Edgefield advertiser. [volume] (Edgefield, S.C.) 1836-current, 1892-12-22
nav YoRk,s Dialect.
Absurd Though It Is, It Is Taught In
the Public Schools.

How many persons know That new
York city has dialect all its own, and
one that it maintains in purity by teach
| ing it in the public schoolsl Many per-
sons have commented en- the precision
with which New Yorker can spot
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. It 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 bstray the fact
by calling our Houston street "Hewston
street." as that name 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
etectstraugers by lat pronunciation.
The name Of Hoboken Is another that
we tribe WITH. calling it Habbucken.
But in ways and bywords other than
these I can pick out 9 New Yorker any.
where that he and I may meet, whether
It be in: Boston OF in the Rocky noun
tains.J I can de- this bylnoticing how he.
pronounees the EUR" sound in such
words hs 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 30 IN all the pub
lie schools. as well as by his parents at
home.
The queer httle twist that enters so
largely into our language in marring one
Of the cardinal sounds that compose IT. Is
thus expressed by or tongues; r-yith
IS how we say earth, bur-yid is how we
ray bird, We say hur-yid for heard
and mursyid- der for murder. All Of Us
who we're born In New York have heard
the public school teachers insisting upon
this peculiar twist, commanding the
pupils to pat ON the trademark as fight
Ing men once wore Me;coas Of arms Of
their feudd masters. Most M us, too,
have heard nice, careful little girls on
tbe way homo from school correcting
careless companions by insisting that
ayou mustn't say burd: you must say it
nicely, bur:yid-"
OF all the consoles and unmusfcal 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 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 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 Yorkers, 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