Lexical incidence

With many of the traditional regional markers of pronunciation, New York City shows a mix of influences – not a particularly surprising finding given its location on the border between the Northern and Midland dialect regions. For example, using data from the Linguistic Atlas projects and therefore representing speakers born in the late 19^th century, Kurath and McDavid (1961) report a roughly even mixture of /i/ and  in creek for New Yorkers. For root, the Midland (and Southern) /u/ was more common than the Northern . On the other hand, on normally shows /a/ for New Yorkers as it does generally in the North. For the highly variable class of “short o” words with /g/, New Yorkers tend to have /a/ in hog, frog, fog, and log, but  in dog. Among the more geographically restricted items, Kurath and McDavid (1961) note the pronunciation of won’t with /u/ as a feature of New York City (as well as the Eastern Shore of Maryland and the Carolina coast). They note a tendency for “cultured” speakers to avoid the /u/ variant, and the form is apparently less common today. Another lexical peculiarity, the use of /Λ/ in donkey, continues to be heard from New Yorkers.