I was wondering if there is a specific phrase for the way people spoke in the 20’s, 30’s, 40’s? Some pronunciations were odd. Take the word ‘Work’ [phonetically - Werk] but in the early 20th century it was Woyk or woik. I’ve seen it in movies, my father has told me his dad used to talk like that. Other words were ‘for’ = foi, ‘after’ = aftei.
Anyone know where this odd inflection came from?
Sounds like Brooklyn, or the Bronx. You know, at the corner of Toidy-Toid and Toid.
That’s not a time, that’s a place. 
Hoidy and Goidy sat on the coib, readin’ the New Yoik Woild…
LOL!!! It’s a place not a social cultural thing? 
lol!!
Which makes me wonder why New York accents were so prevalent in pop culture back then. Because Phlosphrs observation is pretty spot on. You do hear that accent all over movies and radio shows from that era. It seems like it was used whenever they were depicting a working class guy.
A lot of radio was based in New York, so the writers would write in a New York accent.
Similarly, when sound came in, Hollywood hired a lot of writers and actors from New York. They were familiar with the accent and used it for comic relief. The Brooklyn accent (as it was called; I believe the Bronx accent was different. Bugs Bunny is more Bronx) was thus a quick shorthand for a certain type of character.
Many movies were set in New York in those days, too.
I just signed up for NewspaperArchive.com. Let’s you view newspaper articles from long ago, very cool. I’m looking at one now from Philly in 1942. War waning and the whole country was caught up in warbonds.
But I see there is a fair amount of accents being written into the commentary.
Cool.
Death Ray.
Phlosphr writes:
> Other words were ‘for’ = foi, ‘after’ = aftei.
These don’t sound like working-class New York of the 1940’s, although the problem may just be the way you’re trying to express these pronunciations. The first would be more like /fo-e/ (/fo/ as in the word “foe”), with the /e/ sound not really being a separate syllable but just part of the same vowel sound as the /o/. The second would be more like /af-te/.
I remember seeing a comedian on t.v. once talking about this phenomenon among certain New Yorkers. He said the funny thing was that they could actually pronounce the words correctly, only in the wrong way…“Hey, Oil (Earl), I gotta go get the earl (oil) changed in my car.”
NYC has always been more or less the ultratypical American city, and a popular setting for literature, theatre, and film. In the days of ocean liners it was the first place in America you came to if you were arriving from Europe. I think it’s also a factor that before the Second World War, approximately, a lot of other cities in the country were a little bit more like NYC than they are today–not as car-dependent, more centralized, and with a stock of interesting older buildings in their downtown cores that were still being used as business buildings, rather than replaced or repurposed.
No, the ‘er’ being pronounced as ‘oy’ was a very stereotypical New York City pronunciation that has fallen out of favor. I know at least one WWII vet from the Lower East Side who still talks like that. What you’re describing is the general r-lessness that is still common today, but is quickly dying out.
linky or search any of Bill Labov’s New York City studies, particularly his department store study.
That was never part of the Bronx accent. Neither was ‘terlet’ instead of toilet. Both of those were strictly Brooklyn accents (and only among oldsters these days, as far as I can tell).
The pronunciations as described in the first post don’t sound right to me as any depiction of a New York accent, either.
What is pretty common in the Bronx is a dropping of the final r. With words of more than one syllable, the final r is replaced by a schwa sound; ‘after’ becomes ‘afteh’, ‘leather’ becomes ‘leathuh.’ Single syllable words keep the original vowel sound, but extend it a little; ‘for’ sounds a bit more like ‘faw-uh’, but not exaggerated into two distinct syllables as I’ve written it here.
I still haven’t quite figured out how to adequately convey the pronunciation of ‘hair.’ ‘Hay-uh’ is as close as I can get.
These, by the way, are classic Bronx-Italian and Bronx-Irish working class accents. Latinos have Spanish-influenced accents, for obvious reasons.
In another thread I asked why three farm hands from Kansas in the 1930’s would talk with Brooklyn (or Bronx, I dunno) accents. Listen next time you watch “The Wizard of Oz.”
Jack Haley (Tin Man) spoke with a distinct Boston accent. He was born in Dorchester.
Comic effect, for the most part, although Bert Lahr was from New York and the other two were born in Massachusetts, so an east coast accent would be natural for them.
liberty3701 writes:
> No, the ‘er’ being pronounced as ‘oy’ was a very stereotypical New York City
> pronunciation that has fallen out of favor.
Not in the word “for.” To write the pronunciation of “for” as /foi/ (as if it were pronounced like the word “foil” minus the /l/ sound is very deceptive. noctilucent says that “‘for’ sounds a bit more like ‘faw-uh’, but not exaggerated into two distinct syllables as I’ve written it here,” which is closer to the truth. I said that it was pronounced as /foe-e/, with the /e/ sound not really being a separate syllable. Either my way or noctilucent’s way of writing the pronunciation is closer to the accent than saying that it’s pronounced as /foy/.
You also get that shift in some old-school Southern accents.
‘For’ is a different vowel than the one I was talking about. I was talking about the vowel in “thirty” or “third” or “work,” though ‘for’ does have a similar vowel when spoken rapidly. Sorry if that was confusing. You’re right that the OP was wrong about ‘for,’ but otherwise it was right on.
I’ve always been fascinated not by the use of the old Brooklyn/Bronx accent in the movies of the time, but a nasal, clipped inflection that seemed to be the norm in movies, television shows, and radio programming up until the early 1960s, and occasionally encountered into the 1970s. Imagine a newsreel announcer saying “FLASH! FLASH! JAPS BOMB PEARL HARBOR!” I’ve heard people credit the “newsreel accent” to voice coaches of the era, but I’ve heard it from interviewees in “man on the street”-type interviews of the era, too. I’ve heard others attribute it to the recording technology of the time, but find it impossible to believe that audio recording equipment impart an accent that wouldn’t otherwise be there.
Here’s a few examples of the “1940s accent”
