New York 14

Listen to New York 14, a 50-year-old man from Long Island, New York, United States. Click or tap the triangle-shaped play button to hear the subject.

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BIOGRAPHICAL INFORMATION

AGE: 50

DATE OF BIRTH (DD/MM/YYYY): 1957

PLACE OF BIRTH: Long Island, New York

GENDER: male

ETHNICITY: Caucasian

OCCUPATION: attorney and actor

EDUCATION: university

AREA(S) OF RESIDENCE OUTSIDE REPRESENTATIVE REGION FOR LONGER THAN SIX MONTHS:

The subject lived three years in Charlottesville, Virginia; three years in Washington, D.C.; and 14 years in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, but has lived for the past 10 years back in New York City (Astoria).

OTHER INFLUENCES ON SPEECH:

The subject has Portuguese relatives and speaks Portuguese.

The text used in our recordings of scripted speech can be found by clicking here.

RECORDED BY: Joseph Papke

DATE OF RECORDING (DD/MM/YYYY): 05/08/2007

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF SCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): N/A

ORTHOGRAPHIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH:

I went to Catholic schools on Long Island. Catholic grammar school, first to eighth grade at Holy Spirit, then Catholic High School at Chaminade. Ahh, which also says that, I guess, if you’re listening to my accent, I don’t have much of the sort of Jewish Long Island thing, having spent all my time around Catholics. So I really wasn’t exposed to that dialect. And when I went to, uh, college, I went to the University of Virginia and it always used to drive crazy because people would meet me and, y’know, of course they’d say, “You’re a Yankee; where ya from?” I’d say, you know, “New York,” they’d say, “Where?” ahh, and I’d say, “Long Island.” And they would say, “Oh, Long-Gyland?” And I would look at them and I would think, why are they doing — and everybody would do that: “Oh, Long-Gyland?” And I didn’t get the joke. I really didn’t get the joke. Because nobody I had ever met on Long Island had ever said, “Long-Gyland.” And then I joined a Jewish fraternity actually, in Virginia, and uh, over time began to realize where on Long Island we were talking about that accent coming from. I went down there; uhh, my roommate was a guy that I knew from Long Island who also went to Chaminade with me, and his name was F-O-S-T-E-R. And, uh, it was always Paul and Foster. Uhh, “Hey Foster, good to see ya man. [unclear] Foster let’s do this,” and Paul. And I came back, I think, from Virginia after three years saying, “Paul and Foster.” And, so people would hear — hear me, y’know, say, “Foster” or “Paul,” and they’d go, “Pfft, where you from?” So that’s when I first began to realize that my accent was mellowing a little bit. And then I would listen to my sister, my older sister, who was born and raised and still lives on Long Island. She’s got this kinda heavy, Long Island sort of a sing-songy, y’know, this kind of thing going on when she talks to you on the phone —“I was talking to mom the other day, and, oh Paul, you should see beh bleh bleh…” And I’m like, I am not related to this person, am I? My dad was born in the States, raised in Portugal by an aunt and a grandmother and then returned to the States at about 14 or 15. So he had, throughout his life, an accent. Uhh, when I was four he took us to Portugal for like, four months and even as a 4-year-old, now I remember, uh, the place and the time because it was so different. We went over on a ship. We loaded up the Oldsmobile on the ship. You crossed the ocean and then went and lived in this town where the Oldsmobile was the only car; it was all ox carts — ox-drawn carts, dirt roads, uh, no running water, no electricity. We brought Coleman lamps and heaters. And we had the animal bins beneath the house. And the bathroom, I remember, basically was, y’know, this room with side-by-side holes cut in these, uh, plank seats. So, but then when we returned I almost never spoke another word of it [the Portuguese language] because my father, I think, was very conscious of the immigrant thing.

TRANSCRIBED BY: Joseph Papke

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): 05/08/2007

PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION OF UNSCRIPTED SPEECH: N/A

TRANSCRIBED BY: N/A

DATE OF TRANSCRIPTION (DD/MM/YYYY): N/A

SCHOLARLY COMMENTARY:

See this PDF.

COMMENTARY BY: Joseph Papke

DATE OF COMMENTARY (DD/MM/YYYY): 05/08/2007

The archive provides:

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