{"id":137963,"date":"2026-02-18T21:50:07","date_gmt":"2026-02-18T21:50:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/137963\/"},"modified":"2026-02-18T21:50:07","modified_gmt":"2026-02-18T21:50:07","slug":"fuhgeddaboudit-nycs-iconic-accent-is-disappearing-new-survey-shows","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/137963\/","title":{"rendered":"Fuhgeddaboudit! NYC\u2019s iconic accent is disappearing, new survey shows"},"content":{"rendered":"

\t\t\t\t\"transit\t\t\t<\/p>\n

Commuters walk past the platform barriers at the 8th Avenue subway station in Manhattan.<\/p>\n

File Photo by Dean Moses<\/p>\n

Are New Yorkers (New Yawkers?) losing their accent? Get outta here!\n<\/p>\n

The ever-popular\u00a0NYC<\/a> accent is quietly disappearing from everyday talk, according to new research released on Wednesday by a major word-search brand.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Word Finder<\/a> commissioned a survey of more than 3,000 Americans asking a simple but poignant question: Which regional accents across the United States are people vocalizing less often?\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Big Apple dialect came in at #12. It\u2019s not the worst ranking to have, but is it the best? Fuhgeddaboudit! Folks in other regions are losing their vocal touch at a faster rate than New Yorkers. Americans at the top of the list for losing their accents include those from Appalachia, the South and, more specifically in the South, Louisiana.\u00a0<\/p>\n

To get this snapshot of linguistic leveling, Word Finder researchers surveyed 3,042 people, asking which accents or slang they use less, hear less or have stopped saying entirely. What emerged, the company said, is a portrait of a country that still loves its regional voices but increasingly treats them like heirlooms rather than everyday tools.<\/p>\n

There could be various reasons for the linguistic loss, but researchers found that parents play a role. About 70% of surveyed parents said they would prefer their children speak \u201cgeneral American,\u201d while only 30% want their kids to inherit the local accent.\u00a0<\/p>\n

Ironically, when the same group was asked whether the government should fund dialect-preservation efforts, more than half said yes. In other words, people want their kids to sound \u201cneutral,\u201d but they still want the culture preserved. It\u2019s a \u201cvery unusual contradiction,\u201d researchers said.<\/p>\n

\u201cAccents are one of the last truly local things we carry with us, but they are also the first to be trimmed when people want to blend in,\u201d says Praveen Latchamsetty, founder of\u00a0 The Word Finder. \u201cWhat this survey shows is that Americans still feel deeply attached to their regional voices even as many quietly set them aside in everyday life. The tension between pride and practicality is reshaping the sound of the country.\u201d<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, Americans appear to be abandoning their regional slang, and not always by choice. The survey showed these top reasons for easing off local expressions, such as New York\u2019s \u201cfuhgeddaboudit\u201d or the South\u2019s \u201cy\u2019all:\u201d<\/p>\n

64% say they have deliberately stopped using a slang phrase because it felt outdated.
\n36% kept certain phrases out of the workplace because they \u201csound unprofessional.\u201d
\n19% say people \u201cdon\u2019t understand\u201d their local phrases outside their home region.
\n5% dropped slang after moving states.
\n39% say a phrase simply feels \u201cold-fashioned now.\u201d<\/p>\n

Meanwhile, linguists have described the NYC accent as having a complex vowel system and a history shaped by waves of immigrant communities.\u00a0\n<\/p>\n

Backstage<\/a>, the trade publication for actors, even gives tips on creating the perfect New York City accent, such as hardening the \u201cth\u201d in words. For example, \u201cThe\u201d would become \u201cteh\u201d and \u201cwordsmith\u201d would sound like \u201cwordsmit.\u201d<\/p>\n

Even though some classic features \u2014 like dropping the final \u201cR\u201d in words aren\u2019t as strong among the youngest Big Apple residents, people still recognize the New York sound instantly.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The top 10 dialects Americans say they\u2019re using less<\/p>\n

Although the New York City accent did not make the top 10 list, here\u2019s which accents did:<\/p>\n

Appalachian\n<\/p>\n

Southern\n<\/p>\n

Louisiana\n<\/p>\n

Pacific Southwest\n<\/p>\n

Hudson Valley\n<\/p>\n

Mid-Atlantic\n<\/p>\n

Boston Urban\n<\/p>\n

Baltimore\n<\/p>\n

Rocky Mountain\n<\/p>\n

New Mexican English\n<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Commuters walk past the platform barriers at the 8th Avenue subway station in Manhattan. File Photo by Dean…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":81509,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[8],"tags":[58507,9,58508,56,63,65,64,613,58509],"class_list":["post-137963","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-new-york-city","tag-dialects","tag-new-york","tag-new-york-accent","tag-ny","tag-nyc","tag-nyc-headlines","tag-nyc-news","tag-pm-newsletter","tag-the-word-finder"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137963","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=137963"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/137963\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/81509"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=137963"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=137963"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-ny\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=137963"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}