21 - New York’s Accent

The Brolic returns after a hiatus, with sitdown comedians Evan Mastronardi and guest cohost Seth Glicksman examining the origins of the New York accent.

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Episode Transcript

(00:00):
You're listening to the brawlic All ThingsBroke Network. This is a sometimes weekly
New York history podcast where I manwho has debt renter of affordable housing,
an owner of a wildcat, EvanMancinardi read a story to a man who's

(00:21):
a phenomenal artist and really likes words, really into words, And you're I
am not an owner of a wildcat, unfortunately, Seth Bisman, Yeah,
I mean, and do you knowwhat story we're doing today? I have

(00:42):
no idea what story we're doing today. I've been wanting to say this all
day. Nineteen nineteen two thousand,the year of our Lord Optimus prime R.
The guy who's filming turns the cameraon himself in jubilee. I don't
even begin. There will be notables, ladders, chairs here, gentlemen's

(01:03):
pro bono thirteenth century Gregorian chance.He keeps claiming he's been poisoned yet by
the fist fucking adderall then you takeBecca becka pause, Paul, there's a
McDonald's university. His decision to enlistwas quote a primal compulsions, a living

(01:30):
exclamation. Boy. Yes you mayhave the mob, but I got the
city. Have you ever met yourex wife because I'm their exhausted Alexander Graham
cell. That's a big number.I don't talk to Galado five times a
day. He's got my fucking house. He LARPs. Hey just say,

(01:52):
you know former marine Fon Kosovo helpa former FPD commissioner in jail and now
being hunted by him? How areyou do what I'm saying on your daughter's
couchg is credited in this folkvan.I am looking at the official Wikipedia page
for Hambleton University. Well, itwas only a matter of time before we

(02:13):
put these two things together, andtogether we are the unofficial for now allegedly
allegedly New York extension of the dollar. So yes, tell us about you
know, you have podcasts. You'vedone many podcasts my understanding. Tell us
about your primary one and others thatyou've worked on. So my primary podcast

(02:38):
that I work on currently is actuallycalled Butter No Parsnips, and it's dedicated
to words. It's all about words, history and on everything really in between.
But I have worked on a bunchof other podcasts. I worked with
Improbable Research. Who are the peoplewho put together the Ignobel Prizes, which
is a Satirical Science Awards ceremony.I work with Hank Greens complexly on SSISHO

(03:01):
tangents, and then I also havedone I worked with Bloomberg journalists a flam
on Follow the Science, which waswonderful, covered the beats of the COVID
pandemic, which was a lot offun, a lot of really entertaining,
comedic, you know, fun stuffhappening that when when people don't follow the

(03:22):
science, but they followed themselves,it really leads to interesting results. Unfortunately,
what was that? Yes, hehad some medical advice that clearly was
CDC approved. And so did youdo the one where it's like a Wikipedia

(03:47):
rabbit hole? Oh yeah. Ialso worked with depths of Wikipedia as well
on their podcast very thought you did. That's okay, it's still I said,
you have this podcast prowess. Itreally is, I mean, and
that's such a good idea. Mostlydollar for us brawlicks stories are rabbit holes.

(04:12):
So today, so we don't havea sponsor, so every time I
have to just say something because Iwant to keep with the structure. So
I'm going to say today we're broughtby the military industrial complex. I'm just
gonna throw that one it seems tobe some people are making a lot of
money lately with weapons, and manyother people are dying, and those things

(04:39):
seem to go together a lot.Yeah, and we want to thank them
for their support. It's incredible thework that they do and that they see
something in what we're doing here.You know. Yeah, it's not like
this is a podcast critical of historyat all. Hixteen four, sixteen twenty

(05:00):
four. Year of Our Lord fourteentwenty four. It started with the sixteen
Wow, you could have gone backanyway. I should have had you.
Yes, that would have been morefun. But okay, whatever Year of
our Lord? All right, whowho's even around back? Then? I

(05:23):
have to pick a Jesus. Ican't think once. I'm just gonna say
Year of Our Lord the og JesusChrist. So Dutch. The Dutch are
coming there. They find a nicepiece of land. It happens to be
where I'm sitting now. It mayhave been inhabited for centuries prior, may

(05:46):
have you know, by the testsare still being taken trying to figure out
if the land was occupied. Ithink we're not sure. The jury's people
seem to have a real problem withthis one, Like are you home or
are you away? Or are isthis your land? Like it's really an
issue. Yeah, well, Imean I prefer to always be away if

(06:11):
somebody asks, Yeah, I preferto. If I'm going to have a
roommate, they expect me. Uhit's good to have It's good to have
someone expect the roommate instead of justshow up at the door. So that's
what they did. There happened tobe a group of thousands of people called
the Wappinger and Lenapee tribes who arein the area, and the Dutch said,

(06:41):
uh, yeah, we like it. We are the Dutch and we
are civilized, and you don't lookcivilized, and we're allowed to make those
judgments and this is ours, andNew Amsterdam was born. Wow, you
can see it all flyer lamplights.I guess there probably wasn't much ceremony when

(07:05):
that happened. Huh yeah, Imean I don't think it would be a
ceremony. It'll be a tragedy.Oh yeah, no ribbon cutting, no,
no big key to the city.I think the closer to the spear
that probably was there to maybe notbe as welcoming. But yeah, I

(07:30):
mean they they thought they were superior. Like I said, I don't know
who put them in charge, butthey came all the way here and said,
we came all the way here,we're gonna get something. So yeah,
and a creative name to New Amsterdam. We didn't even try, not
at all. No, And there'slike, I don't get the idea of

(07:55):
naming a city new when you knowthe idea is that it's going to be
around for a very long time.Yeah, because like it's not like all
right interim Amsterdam will return to itin a year or so, and then
in Amsterdam, Yeah, it's it'sso not new. The York isn't new,

(08:20):
the Jersey isn't new. We've beenthere a while. But the Death
only had it for two decades.But during those two decades you can see
the influence in the streets. Soclose to me is a place called Van
Cortland. Anything with Van, youknow, is like that region they have
Van Cortland, Spidan Dival. That'sanother one that's very Dutch sounding. Is

(08:48):
that a that's a place that's aplace Todayian div spidan Dival is a place
today. Well here's the thing.People who don't want to say they live
in the Bronx. They'll say theylive in spids and dival if they're northwest

(09:09):
enough. So that's and the andthe Dutch foresaw that because because they're the
chosen people to take it away fromthe Lenopean of course and wapingers. So
yeah. And the other thing isso for two decades they were here.
Uh. And and this isn't justthe Bronx, by the way, you
know, Bedford, Stuyvesant, StuyvesantTown. These are all very Dutch.

(09:33):
I mean the Dutches throughout really thestate van Cortlin, uh goes all the
way up through Westchester. But somethingelse happened. If they're here for a
while, people are going to betalking for a while and some of the
Dutch accent will be you know,we'll leave it smart. So one of

(09:54):
the things that the Dutch accent hasis that the tea becomes a d So
sometimes I don't really say Courtland,I say than Courtland. Sure, and
this may continue. So after theDutch and sixteen so after two short tenure

(10:15):
of terror towards these Native Americans,but they settled, they put their Dutch
foot down, and the English comingand now the English say no, where
the chosen white Anglo whatever, motherfuckers, and we're gonna kick you out.
And then they didn't like that toomuch either, But some of them did

(10:35):
stay and you could imagine the lookon their faces and they're like, is
this like what we just did?Like I'm like, this is like horrible.
If only there was another experience thathappened that I can empathize with to
maybe become a better person. FuckingSo many from South London and specifically emigrated

(11:01):
from England to New York, andthere was already, you know, the
street name stayed and of course thisultimately became once again, not a completely
new name, but new was init. The York just sailed on here
interim. They slapped on the newand the York made it here. This

(11:26):
time they were looking at a placethat was called New Amsterdam already, so
they truly were just like, no, it's actually New York, right,
I thought it was New Amsterdam,but that was just for that time.
They're almost anticipating somebody else coming along, right, right, It's just a

(11:46):
placeholder. No, but the Brits, the Brits expect to keep it here.
And the London accent, the SouthLondon accent at that time. And
this will sound weird because it's notthe necessarily the case. Now, the
South London accent was thought to bethe best way to speak English, not

(12:07):
the lawless. Wow, the bestway to speak English came from South London.
You probably don't hear that now ifyou have any familiarity with England.
Okay, so I have no familiaritywith England. So South England that English
accent was the most like, themost preferred, like the most posh South

(12:28):
London, South South London, SouthLondon. So that's like the posh accent
or is that? Well, Idon't believe the Posh accent was the initial
accent that they thought was best.I believe that. My understanding from another
historian is that just like how inSpain, because the leader had a list
like that, That's why so manypeople in Spain during the time the ruler

(12:52):
they had to mimic it so hewould feel less insecure. Wow, it's
als like people today are going tostart wearing two pays and use the same
slogans and say the same things asa leader that we had recently. Yeah,
yes, this is all fake.Uh So at the time it was

(13:22):
and then the Royal family. Whenthe Royal family came into power, that
accent became what was considered the poshthe proper, but initially it was the
South London and now the South Londonaccents considered lower class. But yeah,
now it's considered lower class, eventhough it starts out this closer to that,
like yes, exactly. Wow,do you know my favorite actor Iriselba,

(13:48):
Yes, yeah, yeah, bigheavy Cockney And you wouldn't think that
because he plays a lot of poshroles, right, and he does the
American accent pretty well, but he'she's from South London and that accent is
supposed to be what was considered theway you're supposed to speak English at the
time. So that's what was broughtover here to New York and so okay,

(14:13):
so this is we're getting to.We're getting to a world where now
the we got the New Amsterdamers andthe New Yorkers who are coming again,
right oh man, and there's stillpeople are still going to talk to each
other. It's not like the Dutchroar massacred the same way that the Native
Americans were. So the Dutch alreadyhas well yeah, you look, they

(14:41):
looked more alike, and I thinkthat somehow that created more compassion. It
was like, you look like acolonizer too. So you already have the
d's becoming the t's, and nowyou have the what the South Londoners do,

(15:03):
and and the South Londoners tend tostretch out words and drop a tea
walter ah wata or wadda throwing theDutch. And so the New York accent
was born. And that's what Iwanted to pick for you because you love

(15:26):
words. Yeah, I picked theNew York accent and its origins and how
it develops, so you'll see howit develops, and of course also how
slang then gets thrown in with theway things sound. Where where are we
at this point? Like what like, where are we at this point in
terms of history? So sixteen yousaid, sixteen? Oh god, what
was it? Sixteen one? Weonly we only were the Dutch were only

(15:50):
here for about a few decades.So we're in the sixteen forties now,
wow wow okay, wow, Yeah, So we're on the sixteen point and
we already kind of have two thingsthat are coming together. Now when you
think of the New York accent,I mean, who do you think of

(16:10):
before we get finish its origins?What what are some like famous New Yorkers?
So the problem, well, Imean the first person I go to
is Robert de Niro, like becauseit is so embedded in Robert de Niro
that like he stepped into other rolesand he still got it, and it's
just like, yeah, Bob,we can't be doing this. But he

(16:32):
right, he plays like a countrymanin this the recent Squorsese film, And
yeah, you still sort of justsound like Robert de Niro a little bit,
but you're wearing a cowboy. It'sa strong gene runs deep for de
Niro and are and you are fromWestchester? Right me? No, I'm

(16:56):
from Oh you're from Long Island.That's right. Okay, we'll get into
that later. But generally it's stillconsidered the New York metro area that has
the overarching part of this accent,though there will be uh some some variations.
So yeah, what I what IYeah, what I will say is

(17:19):
that the first thing that actually cameto my mind is everybody who is not
from New York doing the New Yorkaccent back to you to be like,
oh, you're from New York andthen they do an accent You've I've never
heard before in my life because likethey are so unittate, like because I
can recognize it if someone's doing itfor real, but if someone's doing right,

(17:41):
it's just like that's not even remotelyat at all. Like when people
say, oh, what are yougonna do? Go get some coffee,
and it's like, okay, okay, it's but it's that's not Nobody would
ever isolate the word coffee. Ithas to be in the whole right,
exactly. It has to be hardof everything else. You're not gonna just

(18:02):
stop and then get all serious onthat word. It's just gonna roll off.
That's a good point of how youcan tell, Like if you say
bacon, egg and cheese, you'rean alien from the film Men in Black.
You cannot space out. These areone words. If you type this

(18:26):
in word, there should be ared line under it. It's this is
not a word. That's the wayyou're supposed to say it. So now
we're starting to have some of thefoundations. But if we fast forward now
to the eighteen hundreds, you're gonnastart having some immigrants. So Irish came
in around the eighteen forties. Theywere fleeing famine, poverty. You know,

(18:52):
we always talk about potatoes. Potatoeswere a big deal, huge deal.
How many Irish do you think cameto New York at that time?
I'd sorry, give me a dateagain. We're looking at now, we're
I fast forward a bit because Iwanted to get to the waves of immigration.
So we're in the eighteen forties.Now, eighteen forties, okay,

(19:15):
all right, we're taking a boatup can only hold how much you know,
I mean we're talking big old boats. Yeah, comfortably. Are they
comfortable? No, of course,they're never comfortable. They're never comfortable.

(19:37):
They are packed the fuck in therelike a four train at rush hour.
They are not. I'm all right, I'm gonna give like a high ball
number of one point two million.Okay, well you're in the right unit.
It is in the million, okay, okay, but it's more Wow,
it's two millions. Oh okay,okay, all right, I was

(20:00):
I was getting I couldn't. Yeah, you were. You were pretty close
if we Yeah, So it's throughoutthe forties that they're emigrating. And by
the way, I should pull backa little bit and say we're in the
eighteen forties. Now, so theDeclaration of Independence, the Independent Revolutionary War,
these things have happened. So nowthere's a Dutch basis, there's an

(20:25):
English basis to the accent, andnow the people who have lived in the
colonies are kind of going to havetheir own thing. But during the time
that it was colonized by England,another interesting thing that kept the English accent
strong is that I didn't know this, that most middle to upper class people

(20:47):
sent their kids to school all theway through in England. And part of
that, I'm sure is to speakproper what they believe was proper English.
So it was it was know theEnglish accent was strong, it had,
it had some reinforcements. Even thoughwe are now without English rule and we
still have some Dutch influences, butnow we have Irish influences too, to

(21:11):
the tune of two million people,wow, which was a fourth by eighteen
fifty, New York was a fourthIrish. Wow. Wow, that's a
big swing. It's like none ofy'all to everybody. Yeah wow, that's

(21:32):
an incredible amount of Irish people comingin. That's I mean, it's a
huge demographic. Now they're I meanYeah, that's that's voting power. Yeah,
you're gonna pick up on at somepoint, you know how they talk
you. Even though the Irish werepoorer and discriminated against, at some point

(21:52):
commerce had to happen. Uh Sonow you so these are all the things
that are happening at that point.And in the eighteen eighties you have the
Jews, the Italians and some otherEastern Europeans in the nineteen hundreds. So
between the eighteen eighties and nineteen twentiesyou get a whole bunch of people.

(22:15):
You get Eastern Europe, you getthe Jewish diaspora, and you get Italians
who don't have a thick accent atall. Of course, so all of
this mixing together, this is theinitial melting pot. The accent. This

(22:36):
is part of the melting foundation ofan old woman beating a rug out of
a window. This is the beginningof history, exactly. This is the
audio. We wouldn't have ARTI ifit wasn't for all of this. So
and then, of course you haveAfrican American people, many of whom came

(22:57):
from the South where now there aremany free African Americans, but we're still
in Jim Crow era. Which ismore significant in the South, but still
there is discrimination in the Northeast.And that's adding aav African American vernacular to
all this as well. So itis truly a melting pod. And these

(23:22):
are gonna they have to at somepoint talking into the There are what we
called ghettos, there are enclaves.But after a certain point, if you're
poor, you can't do much elsethan be next to another poor person.
You know, you can't be toopicky, so all these you can't be
an Irish person that doesn't want tobe next to an Italian for so long

(23:44):
when the rent is it's the onlything you can afford for your family,
odd couple eventually, right, yougotta find your roomy, you gotta see
how you can pay down a renta little bit. I get it.
There's gonna be some potatoes and meatballs all swirling around. Came from all

(24:06):
right, I'm sure some Irish personwill claim it. So now it's so.
Now you have that accent and whatwe consider the New York accent,
frequently the De Niro accent, forexample, most people think was solidified by

(24:30):
World War II. By the endof World War Two, a lot of
good things came out of that.Yeah, of that tremendous unity. It
really felt like that was the warto end all wars. It did.
But as we said, someone said, wait a second, that would mean

(24:52):
we can't profit off of things.Yes, another shout out to our sponsory,
another shot the sponsor the military industrialcomplex. Am I see, let's
go boys. Definitely. So nowwe get into what the accent is.
Like you said that de Niro,the Scorsese, the Peshi accent frequently associated.

(25:14):
These are Italian Americans, which theyare maybe a little bit maybe a
little bit off, maybe because I'malso thinking, like you could think,
you know, Woody Allen has thebrother right because a Jewish aspect of it
as well. Man, there's heavyinfluences from both the Italian and the Jewish
accent. But now we're so we'regoing into like, like you said,

(25:34):
what is this business with the wholefucking coffee that people are obsessed about?
So you're you're you're stretching out this, oh to some extent, But I
don't understand what would other people say, kofe? I don't they say that,
Well, that's the thing is.Now, see I say it back,

(25:55):
and I feel like I'm like,I know I sound strange. I
know that I sound the person doesn'tsay that like they'd say coffee, like
like coffee cut. So it's morean not in like an a H sound,
not an a W sound. Yeah. Yeah, the way I can
put it is like godaffi and coffee. Never would think those two. But

(26:22):
that just goes to show the wordplaythat you can do and how words bring
us together. Right, So there'sthere's that been Then we said also like
the it's it's not so much herewatch the key becomes a D and the
herb just we drop ours all theall the fucking way. We don't got

(26:44):
time for ours water. That's it. Yeah, fun, I don't know
climb. I don't know why I'mthinking climb a ladder, you know.
Yeah. I was told by anX of mine once told me that they
were like I wouldn't I wouldn't beable to tell that you're from New York
until you talk about us being together. And I was like, what do
you mean? Like you say togetherlike you throw the what you say together?

(27:07):
Yeah, And I don't know wherethat It's just like I gotta hey,
listen, I got places to be. I don't have time for the
art, right, I mean,it's but also it's like it's like why
I started using I went around fortexting. I used to not like it
if I started using emojis because tome, a period makes things sound too

(27:30):
serious. If you say, okay, period, I sound mad. I'm
not mad. And it's the samething with keeping the R. I would
we are together. To me,it's like so scaring, although if you
have to say that to your partner, I would say, maybe consider how
things are going right, we aretogether. It's me and you. What

(27:55):
are we on a fucking island.It's like it just sounds like very strict
and serious. So that's why Ithink I think New York is there's there's
this even if they're arguing, there'skind of this. All right, we'll
get over it. It's not theend of the world type of attitude and
anything that sounds too strong. Butbut then there's an interesting dynamic here because

(28:19):
so many people with their teachers wouldremind them about the R because they would
spell the words wrong, they wouldbe they would they would have idea and
after a while it's like, okay, I know there's an R here,
So it became idea, Wow,this is terrific. I was literally going

(28:42):
to bring this up because my stepfatherused to do that, like he used
to not used to train himself outof it. He would say soda and
I and it's that's just like whatwhy would you do? You throw away
the R for all the other words, but you're it's like they were told

(29:04):
you had to add the R andthey just didn't get the memo where it
goes. So it's just being likethrown at the wall of different words and
it ended up on all the wrongwords. So yeah, so this became
kind of a phenomenon where people hadto be told, no, you don't

(29:25):
spell it this way. It endsin an A. This word actually doesn't
have the R. But anything thatends in a vowel, especially a lot
of Jewish and Italian New Yorkers,they'll throw in that R with no remorse.
It's like, this is I don'tcare what it sounds like. It
is still my idea. Yes,that is really interesting, and I guess

(29:48):
it's it's especially interesting because words thatend in vowels would probably be more familiar
to Italian speakers, like right doyou have ending a word with a vowel
that's interesting would probably be more familiar, and so they probably were doing a
lot of work to train themselves outof ending words with vowels that way,
And then they came across words likeidea and they were like that you tricky,

(30:15):
tricky motherfucker, I'll fix you that. That's a good point because they
always and in vowels, so theyprobably thought that's the trick. Oh my
god. That's so when it cameto those words that did end with er,
they were all like, but I'mbreaking the rule now. Yeah,
no, this is the one that'sfor me. This is the one that's

(30:37):
for me, the one that thatactually had the ear. It's reverse psychology.
Yeah, okay, uh yeah.So so this this accent is starting
to form with these things. Ilove how speaking of language, I use
otter Ai to take my notes andit doesn't know what language I'm speaking because

(31:03):
the words that came out here areall over the place, so I'm trying
to remember what the fuck my noteswere. Reminder, this this episode not
brought to you by otter Ai.It is brought to military industrial complience.
Yes, maybe it'll only be broughtto out or if they make an update

(31:26):
a bralic update at that. So, yeah, I'm just gonna skip something.
So now sorry, I'm just goingto where I can understand things.
So one of the examples that someonegave is that they were Korean. They

(31:48):
their parents were Korean immigrants, andthey lived on stan Island. And first
of all, he said, Iwas surprised that, like in the sixties
and seventies, people didn't know Koreanswere like among them, Like they thought
it was only two countries in EastAsia, China and Japan. That's yeah,

(32:09):
that's yeah, that sounds like howwe do stuff. Yeah, yeah,
yeah, we picked two that areout there. We say we're only
that's the two that we know.And so that's if we see anybody who's
coming from over there, that's wherethey're coming from. All right, right,
I mean there was a war,but I guess they thought, okay,
but that's they're not from this planet. No, they stay over there,

(32:32):
they don't come here. They don'tcome to Stan Island. But the
Korean War, which took place onMars, they don't they don't come here.
Yeah, that's yeah, that's thatgreat, uh, passing down xenophobia
logic that so many immigrants did forgettingthat they were discriminated against themselves. So

(33:00):
no one believed this guy when hesaid he's from stand up because they heard
his voice and they thought it wasa white immigrant, and then they saw
him and he's a They thought inChinese Japanese. Then they learn Korean.
Man uh, And it's like thisaccent transcends things, it doesn't. You
could be it could be different accents. You could be raised hearing a Korean.

(33:27):
You could be raised hearing Yiddish,which, by the way, went
into We're going to get more ofthat later. That Yiddish just came into
the lexicon, not just the accent. Interesting. You could be raised Italian
and this accent kind of after acertain point after it's like a little a
little bit after World War Two.Now it made its way enough into just

(33:49):
about every culture with the next generation, with that family's child, because I'm
sure it was a mark of assimilation. I'm sure bribing a child who like,
like, you know, it's onething to speak English, but it's
also it's another thing to speak English, like the way everybody else is speaking
English, right exactly. Uh,he said something funny. He said he

(34:14):
went to New Jersey where they speakvery close anyway, And he met a
woman who said who had a fetishfor an Asian guido, which is like
totally common. What the it's wowreally just wild card like like truly like

(34:39):
playing the slots and said that one, that one, and that one that's
yeah I want and yeah, andhe was like those slots all aligned,
and he's like, I'm here.He came out, uh so told him,

(35:00):
oh, what was it the stationinstead of the was it instead of
the stallion, like an Italian stallion? No, like an Italian Asian,
like a Stan Island Asian. Right, right, that's what station meant.
So, I don't know. Thatdoesn't sound romantic, No, not at
all, there is I do notwant my partner to sound like the main

(35:22):
stop on the bus, right.I have disdain for New York transportation.
Why would I want someone I'm interestedin to be named after that? This
is my girlfriend, She calls meport authority. Don't ask me why I'm

(35:43):
spidan dival. Imagine hearing that inpillow talk, Ohan, don't. I'm
not gonna lie. It's got It'slike got close enough mouthfield is spartan.
It's kind of like a power spansounds like that guy's a chief. He's
a captain in a bit. Yeah, at least, right right, at

(36:06):
least it sounds like I could protectand not that I'm just you know,
a sedentary thing. Yeah. Stationsounds like he's got a big gulf in
his hand while you're having sex.Yeah, moving isn't the thing. He's
not the train, he's the station. So linguistic experts, now you've probably

(36:29):
heard people say Bronx accent, Brooklynaccent, Stan Island accent, Uppermanha.
This is this is debatable because alot of linguistic experts say, nah,
it's a New York accent that isthroughout the city. It makes its way
throughout the metropolitan area, and whenyou get to the metropolitan area like Long

(36:50):
Island, you have some variation,but there's nothing different between a Bronx and
Brooklyn and stan Island accent. Ipersonally it's not an exact science, but
I personally disagree because I think thatit's all going to depend on who had
the dominant immigrant community during that timethat you were born. The Italians in

(37:16):
Brooklyn, and you know, Italiansmoved to Staten Island back then, but
they were really in the Bronx andBrooklyn so and less so in Queens And
yes, there was little Italy,but it wasn't to the same extent they
took over the Bronx. They tookover parts of Brooklyn. So if you

(37:37):
grew up in that area, andyou know, and you were raised there,
I think there would be something alittle different based on the immigrant community
of that time. Now, ifyou were raised during a different generation or
a different immigrant community, then theBronx accent might change. Then the Queen's
accent might change based on who isthe dominant immigrant community. Very very interesting

(38:00):
because I wonder how this does playwell. I'm curious if if that's so,
I can see it. What I'llsay is I can see it.
I can see from from a distance. I don't know if I personally would
be able to say, oh,that's a Bronx accent, that's a Brooklyn

(38:21):
accent, that's Staten Island. Idon't think I would necessarily be able to
say that. However, I amalso inclined, I think, to chalk
up a heavier New York accent,as in, somebody who does extend the
vowels a little longer, somebody hasdropped theirs. I think I am more
inclined just to associate that with Brooklyn. I think in my head when I

(38:45):
say something's got a heavy New Yorkaccent, I say they have a Brooklyn
accent. But I don't know ifthat's even based in anything. And the
k is very strong. It's likeit's a mouthful of brooklet in there.
Yeah, if you're eating the marinara, it's going all over the fucking place.
This is not a good thing tosay with a full mountain. And

(39:08):
don't even get me started on blacklavah. Yeah, they just go into
those continents. Yeah, you're right, You're right. I do think,
yeah, a lot of times thinkthis is it is interesting my perspective from
like I lived on Long Island mywhole life, like like not right,
but most of my life and solike and eastern so so most of the

(39:32):
folks that I was interacting with wereItalian American folks who were raised or either
had parents who were raised in Brolinin New York. Like I was always
like like me personally. I woundup moving to Florida, which I guess
balanced out the influence of the twoaccents. Oh, that's gonna be interesting.

(39:53):
Accent. Why, Yeah, yeah, because I think what wound up
happening is I learned what New Yorkerssound like, and then we moved down
to Florida like a pivotal age,and then I was like, this is
a very different sounding person now,and I need to find out where the
middle is and just make sure allthe letters are pronounced. Yeah. Someone

(40:15):
said it great, they said,like the New York accent. Would I
write it down? I don't evenknow if Otter got it right, So
I'll just say the New York accentis a bunch of people with different languages
just trying to speak English. Yeah, And it's like everyone is just trying
to speak English from their language.And that also means that if you think

(40:37):
the Italian or a Jewish person,or a German or a Korean person speaks
it a way that you want to, you're going to start a little bit
to modify it. And there's avery interesting phenomenon that comes up. Oh
but what I wanted to say is, so you were not in the New
York part of Florida, because there'sa lot of New York and law.

(41:00):
Yeah. No, I was rightoutside of right outside of Orlando. It's
like a small town, like nota small it's like, you know,
it was a place that nobody movingfrom New York to Florida would be like,
we gotta we gotta stay in Longwood, Florida. Yeah no, sorry,
no, I have no idea whatLongwood That sounds like Texas? Yeah,

(41:20):
no, it was not like aparadise, all right, Yeah,
because I was curious how that wouldIt'd be interesting if they became a Floridian
New York act like mesh action.That's something to study. What I will
say is that a lot of whatthis is sort of on the brink of
is what are called pidgin languages andcreole languages. So there are a lot

(41:46):
of regions that have basically been defined. I mean, obviously New Orleans has
a creole language, which is definedby the fact that French and Spanish and
English speakers were all coming to oneplace and then they were like, all
right, so now we need totalk to each other, and so like

(42:07):
they started developing these new ways tospeak that basically met that middle ground,
and that's where these new words camefrom. One of the words that we
actually covered on the podcast was highmuck a muck and this high muck a
muck and hig muck a muck isyou know, high and mighty. It's
like an elite guy, it isit high mucky muck would be a mispronunciation,

(42:35):
but I think it's like accepted highmuck a muck m u c k
hyphen a hyphen m u c k. And where that came from is actually
from English speakers in the area whoneeded to trade with Native people in the
area, and they came together andthis word I can't remember the actual the

(42:59):
roof, but it came from anindigenous word which was meant to refer to
a high roller who like would comein and have like a bounty basically,
And so if you were a highyou were somebody who had had a lot
to offer. Yeah, so howdo you think muck because the monk means
if you use it alone, meanssomething else, means like to throw dirt.

(43:22):
It was it was just a mispronunciationof this native word, of this
indigenous word. Oh, so likeEnglish folks had heard them saying like,
uh, how you how you mucker? I can't remember exactly what it was,
and they were like, oh,I called me a high muck.
I must muck a muck and likeit like just sort of evolved that way

(43:42):
where they're like, this guy isreferring to me who has things as a
high mucker, of course, andso of course that's what that's what a
British person colonizing would think. It'slike, it's like this guy, he
was Italian and he worked with alot of uh Latinos and he didn't know
what maripone means. Marpone is avery bad word and Spanish that basically is

(44:08):
a very bad word for a personwho's gay, and he didn't know,
and they would say it, andhe's he's very muscular, so he thought
it meant he's very strong. Andthen one day he came in with the
woman he was dating who spoke Spanish, and all the people he used to
work with are like, oh shit, he's gonna learn today. That's so

(44:30):
funny. But it's exactly just that. I just because imagine if high mucky
muck one day, like someone who'sa descendant of these the people who colonize
it meets a native person and it'slike it means you stink to high hell,
Like it's it's just all Unfortunately,I think that there they do not

(44:52):
like it was not necessarily an insult. It was to just okay, who
is who? But but it isthis is how like these languages converge.
It's like it comes from the necessityof like, we're going to live together,
so we need to we need tobe able to communicate. We need
to be able to whether or notwe're doing it exactly right, whether or
not we're doing it exactly how youdo it, or how exactly how we

(45:15):
do it. Like we're meeting amiddle ground where we're saying, right,
this is this is how I'm gonnarefer to you, and this is how
you refer to me, and that'show we know who we each other is.
But we're sort of both bringing ourown languages to the thing. In
Native Americans, I found out frequentlytold the white man a bad word for

(45:36):
another tribe as the name of thattribe. So the words we use,
we may be wrong. We maybe wrong sometimes, Yeah, those guys
are they're the asshole tribe. Alsotribe a wrong. I will introduce myself

(46:01):
to your assholes. Happen it rocked, So yeah, so we have all
these things come to and the otherpart of it, of course, as
I do, as many people doin New York is talking with hims.

(46:22):
And there was a joke that someonesaid that a judge is asking someone who
is uh charged with murder, howdo you plead? And he said,
he pleads not guilty. And hesaid, well, why didn't you tell
the police, the arresting officers thatyou were innocent? And he said,

(46:43):
I was handcuffed. I can't speakif your hands can't move. Well that
this so this is what I'm goingto jump I'm going to assume is where
this comes from. Is Yeah,probably the necessity to communicate what you need

(47:04):
to do right exactly, like trulyjust to the point where like, okay,
I want water. I want water. And then and then all of
a sudden, it's like if Ipoint, you get what I'm talking about.
If I just point and so like, then it becomes necessary to be
like we're gonna trade you and me, we're gonna trade. Did you know

(47:24):
that even ASL, the sign languageis influenced by New York. They had
an ASL speaker say that the signslook different, there are at least emphasized
different. And the one that's reallyfucked though, that that the guy who
spoke, ASL said, I've neverheard this anywhere else in the country.

(47:46):
Is that the sign for Harlem,which I believe is the even though I'm
a Bronx person, I love theBronx parl. Harlem, I believe is
the capital of New York. That'smy personal belief. But he called Harlem,
and ASL apparently Harlem is no.No, no, you could spell

(48:06):
it out or you could. Wow, that's not deep. No, it's
not good. Yeah, but that'show that's how deep it is, whether
or not you're talking about Harlem,Texas, right or Texas or that someone

(48:29):
has a gun and you need tobe alerted. Why are we talking about
Harlem right now? So let's talkabout during this time. You know,
the the more we get, thefurther we get from World War Two,

(48:52):
And you know, in the sixtiesand seventies, New York accent kind of
dominates film, like like you weresaying, a lot of the actors we
think of, so a lot ofpeople started to think of the New York
accent really as the American accent.And it was interesting when I heard Daniel
Ratcliffe, you know, who's obviouslyEnglish, so and asked him to do
an English accent, I mean aan American accent, just American, and

(49:17):
he did it very well. Hedid a New York accent as good as
you could hear a British person doit. But they didn't say New York.
They said American. Interesting, butback in the day, like let's
say, maybe earlier, maybe earliersixties, fifties, I don't know exactly
when they were all produced, Iwould think American accent meant John Wayne,

(49:37):
American accent meant that Cowboy. Well, it's interesting because I think that is
starting to be the case again,really because I've definitely seen that, like
there is a fair share of youknow, guy on the street YouTube videos
being like, yeah, I'm inBritain, how do you think American sound?
And what a lot? And Ithink it's sadly, I think it's

(50:00):
from the gun epidemic and like fromfolks who see where those things happen and
are like, how do y'all bangbang like? And I think they see
like how that relationship is being rightbetween like the South and the gun rights
and because where we show up inthe news all the time, that's that's

(50:21):
where we show up. That's terrible, But that is, I agree,
like the southern accent I would presumewould have been like the first thing in
my mind when I think of evenfrom being from from New York myself,
Like the first thing in my mindAmerica is ten gallon hat, big belt
buckle and named Sally and an actualgun, not a Harlem. So that's

(50:50):
wow, Okay, yeah, andI think you're right. The other thing
is that we have so much accessnow because of TV streaming that sure you
can get a lot of different accentsthat you probably were only able to see
the export of very famous New Yorkmovies like The Godfather. The Godfather.

(51:12):
They said, you know what reallychanged it is these types of movies.
The Godfather really put the New York, especially Italian influenced accent on the map,
and it became more and more associatedwith New York. And yeah,
I was gonna say, I'm notsure. Actually I was gonna say,

(51:36):
because I mean the Godfather was FrancisFord Coppola and then yes, Goodfellas Scorsese.
So you also have the influence ofthese individuals who are who are coming
from those backgrounds, who are like, right, I want to broadcast my
culture, and I mean I'm notgonna say was a good fellow, but

(51:58):
I do want to broadcast this elementof American culture, right, No,
that's that's true, And it's interesting. The Mob had to be portrayed in
a certain way for The Godfather tobe produced. I know that. Yeah.
So what we also think about withthe New York accent in its sound,

(52:20):
it it comes with qualities. Peopleassociate the accent. Some of the
words that came out, you know, adjectives we have, you know,
quick witted, funny, direct interruptingonce once you get the point, how
do I get here? Well youcould. I was like, no,
no, no, just how doyou get here? Have you ever heard

(52:42):
that thing about how the like likeWest Coast business folks and East Coast business
folks have trouble like working with eachother. This is very interesting because apparently,
like West Coast business folks are alittle easier going. They're just a
little the right, just generally.But like when when East Coast folks,
when New York folks go out west, they're like, wow, okay,

(53:04):
you going okay, all right,slowed down, slowed down. But like
because like New York is really arejust like all right, we gotta get
this done. Then we gotta getthis done, and don't even bother me
with this because I've got a Mondayplan that like, no on us.
Yeah, but I've heard that before. It's like that there is a difference
in culture in the way that likethe East and West Coast does things just
business. That's funny and it andit makes sense. It's like instead of

(53:28):
the go I would always think ofnegotiation with another country, but it's negotiation
between the coasts. Yea, andtwo different approaches. Yeah. And the
crows I found out, Yes,the crows. They're always saying the crows.
The crows, not not the bandI'm talking about. The actual bird

(53:50):
has different ways of talking on theEast Coast and the West Coast. Wow,
I mean that makes sense, thatmakes sense. Yeah, they're always
hearing each other yell at each other, like the like the first half of
coffee, you know, they're alwayscawing at each other. So yeah,

(54:14):
exactly. So all these sounds thatthe New York accent even thought at one
point it may have been seen internationallyas the American accent in the East Coast,
but really throughout the country it wasseen as what South London is seen

(54:36):
now and that's lower class. Soone of the famous uh, one of
the famous sportscasters radio hosts of alltime, Mike Francessa who deserve versus many
many uh Hall of Fame clips fromfrom there. But he almost wasn't able

(54:59):
to have a job because they said, no, you got to lose it.
Wow. And this man is fromLong Island and he's saying, no,
I'm not going to lose it.Penny Marshall from the Bronx, she
Laverne and Shirley, same thing.It was just like many other accents.

(55:20):
And now we get into just likehow when the Puerto Ricans came and even
that we say Puerto Rican with aD, it's Puerto Rico or Puerto Ricano,
Puerto Ricanya, but nobody says thatwe had the D. They then
their accents became more lower class.It's always it's it's like the next one
always gets the ship. Yeah,yeah, no, absolutely. Yeah.

(55:45):
It's interesting. You just mentioned,ah, did I lose it? I
lost him? I lost him,I lost it, I said, sportscaster
Penny Marshall. Oh oh yeah,well well it's interesting. Uh, this
is this is related to do youknow the trains. Atlantic accent. No,
I thought that was a I thoughtthat was a station. So the

(56:07):
Transatlantic accent is actually an accent thatwas taught to performers to use only in
performance. And it was it's sortof like go back to any movie you
watched from the forties, fifties,maybe even the sixties. It's sort of
like that, like, well,dear, how do you suppose we go
about that? It's not that.Yeah, it's not quite British and it's

(56:29):
not quite American English. It's likesomewhere in between. You're so right,
and and that that accent didn't actuallyreally exist anywhere, like that was a
taught accent. Wow. Yeah,you're right, because I never thought like
all of the old movies again oldmy idea. Yeah, it's it's always

(56:49):
it's always very direct. It's alsovery direct. That's like some of the
ship was just so rude that theywould have then say just so casually sorry
about that. But yeah, you'reright. You wouldn't hear it outside like
what what state is that? Yeah? But that's the Transatlantic Wow. And
they were taught that like it becausethey probably had some accent. And there

(57:12):
are some great videos you can catchevery now and then of those actors,
like there's some bloopers that exist andthey fall out of it and you're like,
oh wow, that was they werejust doing that. Yeah. So,
speaking of that, one of myfavorite shows is called Justified, and
there's a character by Timothy Oliphant.That's the actor. He's born in Hawaii.

(57:35):
He plays a man from Kentucky.But he did it so long he
never lost the accent. It waswhen someone interviewed him that droll was still
there. And that happened to metoo, because I I was and it
feels a cause and went at theaterproduction and I was so into it.

(57:59):
Sometimes just when I tried to getrid of browns, that's what came out.
That's not that's a generic southern.The Kentucky Southern is. If you
listen to Timothy Olephant, it's it'sa lot less pronounced, but it's there.
It's like a slow drawl that's likethroughout everything. It's not like,

(58:22):
yeah, Hawaiian. You imagine aguy from Hawaiian. Nice now sounding of
little southern because of how long hehad to do that. No, no,
And do you you know Gillian Anderson, Yes, Oh, she could
do both because she's one of myfavorite actors. She's she's considered. Uh.
I think it's called by dialectic,which I didn't write. It was

(58:44):
a thing. And then I've I'vewatched interviews where they're where it's like,
oh, you're you're doing this onefull British and then you're doing this one
American English. I'm very very confusedabout it, right because she was Yeah,
because she was raised in both places. That's yeah, which I but

(59:05):
I guess in my brain it's likeI would pick one eventually. Yeah,
that's that's kind of interesting. Shedidn't end up like with the Transit.
She could have had the Transatlantic accentsto some extent, but she did not.
She had like one compartment that's Britishand one compartment that's that's. I
think she was from the Midwest,like Minnesota or one of those states Wisconsin,

(59:28):
where there are more British speakers.There's more British and Nordic people there.
It's just cold, very light complexion. Motherfuckers who may want a homogeneous
area. Yeah, uh, it'sit's amazing because you you really it is

(59:52):
not, even though it had theseassociations. It's the southern East coast.
None of it had an association,and with education, you could be extremely
educated and have any accent. Oneof the guys during this interview just broke
out into Shakespeare and I had neverheard Shakespeare in a thick Bronx accent,

(01:00:15):
and it was something to behold.Actually similar, kind of like the reverse
situation. Do you know who youknow? Bob Hoskins is? Have you
ever seen who framed Roger Rabbit?I never seen. It's one of the
have you seen my original Mario Brothersmovie a long time ago? I think

(01:00:38):
it's Google This man. So he'sa British actor and just like Adriselba,
he had a thick Cockney accent,a thick Cockney accent, Yeah, truly
like the cockneus of Cockney. Anduh he was type cast as a New

(01:00:59):
Yorker because he had this short ofsort of short, stocky Italian guy look
that they were just like, you'reyou're it, you'll play the Italian guy.
And in Roger Rabbit in uh,I think it's Mermaids. I think
the film is. And then inthe Mario Brothers film, he's just full

(01:01:21):
Brooklyn, like it's full Brooklyn everytime. And for my entire childhood.
I was like, that's the NewYork actor Bob And then I saw an
interview with him and he's like,the funny thing about doing Roger Rabbit is
that you know, I'm seeing I'ma Shakespearean actor and I'm doing a cartoon.
And it was just like, wow, the other way like like you

(01:01:45):
said, it's the other way around. Wow, that's that's so, that's
so funny. Lake Bell, bythe way, another actor she same thing.
By what did you call it?She is as well Lake Bell.
Yeah, but it makes sense tosome extent because, as I said,

(01:02:07):
southern London and especially the outer boroughsBronx, Brooklyn, Queens and uptown Manhattan
they have London has Burroughs too,by the way, it's one of the
only other places that does. Soyou have played you have another city that
has Burroughs, and southern London kindof has the same reputation as a lot

(01:02:30):
of the outer boroughs do. Andlike I said, it was the main
language that was exported here. Soit kind of is coming full circle with
Missuskins and and and I DRIs haveyou heard James Gandolfini, of course,
known for tony soprano but have youheard him speak. He yeah, it's

(01:02:51):
not that I thought it was,because I think he is from the East
coast coast, but I thought itwas. But it's not. Yeah,
yeah, no, it's it's aIt's definitely interesting. I had, I
had under I had heard at leasta long time ago, I heard this

(01:03:12):
that actually the American Southern accent isclosest to what old English used to sound
like. Apparently, I'm not sureif that's true. I'm not sure if
I'm getting all those things right.But if I'm to understand what I remember,
it is that the Southern accent,the American Southern accent, is actually

(01:03:34):
the closest to what English used tosound like. Even though this area is
called New England, New Again,that makes that would be crazy. Yeah,
language is weird, man. Theway everything works in terms of communication,
it's all about geography. Yeah,so so speak think of that.

(01:04:00):
Let's talk about the new geography.There's more Asian immigrants, South Asian immigrants,
of course, more Latino immigrants.The Puerto Ricans came sixties, uh,
and Dominicans came more in the seventiesand eighties. And what what what
ended up happening because the Latino communityis larger than most of the other immigrant

(01:04:20):
groups. But they all needed tolearn English. So what would happen is
that they would learn English sounding alittle bit Latino. Yeah, so it
had. My Albanian friend says thisphenomenon in the documentary Watch a Bengali Woman.

(01:04:41):
It was. It also was forher that people thought to the least
part Latino because that's who you're learningwith, and they're gonna the majority of
your class lots of times is Latino, and they're gonna be speaking English the
way bacon speak English. Yeah,yeah, yeah, yeah, and then
it rubs off on you. Yeah. No, it's a it's a very
like weird things, which is yeah, like all influenced and in one person.

(01:05:05):
Yeah, isn't Isn't that crazy?Uh? You know this New Yorker
said. The most New York headlinewas in eld Adio. So that's the
Spanish language paper, and it wasabout Congressman Jose Serano, who represents represented

(01:05:27):
uh, one of the poorest districtsin the country in the South Bronx.
And I don't know what precipitated it, but the title said no soy,
I'm not oon schmuck, and hesaid, that's the most New York title.
That's it right now, no goingback. It's like it's like,
if you have to say we aretogether to your partner, you know,

(01:05:50):
probably things aren't great. And ifyou have to say I am not a
schmuck, you're in You're in hotwater as it is. You know you
like, yeah, not looking greatfor you. You're on the schmuck defenses.
You don't want to be on theschmuck defense, No you don't.
Let's talk about these so as weclose, let's talk about I have two

(01:06:14):
things. One, let's talk aboutthe actual words. So here's where we
get from the accents to how thishas manifested in words that we use.
And now you get to really seesome of your analysis, because some of
these may end up in the dictionary. I just learned. Even the word
literally, which now does not meanliterally, has a second definition that completely

(01:06:41):
counteracts the initial definition and it becomesjust an exaggeration. Wow, there's a
there's a I think there's a wordfor that. It's like a it's like
a reflexive oxymoron or something like that, because like what it means, like
it means the opposite of it,like it can mean the opposite itself.

(01:07:01):
Uh that is is that now?Is that stumming from from like New York?
Or is that just that's just general, that's that's country wide. Okay,
okay, that that's countrywide. Idon't think these are in there yet,
so, uh one thing, ofcourse, let's start with what this
podcast is named after, the Barralicand New York is the Bralic city.

(01:07:24):
So everything we do is broad.But a lot of people don't necessarily know
this word, even if I willuse it in work situations unapologetically. Uh
so, do you know what itmeans? Brolick? Yes? I had
always what I've always thought is thatbralick is like a like if you're bralic,

(01:07:45):
you're jest. You're like, yeah, yeah, you're wrong, But
it can apply take that and extrapolateit to almost anything, like, oh,
that's a Bralic line. I don'tthink we could wait for that.
Okay, okay, okay. Theend of that show was bralick because it

(01:08:08):
was just very and died very strong. Sure. Sure, So it's sort
of like the concept of strength,right, the concept of strength and something
that has a grand presence is bralic. Like even a brawlic portion of food,
you know, right, which Icould absolutely imagine using that, like
like yeah, right right, yeah, yeah, that plate is indeed bralic.

(01:08:33):
Yeah, that's a plate of food. Now let's go to origin.
Some say this is the main oneI hear, but we can look on
Urban Dictionary too, or you cantell me what you think. This word

(01:08:53):
comes from Dragon Ball Z and therewas a character named Brallio who was very
strong, and as a result,it became used because Dragon Ball Z is
one of the most watched animes inthe world, but especially among like New

(01:09:16):
Yorkers. All New Yorkers watched DragonBall Z like it wasn't a lot of
animes became more for those who areinto anime. People who weren't into anime
watch Dragon Ball Z. And itwas on when we got home from school.
It was accessible to us. Soall of this created the conditions where
maybe Brallio that could be that's that'sfascinating. If that's true, that's because

(01:09:45):
it is fair Like I don't yeah, that word just popped up at one
point, like I don't write.I couldn't really, I couldn't even really
suss out in our origin other thanthat bralic makes a lot of sense.
I'm trying to think. The onlything I can think is colic. That
can't be it. Isn't that abad medical But yeah, that's very interesting.

(01:10:12):
That's a very interesting origin. Right, so let's get into sorry about
that. I think we'll have enoughtime. Let's get into some of the
other New York classics. Of course, dead ass and dead ass a good
one generally said as one word,but if it's said separately, there's some

(01:10:38):
serious emphasis going on, like deadass. Like when I heard what was
going on, how many people Ihad to transfer to to get this optimum
shit? Hopefully? Right? Icould not. It's like, that's a
dead This is the seventh person I'vespoken to and you pingpong me around and
I still don't have service. That'sa moment. Yeah, And that's a

(01:11:01):
how man, that's a utilitous word, yes, because like like if I
want to be dead ass with youright now, like I could, you
would know, like I'm I amdead ass with you, like you know,
yeah, I'm being real. Youare not playing around. What comes
next must be taken seriously. Andit's a verification as well. You can

(01:11:26):
be like dead ass and a verificationyeah, it is dead ass question answer.
That's a great yeah, so muchutility. You're right, that's a
great way to put it. AndI think part of it comes from this
dead pan. Dead pan can bea serious look, right, and New

(01:11:54):
York is famous for attaching ass toanything like that was a whack ass movie.
That's a cool time. So becausewe do that, and it just
doesn't sound right to say dead parents, I mean it worked together like dead
dead serious. I was gonna saydead serious is where I could also see

(01:12:15):
it coming from, because dead rightsthey can't. That's just like, are
you taking this seriously as death?Like? How much you like? Yeah?
Very interesting, that's very interesting.Okay, So what do you think
now? I said I was goingto bring this together. I looked at
the sexiest accent in America and therank things as of twenty twenty. What

(01:12:40):
do you think came in last?What do you think came all right?
All right? Are we talking what? Okay, we're talking any accents in
America in America? All right?All right? So so regionally speaking,
we're not saying like, we're notsaying Irish, Italian. We're saying yeah,

(01:13:01):
no, not that, we're sayingmostly based in cities, New York,
but also could be a region beyonda city in an area, but
mostly cities and a few regions.I'm gonna say, like least sexy is
like the Midwest accent. Like we'retalking like, oh, how are you
doing? You're doing good? Ohthat's great to hear, don't you know?

(01:13:23):
Yeah? I get something on Monday? What? I got something on
Mundy? What is Monday? It'sno Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday. It's
like, yeah, like that,it sounds like Teletubby. Sorry, I'm
going to say that's down there.New Jersey is the least sexy. Okay,

(01:13:44):
I don't know who's doing this exactlya lot of people who just don't
like New Jersey fair. But Ifeel like, I don't know, I
feel like everyone's gotten that twinkle intheir eye when they see like a strong
New Jersey woman come in and theygot that accent and they know what that's
so funny twinkle in the eye.Yeah, because it's just like, Wow,

(01:14:08):
I love this woman right now,and she's gonna be out of my
life in two minutes. That Ishould thank God for that. Yeah,
she creates a presence. But andand guess what was right behind it now
right behind Well, hold on,is this the sexiest or least sexy?
Least? So? If New Jersey'sfiftieth, I'm just gonna definity move this

(01:14:30):
so I won't get out of this. Is what happens from Optimum does what
it oops? Thankfully I didn't breakthat. Here we go. So,
yes, this is gonna be numberforty nine. Okay, and New Jersey's
fifty. So don't tell me NewYork is forty nine. No, New
York is not forty nine. Whatdo you think is forty one? Ah?

(01:14:57):
Oh man, it's a state.It's a state. Sorry not,
it's an area mentioned earlier in ourpodcast, earlier in this whole episode.
Exactly. Yep, that's my hint. Oh man, I don't I have
I don't know my hint A littleclose all Long Island, Long Island's fair.

(01:15:27):
Jersey's gonna be fifty. Yeah,Long Island's gonna be forty nine.
Yeah, that's fair. Okay,guess we're New York Place. It's gonna
I don't want to say anything toNew York Place if that's low. If
those two are now, I'm gonnasay, I'm gonna say it's a little
higher up. I'm gonna say it'slike thirty nine two. Oh, these

(01:15:48):
people don't know what they want.It makes it makes no, they don't
know what they want? What astinthree? What was Boston was the third
third? The guys who say likethe pack constead are paw, it's the

(01:16:14):
A instead of the A. Yeah, no, they've gotta They just asked
Mark Wahlberg. It's apparently flipped.So Boston used to be two and now
it's three. New York took itand number one text what I don't know.

(01:16:40):
I guess I get you know what. I guess I get that because
because there's there's a sort of drawlto it, but but it still has
dominance. There's a there's but Ibut it those top three. It sounds
more like just the most distinct threeaccents. Does like it? There's any
sex appeal to them? I don'tknow. And then and then after that

(01:17:03):
we just get to I had anex from New Jersey. I don't like
her, or I don't like him, So I'm just gonna say that the
same thing I had an answer.Or maybe you don't like someone on Long
Island, you say that that's whatI like all right, there's gonna be
one last part to our podcast,and thank you so much for joining.

(01:17:24):
This has been really fun. Thisis what I call the New York eye
test. Can you decipher? Theseare just letters, but they're each represent
a word. Can you decipher whatthis means? Do your best? Everyone,

(01:17:47):
cankay? What is it? Whatis it? I don't funk with
people who funk with people I don'tfunk with. Sorry, Yes that was
it? Sorry you got it?I was I was stripped up for a
second, but yeah, no,yeah, absolutely, I mean, look,

(01:18:10):
the metro area, crid do Iget a degree in the mail So
that was the bralic we look.I think we we learned stuff. I
certainly learned a lot from you.I learned that an entire accent originated for

(01:18:30):
movies that always, to me soundeda little ridiculous, and now I know
why and they wanted it that way. And I I mean I learned about
literally everything. Yeah. You knowwhat's funny is I I've heard about how
the New York accent came to be. I've heard people talk about how the
New York accent come to be.It came to be, and it's I'd

(01:18:54):
never actually really dove into it,and this has been This makes so much
sense because new is like the foundationof that melting pot idea, like,
of course it would be the placethat this accent sort of converged. Exactly.
It takes. It takes. Oh, I forgot to mention something that
something else that would happen in NewYork. Of course we say things like

(01:19:16):
Spanglish, so the English part soundsNew York and then the Spanish. But
the other thing that would happen isthat when Yiddish, Yiddish would be thrown
in a lot, And if you'renot from a Yiddish family, you still
may use a word like schlep.Every New Yorker says schlept. I left
this all the way to Brooklyn,Northwest Bronx, this slep. And a

(01:19:44):
woman said that her mom would saypart of the punch when she was a
kid. Her mom would say partof the punchline in Yiddish if she didn't
think it was appropriate. So ifa joke ended on something about someone's toolcase
in their butt, that's what wouldhappen. So it had part of the
New York accent. It's the war, it's the lexicon, it's how it

(01:20:08):
sounds. It evolves a little bitbased on the dominant immigrant community, and
it's straight up at times just becomesas English is. Honestly English is this
English is using words from other people'slanguages all the time. Oh yeah,
Actually on Butternoe parsnips. We recentlyhad a conversation with a guy from the

(01:20:30):
Netherlands who studies language is a polyglot, and he was talking about how like
English is such a nightmare because Englishjust has all the rules and none of
the rules of the other languages,none of the other languages. Oh my
god, it's so true. Itried teaching it for a little while,

(01:20:54):
and I would trip up because Iwould say, wait, that's not a
rule, because I'm about to breakit. Can I ask you a question,
Yes, have you ever heard theword scotch? Scotch? It doesn't
sound good. It's it's kind oflike schmuck. It's kind of got the
same vibe as schmuck. And myfamily, my family used it as as

(01:21:19):
a as a like. It wassort of a familiar word in my family,
and I always thought it was like, all right, that guy's a
scotch, that guy's being a sketch, and I later found out that it
wasn't a common word when my stepmother, who was not from New York married
my father, who was, andhe remarked and was like, you're being
a skoch. And my stepmother waslike, what what does that mean?

(01:21:43):
What do you mean by that?And I was and I'm sitting here,
was like, what do you mean, what does that mean? You're being
a scotch? And she was like, why you can't say that? And
I was like, I don't knowwhat, why can't I say that?
And it was like she truly hadno frame of reference for this word.
But basically it meant like, oh, he should have found a way to
lie. Then yeah, it meanfor the love of my life. Yeah,

(01:22:09):
it was like, yeah, goahead, yeah, no, no,
no. Apparently it comes from itcomes from like Italian Italian flag essentially,
which comes from which came to likethat Brooklyn sort of slang, which
is where my grandparents were raised.And so sketch was like a familiar thing
on Long Island for sure. Yeah, And so is for Pa Cocta.

(01:22:30):
If something's for Cocta, it's allfucked up. I always thought. I
always thought that was Italian it soundsItalian, sounds very Italian, but I
think it's Yiddish. I could seethat, although yeah, see I'm even
swell. My connection now is buggingout. But see if you can get

(01:22:53):
it. I yeah, I wastold that it's Yiddish, even though I
always thought that's an Italian fra.Yeah, No, it's it's from It's
from Yiddish and it means sty orgrappy, gravy, right, yeah,
because it's it like messes with theoriginal spelling, which is v E R
K A K T, right,which is which is saying it like an

(01:23:14):
Italian. Yeah, but like you'rethrowing you're making it what it should be,
which is yeah, yeah, that'syeah, that's the typical New York
You're you're saying that like one way, and it comes from another language,
some other great ones that I thinkSpanish is getting into our lexicon, which
most people know what it means,but it has many uses. It is

(01:23:39):
also very utilitarian. Yeah, andI feel like, yeah, it's a
it's a term of It can bealmost a term of endearment if you're saying,
like, somebody who really is bold, a woman especially who's bold.
And it does depend on who's sayingit for sure, Yeah, if they,

(01:24:00):
if it's said in a in aPentecostal church, it may not be
the same thing. Get out ofit. And of course with the short
for connaso many death. Have youheard this one again? The fuck?
And it's mostly said in Spain.It's Spain. This is one of the

(01:24:23):
interesting ones because usually Spain goes toSouth America, but this one a lot
of the people I've spoken in SouthAmerica say, we don't use that.
It's Dominican Spanish, but it's alsoSpanish from Spain. So it went from
Spain to the Caribbean, which isnot usually what happens. Usually the Spain
Spanish is Argentina, somewhat Columbia Venezuela. So yeah, and it means you

(01:24:50):
could say, if you drop somethingto say conno. I think I have
heard that action now that I'm thinkingabout it. My life is Argentinian and
I think I've definitely heard that.Okay, So maybe Argentina Tinians do say
it. Well, maybe I'm maybemaybe I made a mistake. She's not

(01:25:11):
oh, because she's Argentinian, right, She's not Caribbean, She's not from
the Spanish Caribbean. Maybe maybe I'mgetting that confused, but again, this
is what happens. I have aprofessor's friend who studies so sociology, and
she said, I'm hearing many ofmy Mexican students used Dominican Spanish because that's

(01:25:33):
the dominant Spanish. So it's verypossible she did. Uh. And it
also can mean vagina, so it'squite a quite a range. That's a
spectrum. Yeah, cadajo different meanings. It can mean stupid. I say,

(01:25:55):
like, cadajo land is in ourlexicon, that means you are going
to the depths of the miss youneed to go to carrajo land. You
are not doing anything else that day? Is that like is that like like
sort of like bumblefuck? Sort oflike that's exactly what it is. It's
bumblefuck, gotcha? Uh So Yeah, And as we close, I think

(01:26:19):
it's very important to say what Isaw a quote on a shirt. An
accent is ultimately a sign of braverybecause when you hear it, someone is
no, they don't sound like maybeother people sound, but they are still
going to use their voice. Yes, wow, that's beautiful. I love

(01:26:39):
that. Yeah, I can't.I saw it on a shirt. I
can't attribute it to anybody. Anaccent is a sign of bravery. That
shirt, that shirt, that thatshirt, that shirt. All right,
well, until next time. Thishas been the rolick and thanks so much.

(01:27:01):
I'm just going to stop recording