Expressions Of Brotherly Love

Bag school and chew on a hoagie with Claudio Salvucci, reporting from the pavements of his native Philadelphia.

One day my linguistics professor singled me out for a question. "What," she asked, "does a Philadelphia accent sound like?
How would you describe it?"

I was stumped.

My entire life had been spent in the city and its immediate suburbs. You’d think that describing the way my neighbors spoke would be no different from describing where someone could get a good cheese-steak. Who else is supposed to know but the locals?

But this time the local really had no idea. I didn’t know how I spoke; I just did.

As I would later learn, the Philadelphia dialect is unique in the English-speaking world. Not only does it have a linguistic pattern that is not duplicated in any other major city, but also that pattern had been studied and documented by scholars for over a century.

History of Research
There were incidental accounts of Philadel-phia and Pennsylvania speech in the 1800’s, but the first true scientific study dates to 1890, with the first transcription of a Philadelphian’s speech into the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA).

During the next century research on the dialect increased dramatically, mostly under larger surveys such as the Linguistic Atlas surveys in 1939; the DARE surveys in the 1960’s, and the recent Phonological Atlas surveys of the 1990’s.

Studies specifically devoted to Phila-delphia were also published. R. Whitney Tucker contributed two general articles to American Speech on the dialect. By far the most extensive research on local vocabulary is Dennis Lebofsky’s invaluable doctoral thesis The Lexicon of the Philadelphia Metropolitan Area (1970), and William Labov has been at the vanguard of research on Philadelphia pronunciation since the 1970’s.
In recent years there have also been numerous books and articles from the mainstream press. Examining all of this data, we can arrive at a good picture of how English is spoken in Philadelphia (or, as we say it, Fulladulfya).

Geography
Philadelphia is the focal point of the Delaware Valley dialect area, which encompasses the Pennsylvania counties of Bucks, Montgomery, Philadelphia, Delaware and Chester, the New Jersey counties of Mercer, southern Ocean, Burlington, Camden, Gloucester, Atlantic, Salem, Cumberland and Cape May, and New Castle County. There are some slight differences even within this generally homogenous area, such as Norristown zep (submarine sandwich), Trenton Tick Tack Night (Mischief Night), and Jersey shore shubie (summer tourist).

The Delaware Valley was historically the "hearth" or focal area for all the dialects of the Midland. As settlers moved westward during the 1800’s they brought their speech through Pennsylvania and the Lower Midwest. Philadelphia’s position along the Eastern seaboard has also greatly influenced its linguistic development. Northern and southern features have always competed in the city, given its close proximity to both New York City and the Mason-Dixon line.

Pronunciation
At first hearing, Philadelphian sounds quite similar to the New York dialect; I have even been told (by a Long Islander no less!) that I
"talk like a New Yorker."

As in most East Coast urban areas, soft th tends to lose its aspiration as in dis (this), dat (that); there is a loss of initial h- in yuge (huge) and yumid (humid), and a glottal stop for medial t in sum’n (something), nut’n (nothing). Short a exists in two forms, the standard "lax" a, and the tense nasal vowel of yeah: maen (man), baed (bad).

New York and Philly both have a contras between the vowels of cot and caught, with the aw distinctively raised: cawfee (coffee), dawg (dog); both have a typically southern ow: caow (cow), aout (out), al (owl), though Philadelphia’s is more advanced.

But unlike New York, Philadelphia shares with Baltimore and Pittsburgh a couple of important features: first a very exaggerated fronting of long o in words like home and boat, which sounds something like "eh-oo"; second, retention of all final and pre-consonantal r’s (e.g. in car, start) which are dropped almost everywhere else on the East Coast. An interesting similarity with Canada is the long i before unvoiced consonants (p, t, k, f, s) which is backed to uy, pronounced "uh-ee": ruyt (right), luyf (life).

More typically local changes also occur. Short e is backed to short u or schwa before both r and l: vurry (very), tull (tell). Short i in medial positions is often lengthened: attytude (attitude), beautyful (beautiful). Long a and e are both backed before hard g: vegg (vague), beggle (bagel), lig (league), iggle (eagle). Initial s in str clusters becomes sh: shtring (string).

The Philadelphia l is often "vocalized," that is the tongue does not make contact with the roof of the mouth, and the back of the tongue is raised instead of the tip. This also tends to weaken the l sound so that it almost sounds as if the letter is being dropped altogether. Thus the words pal and pow sound almost the same, as do balance and bounce.

The ar sound is in all cases backed to aur: caur (car), staur (star). Some may hear these as core and store—but there is no merger of ar and or in Philadelphia because or raises and merges with oor. So poor and pore, tore and tour are all pronounced with the long u vowel of tube. You can get a good overall feel for how this all sounds by listening to television political commentator Chris Matthews, host of CNBC’s Hardball.

Grammar
Grammatically, Philadelphian does not differ very much from other forms of colloquial American English; but a few regional
characteristics can be noted.

Common to many of the cities in the Northeast is the second person plural pronoun youse, or an unstressed variant yas, used like the Southern y’all: Aur youse goin’? (Are you going?).

The positive use of anymore to mean "currently" is a Philadelphia usage that has since spread: things are so expensive anymore. Other constructions include: quarter of instead of "quarter till" or "quarter to" in telling time: quooder of five (quarter till five); omitting the infinitive in want off (want to get off) and want in (want to get in); and omitting the object of the preposition with: Here, take it with.

Vocabulary
Local words characteristic of Philadelphia include baby coach (baby carriage), bag school (skip school), pavement (sidewalk), and square (city block). A few words with Philadelphia origins have since gone on to more widespread usage: hoagie (submarine sandwich), yo (hey, hello), and hot cakes (pancakes), and others have become obsolete, such as coal oil (kerosene).

Ultimately, linguistic research in Phila-delphia has had a far wider application than just describing the speech of that city. It has been instrumental in disproving the commonly held notion that within 50 years we will all be speaking a homogenized Ameri-can English straight out of the evening newscast. In fact, American dialects are now more different from each other than they have ever been, and despite any influence from the national media, in places like Philadelphia they are continuing to evolve along their own lines.