Help with an accent???

Question

How can I teach my self to talk with a New York accent? Like this:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KelP211VomY

at 7:45 (in the video) you can hear them talk a little bit.

Any ideas how I can teach myself to talk with an accent like that? Thanks !

10 points!

Answer 1

New York accents are hard to to convincingly...and most people butcher them horribly.

some basics

1) The "aw" sound- new Yorkers replace the short "o" sound with the "aw" sound in most words...and a "a" sound in other words. This is the trickiest part of the accent, because unless youre from here you usually cant tell which word is pronounced like what...but here are some examples

coffee-cawffee

sorry-sahree

orange-arange

dog-dawg

soft-sawft

cloth-clawth

florida-flahrida

salt-sawlt

2) the 'r'- in new york we dont drop the letter R like they do in boston (bawston lol)..their "r" becomes more like an "ah" sound before consonants and an "a" at the end of words

whereas ours becomes more of a w before consonants and a "a" at the end of words

examples-

pawk-park

noo yawk-new york

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=apyL9wBWv...

he explains it better