How do you do a Philadelphia accent?

Repeat after me: "Halve the hoagie, then have half"

It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia.
(Image credit: (Patrick McElhenney/FX))

I have been living in Philadelphia for nine years now, and while I can tell a Philly accent when I hear one, I cannot, for the life of me, figure out how to do it myself. Something about the vowel system gets me all tripped up, and I end up sounding like cockney Tony Soprano.

Part of the problem is that there aren't any well-known popular culture characters to imitate. You know, if you want to do Minnesota, you channel Fargo. To do Boston, you put on a little Good Will Hunting. But who do you imitate to "do" Philadelphia? The accent rarely shows up in movies or TV, even when they are explicitly set in Philadelphia, as this New York Times article points out.

Subscribe to The Week

Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.

SUBSCRIBE & SAVE
https://cdn.mos.cms.futurecdn.net/flexiimages/jacafc5zvs1692883516.jpg

Sign up for The Week's Free Newsletters

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

From our morning news briefing to a weekly Good News Newsletter, get the best of The Week delivered directly to your inbox.

Sign up
Arika Okrent

Arika Okrent is editor-at-large at TheWeek.com and a frequent contributor to Mental Floss. She is the author of In the Land of Invented Languages, a history of the attempt to build a better language. She holds a doctorate in linguistics and a first-level certification in Klingon. Follow her on Twitter.