Speak with a New York Accent

This lesson is designed to help you speak with a convincing New York accent.

Drop the R vowel
car, hair, morbid, order, shared

Thicken the Long U
boomed, Buick Rendezvous, do, tiramisu

Thicken the AW sound
because, costs, drawing, thoughtful, watermelon

The Short A occasionally becomes EAH
dragged, gas, half, master

The following speech concerns a husband complaining about being dragged into the rain by his wife, then complaining about his car, then complaining about having to share.

New York weather has a morbid sense of humor. It had been picture-perfect when my wife and I went into the exhibit, but as she dragged me through the parking lot, the sky was a gang of clouds. Thunder boomed, and the floodlights switched on, drawing my attention to the raindrops rushing through the harsh light.

I don’t do well with rain. It doesn’t do any favors for my hair. I turn from a thoughtful type to a soaked grouch. So I was trying not to resent my wife’s insistence that we step out to our car.

Our car. That’s a therapy session in itself. Are you familiar with the Buick Rendezvous? It was sort of half-station wagon, half-sport utility vehicle, meaning it was too small to handle all our stuff, but large enough to guzzle up a ton of gas. We shared it in order to keep costs down.

Let me tell you, some things aren’t meant to be communal. Pizza, I say one should share. Watermelon. Tiramisu. Not a car. Not if you want a healthy marriage.

The handbook "Speak with a New York Accent" takes the exotic art of performing with dialects and delivers easy-to-follow lessons (including a longer list of those exceptional short A sounds). Break all barriers to learning the New York accent with this book, and at your next audition the casting directors will be scraping their jaws off the floor.

Available in paperback:
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On Kindle:
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