pronunciation, for we notice
that the very great majority Of stran-
gers say Broa-wa. So we spot them on
the instant and ask them from what
part of the country they hail. just to
show them that there is something about
them that is not cityfed, and to set
them puzzling about whether it is in the
shape of their hat, or the style of their
shoes, or what it is.
People from the south betray the fact
by calling our Houston street .sHewston
street" as that naine is pronounced from
Texas to the Chesapeake, but we play
as strange a trick with another name,
for we call Coenties slip Quincy Slip"
AS no one would do that naturally, we
detect strangers by that pronunciation.
/ he name of Hoboken is another that
we .trife with, calling it Habbucken
But in ways and bywords other than
these l can pick out New Yorker any
where that he and may meet, whether
it be in Boston or in the Rocky noun
tains. | can do this by noticing how he
pronounces the eur" sound in such
words as birth, bird, earth, heard. etc
All the rest of the country pronounce
those words burth, burd, urth and hurd
Not SO the New Yorker. He is care
fully taught not to do SO in all the pub
lie schools, as well as by his parents al
home.
The queer little twist that enters SO
largely into our language in marring one
of the cardinal sounds that compose it is
thus expressed by our tongues; ur-yith
is how we say earth, bur-yid is how we
say bird. We say hur-yid for heard
and mur-yid-der for murder. All of us
who were born in New York have heard
IIle puDllC SCHOOl JedCueTS INSISTING upon
this peculiar twist, commanding the
pupils to put on the trademark as fight
ing men once wore the coat of arms of
their feudal masters. Most of us, too,
have heard nice, careful little girls on
the way home from school correcting
careless companions by insisting that
''you mustn't say burd; you must say it
nicely, bur-yid."
OF all the senseless and unmusical and
bad things that are done to English that
is one of the worst, because one expects
to hear language at its best in the
greatest city'of a country, and thither
foreigners repair to study English and
then perhaps to go back home and teach
it with whole lot Of little tricks like
that in their heads, to be solemnly taught
and scattered. until no one knows where
the mischief will end. OF course l do.
not want the reader to understand that
very nice people murder the language
in these or any other ways, but the great
masses of New Workers, those who get
their learning in the public schools and
whose tongues were trained in old New
York homes of the middle class-these
are the victims of this most peculiar
habit.-Cor. Providence Journal