"Hey you'se guys, these hots are wicked"

For me, the realization came in the first week of my undergraduate studies at SUNY Geneseo: the carbonated sugar-beverage I had always referred to as “soda” was called the ridiculous name “pop” by my Western New York friends. They also called “hot dogs” “hots,” etc. Of course this was merely amusing unlike the speech of Long Islanders and Brooklynites which reminded me of incredibly long, family reunions on Montauk Point.

When I came to study linguistics in Anthropology I took a fascination in reading about regional dialects. For those not initiated to the secrets of social anthropology, let me lay a bit of groundwork here. Firstly, there is a difference between an “accent” and a “dialect.” An accent is a variation in pronunciation; for example, much of Upstate New York is infamous for its stretched “a.” Long Islanders and folk from the Bronx have differing pronunciations of some sounds, thus have different accents.

A dialect, on the other hand, is much more extensive, encompassing differences in pronunciation, variant words, typical sayings and common metaphors. For example, the word “wicked” as a term meaning “cool” or “neat” is known to be used in Boston and New England, but not well known outside of that area. A dialect encompasses one or more accent regions within its borders.

Every accent and dialect originates from two sources. The first is the “substrate,” or the language(s) spoken by the people who settled in the spot. So Hudson Valley English still holds some traces of Dutch in the rural areas. The second influence is the effect of time. People are naturally inventive and will create new words and sayings to meet their unique needs; simultaneously, over time subtle, unplanned, changes in pronunciation and meaning pile up between languages.

So what does all this mean to Yorkstaters and their “soda,” “pop,” “hots,” and “hot dogs”? New York State sits at the confluence of three important dialectical regions[1]. We may actually be unique in this regard as many states (including huge ones like California) have only one dialect. For a more scientific discussion and some good dialect maps, click here.

The first is the New York City Dialect, whose substrate rests largely upon the Italian and Jewish immigrants to the region; its heart is the Bronx and Brooklyn, but it has spread out along Long Island and deep into New Jersey. Famous speakers of this dialect include Rudy Guiliani and the stereotypical “New York Cabbie.”

Our second dialect, moving north and west, is the Western New England, which is found in much of Connecticut, the Berkshires, Vermont, the Adirondacks and the Albany area. Western New England is closely related to Eastern New England and grades into Maritime Canadian in the north and “Midland” in Pennsylvania. The fact that the children in my hometown used the word “wicked” when I was growing up shows continuing evidence that white speakers in the Southern Tier, to this very day, share more in common linguistically with Boston than with New York City. One simply has to ignore the differences in pronunciation.

The final linguistic region is known as “The Inland North” and is the common speech of the American Great Lakes.[2] The speech of Buffalo, Rochester, Watertown (perhaps) and all of Western New York is closer to that of Chicago, Michigan, Toledo, Cleveland and Gary than New York City. It comes from a substrate of New England settlers and was built upon by German, Irish, Hungarian and Slavic immigrants. These are the folk who call their drink “pop.”

This discussion often raises many more questions. So where exactly are these borders drawn? It’s easy to say that Buffalonians speak Inland North, Adirondackers talk like Vermonters and Brooklynites speak with a New York City dialect, but what about the areas in between? Where does Inland North become Western New England? Why do the Yuppies of Manhatten not speak with a New York City dialect? Are there other influences affecting these borders?

It’s always difficult to draw the exact borders of one dialect and another because dialects are groups of many different factors. For instance the “Upstate A” and the word “Pop” are both indicative of the Inland North, but the Upstate A reaches much further east (into places like Syracuse, the Mohawk Valley and Binghamton) than Pop does. Likewise, some NYC words make their way north, especially in the Black dialects that then jump to wider usage. So while most linguists agree on the names and heartlands of dialects they universally disagree on where to draw the line.

The reason that in many places, especially upper and upper-middle class areas, the local dialect is weak or absent is because of the deterritorialization of these areas. Wealthy people have a habit of either purposely downplaying their own regionalization and then raising their children in what they see as a neutral “correct” form of English; this “correct” form is most typically heard in the anchors on the major network news shows. So, in a place like upscale Manhattan, you have wealthy from around the globe who have purposely abandoned (even subconsciously) their own regional dialects.

Finally, there are as many influences upon local speech as there are people, everyone has the ability to engage in linguistic creativity. However, linguists have found that some people have more influence than others. Powerful personalities can shift language patterns within their own neighborhoods and have a cascading effect in other areas. In a broader sense, an ethnic group with a distinctive speech can greatly affect their area depending on 1) if they have many local speakers and 2) how much power they have comparatively. Weaker groups have less effect than powerful ones (whose speech others try to imitate). The effects of these groups persists in the areas in which they have settled.

The best example of this is just over the border in the “Hayna” Valley of Pennsylvania, which has been heavily influenced by the large numbers of Slavic immigrants at the beginning of the last century.[3] Hayna speakers use many Slavic pronunciations and even words; in York State, some of this Slavic influence is found in the word “You’se,” especially “You’se Guys,” which combines it with the word “Guys,” a gender-neutral northern American (Inland North, NYC, North Central, New England) word, to create a term roughly equivalent to “Y’all” in the Southern dialects.

In conclusion, I would like to emphasize the importance of local speech. In much of the world, local dialects are considered cultural patrimony, a vital part of the people’s heritage to be studied, celebrated and preserved. Local speech reflects the origins, history and unique position of a people. It is an expression of who we are and where we come from. Unfortunately, often times linguistic terms like “You’se Guys,” “Pop” and “Crick” (meaning a creek or brook) are derided and seen as backwards or incorrect and fall out of popularity, at which time they are replaced by a sterilized import from Standard American English. Already the Northeast has lost unique words like “Cupboard” instead of “cabinet,” a southern word and “pail” instead of “bucket,” which is also a southern word.

So what are your experiences with and opinions of York State’s incredible profusion of linguistic variation? What words do you use that you don’t think they do elsewhere? Does your town have a unique expression or metaphor? I look forward to the comments.

-Posted by Jesse

PS: Also check out: Sea to Shining Sea, a great website PBS that gives an intro to language variety in the USA

[1] Please note that these are dialects of Standard American English; for the purposes of brevity I leave out Haudenosaunee English, Black American English, Chicano English and other subdivisions of American English.
[2] Excepting Erie Pennsylvania which speaks Pittsburghese and the Upper Penninsula of Michigan, northern Wisconsin and Minnesota which speak “North Central,” made famous in the NPR program A Prairie Home Companion and in Fargo.
[3] “Hayna” is not a river or an actual valley name, but is the name of the dialect spoken in Scranton and Wilkes-Barre.