Jason Horowitz wrote a great piece in the New York Observer about a very particular kind of Northeast accent he calls the City Girl Squawk. I know that when I give a link that is more than a paragraph, it feels like a homework assignment, but this one is good (skim around it if you must) because it deals with an accent that I have a lot of experience with. Almost every girl I went to high school with talked in this way, and seeing as I go to NYU, largely populated by girls from the Northeast, I haven't escaped it. This accent has bothered me for a long time.
A lot of people make fun of Southern accents, which I actually find very pleasant, but the city girl squawk is curdling to the point of being a public safety risk. It is also very specific to a type of girl--as Horowitz calls her: attractive but not pretty, stringy but not skinny, smart but not all that intelligent. He might as well have been in my study hall. It is a voice typified by long, whiney vowels and a piercing laugh that makes you want to scrape out your cochlea with a grapefruit spoon. Conversations are liberally sprinkled with hyperbole and the words "like", "so" and "totally." Horowitz puts together an incredible snapshot of the practitioner of the accent. Everything I would point to as annoying is in this article. Read it--you'll love it. Unless you're a girl I went to high school with, in which case this article is probably about you. Sorry.
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3 comments:
Wicked article! Fascinated that ppl actually talk that. But then again, my best friends told me once that sometimes when I laugh, only dogs can hear me. Aaah, u just gotto love her nah?
I agree, great article and well written. The interviews with the linguistics profs were very interesting as well, and I could DEFINITELY relate to this dialect even living in the Midwest. Gah!
Your comment is ludicrous sir! Also, quite a biting post you just listed in terms of your thoughts on the article...you seem to have a vendetta building up against the East Coast city girl.
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