New York 7 ©2000 International Dialects of English Archive,
Comma Gets A Cure ©2000 Douglas N. Honorof, Jill McCullough & Barbara Somerville. All rights reserved.

Recorded by Alexandra Goodman on Oct 15, 2000; edited by Eric Armstrong on Oct 30, 2000.
Recorded in Chicago, IL.
Place of Birth: NYC
DOB: 7/9/1940
Ethnicity: Jewish
Raised: Bronx, NY
Level of Ed.: M.A. Economics
Places lived (50mi+ from place of birth): Chicago IL
Current Occupation: Financial Consultant

Notes (by Eric Armstrong)
A light Bronx/Jewish dialect.
No R-coloring on -er endings and on -OR -OOR : "cure, north, formative, before,
Strong R on -AIR: "Sarah, Perry, Square, rare, "
stressed ER vowels have R-coloring (begins with sound in "hut"): "earlier, were
Strong rounding (and a slight offglide) on the AW vowel: football, baseball, long, cloth, cost, Bronx
Final Schwa NOT like "hut": Comma (resists intrusive R), Polo (almost sounds like Polar)
-eye diphthong very bright (begins with ash): "Giants"
Ash before Double R: "Harrison
Yod Dropping: "tune
Lots of pitch variation- note "Five or six times the cost of penicillin"
Sound quality abruptly changes in the last sentence.

Transcription:
I was born in New York City, um actually North Harlem, but spent almost my entire formative years in the south Bronx, and we actually lived between Yankee stadium and the Polo Grounds. Now I realize that most of you who will listen to this tape will have no idea what the Polo Grounds were. The Polo Grounds were a field, an athletic field, a professional athletic field where the New York Football Giants and the New York Baseball Giants played. Living between these two stadiums was fabulous because that meant that any day that I didn't feel like going to school, which amounted to many days, especially during the football and baseball seasons, I had a choice of either going to watch the Yankees Baseball team, the Yankees Football team, the Giants Baseball team or the Giants Football team, in person. Now back in those days, I know you won't believe this, but back in those days, you could actually go to the ball park about the sixth inning and the turnstiles would be left unattended. So that means that you could get up to the general admission turnstiles, there would be nobody there to watch, you could sneak under, over or around these turnstiles, get into the ball park and watch the last three or four innings of most every game.