How do you do a Philadelphia accent?
Repeat after me: "Halve the hoagie, then have half"
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.
I've gotten a little better at the accent, or at least at understanding why Philadelphians sound the way they do, from watching Sean Monahan's PhillyTawk YouTube videos. They're fun and entertaining, but they also break down the linguistic concepts behind the accent in an accessible way. Here's the explanation of the split short-A system. It helped me realize that to pass for a Philly native I will need to work on mastering the sentence "halve the hoagie, then have half."
Subscribe to The Week
Escape your echo chamber. Get the facts behind the news, plus analysis from multiple perspectives.
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.
And while I knew about that old shibboleth where the Eagles become the "Iggles," I never thought about how a Philadelphian would say "Craig's essay about the effect of the Black Plague on the medieval Hague was pretty vague."
If you've been mystified by the Philly (or South Jersey, or Baltimore) accent, all the PhillyTawk videos will help. We've all got to do what we can to keep up appreciation for this distinctive American dialect, at least until natives Bradley Cooper (at 1:15) or Tina Fey (at 3:40) bring it to the big screen.
Sign up for Today's Best Articles in your inbox
A free daily email with the biggest news stories of the day – and the best features from TheWeek.com
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.
-
Is Cop29 a 'waste of time'?
Today's Big Question World leaders stay away as spectre of Donald Trump haunts flagship UN climate summit
By The Week UK Published
-
The rise of the celebrity chef tour
The Week Recommends Chefs and food writers are hosting sell-out live events around the world
By Irenie Forshaw, The Week UK Published
-
'Thank you for your service'
Today's Newspapers A roundup of the headlines from the US front pages
By The Week Staff Published