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New Jersey English |
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This article may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards. Please improve this article if you can. (July 2008) |
New Jersey is dialectally diverse, with many immigrants and transplants from other states, but there are roughly two regional varieties discernible, each having features in common with the two metropolises of New York City and Philadelphia that each extend into the state.
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The northeast quarter of the state is within the New York City metropolitan area, and in some areas near the Hudson River, including Newark and Jersey City, all the main features of the New York dialect are found. Elsewhere in northern New Jersey, the accent shares many features of the New York dialect, but differs in a few important points. For instance, it is rhotic: a Brooklynite might pronounce "over there" as "ovah deh" [oʊvə deə], while a Northern Jerseyite might say "over deir" [oʊvr der], much like the bulk of the rest of the United States. Also, it lacks a phonemic short a split. Still, many pronunciation features are common throughout the New York area: for example, the pronunciation of /ɔː/, the vowel in words like coffee, dog, and talk is raised and tensed to [oə] in New Jersey and New York alike.
Regarding vocabulary, New York City shibboleths like hero are less used than the less regionally distinct sub or submarine.
South Jersey is within the Philadelphia dialect region. One recognizable feature of this is the pronunciation of /oʊ/ (the vowel in go) as [ɛʊ], and this can also be found elsewhere in Pennsylvania, Maryland, and Delaware. Residents, some seasonal, of the seaside communities north of Atlantic City tend to have a New York influence and those to the south have a Philadelphia influence, likely because of the large number of residents from those areas who visit during the summers.citation needed Some residents of Ocean and Atlantic Counties speak with an accent that includes New York and Philadelphia influences.
Contrary to popular belief, rarely anybody in New Jersey refers to the state as [dʒɒɪzi], typically written as Joisey. That pronunciation of the middle vowel as [ɒɪ] instead of the standard American [ɝ] is only residual in the New York Dialect as described above. Also rarely heard in reality are questions asking what highway exit someone lives at, although knowledge of the highway system is indeed crucial to living there.
The term Jersey is sometimes used to refer to the state as a whole, or as an adjective as in Jersey Tomatoes.
The New Jersey accents in movies and television are usually inauthentic.citation needed In most cases, the actors use New York accents instead – for instance in The Karate Kid.citation needed
They often simply use actors from New York – usually Brooklyn, Queens, or Long Island – to play New Jerseyans, as was done in the long running HBO series The Sopranos. One exception is James Gandolfini, a native speaker who portrayed mobster Tony Soprano. After the first season they gave him a voice coach, who transformed his natural North Jersey accent into something more Brooklyn.citation needed
Even when filmmakers strive to capture authentic New Jersey accents, they often fail.citation needed Russell Crowe, for instance, speaks with a dialect belonging more to eastern Massachusetts than to Essex County, NJ, his character's setting in American Gangster.citation needed
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