The Speech of New York City

Abstract

In this tribute to Arthur Bronstein, one of the most distinguished students of present-day New York City speech, it is appropriate that one examine the earliest historical roots of that speech. Lest someone demur that my recent Carolina upbringing disqualifies me from competence for the task, I must observe that both of my maternal grandparents were natives of New York State: my grandfather was born in Oswego, my grandmother in Setauket, Long Island, where her parents were refugeeing from the summer heat of lower Manhattan. Her connections with the city go back at least to 1637, with the arrival of Oloffe Stevensen, whose descendants assumed as a surname his soubriquet Van Cortland, probably derived from their experience at trading in the Baltic. My last ancestor to arrive in this hemisphere, Jan Cornelis Van Den Heuvel, intermarried with the Apthorps of somewhat notorious reputation; he had a town house at 229 Broadway and a country retreat in Bloomingdale, now the west seventies.¹ Others, with varied professions and interests, lived in Long Island, Brooklyn, Manhattan, and the Albany area—an interesting crew.²

Originally presented at the 1977 meeting of the National Council of Teachers of English, in New York City, this historical study, for the Handbook of the Linguistic Geography of the Middle and South Atlantic States, was made possible by a Senior Fellowship from the National Endowment for the Humanities and by the hospitality of the Newberry Library of Chicago and the Library of the New York State Historical Association at Cooperstown. Linguistic evidence is principally derived from the field records for the Linguistic Atlas project, inaugurated by the American Council of Learned Societies and directed by Hans Kurath.