Philadelphia Accent Dissected On Linguistics Podcast

PHILADELPHIA – The Philly accent is quite distinct. While we share some features with other areas in place like New Jersey, Delaware, and Maryland, our accents are pretty easy to pick out.

And a podcast hosted by two linguistics experts recently spent a whole episode breaking down the Philly accent with a University of Pennsylvania PhD grad.

"The Vocal Fries" hosts Carrie Gillon, a former linguistics professor, and Megan Figueroa, a doctor of linguistics, spoke with Betsy Sneller, who earned her PhD in linguistics from Penn in Spring 2018 and is a postdoc at Georgetown University.

The episode is titled "How Millennials are Destroying the Philly Accent."

Sneller, who is a Michigan native, goes into detail on how our unique vowel pronunciation makes a Philly accent a Philly accent, as well as what words make up Philadelphians' dialect ("jawn" is the most recognizable example).

She goes on to say aspects of the Philly accent is being phased out a bit by people who were born after 1983 and who attend elite public high schools in the Philadelphia area.

Topics like the "tense short a," "fronting of back vowels," the use of "anymore" and "yo," and more come up, showing the nuance and complexity of our accent.

You can listen to the Philly-focused episode here.

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