All of us have some form of accent. My family has lived in the Capital District region for more than a hundred years. But as soon as I utter the word “coffee” or, as I pronounce it, “cawfee,” you can immediately tell that I may have picked up a bit of a NYC accent during my law school days in downstate New York. My kids like to slightly make fun of it (“Hey, hey taxiii!”), but as soon as I start my knee-jerk response of trying to change the way I say this word, they urge me to stop. “Cawfee” is the way their mom pronounces this beverage, and they wouldn’t have it any other way.

Check out Dan Nosowitz’s Atlas Obscura interesting article on how the American Jewish accent is now considered hot by linguists. Mr. Nosowitz notes that the study of melody, pitch, pause and intonation is called “prosody” and it’s now a popular, if still esoteric, topic among the language set. Appalachian English as well and Jewish English are both considered part of this group of sing-songy speech.

Mr. Nosowitz goes on to discuss the definition and history of Jewish English. He also notes that this accent has been influenced by the use of New York City English as well as by Yiddish.

Click HERE to read this article…