The Press., 1893-01-12
NEW YORk'S DIALECT.
Absurd Though It Is, It Is Taught fin
 tie Public Schools.

tl-e Public Schools.
 How many persons know that New York city has dialect all it's own, and one that it maintains in purity by teach ing it in the public schools? Many per- sons have commented cn the precision with which a 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- ble very strongly. It appears to be quite } 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 cityfied, 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 "Hewston street," as that name is pronounced from Texas to the Chesapeake, but we play as strange & trick with another name, for we call Coenties slip Quincy slip" AS no one would do that naturally, we detect strangers by that pronunciation The name of Hoboken is another that we trifle with, calling it Habbucken But in ways and bywords other than these can pick out New Yorker any where that he and may meet, whether it be in Boston or in the Rocky noun tains. 1 can do this by noticing how he pronounces the "ur" 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 we'll as by his parents at 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 the public school teachers 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 8 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 a 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 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 hahit.-Cor. Providence Journal.