New York Dialect: Pitch

Video Transcript

"Alright now let's talk about pitch for a moment. What I want to say about pitch, when I'm talking about pitch I can also use the term lilt. You've possibly heard that term before. Numerous different dialects have a different pitch, a different rhythm to them. The Irish one is the easiest to set the example with. It's a bit sing songy the way they shoot the words out of the mouth and it has a bit of a lilt to it you know. We as standard American dialect has a bit of a lilt as well, we tend to go up at the end, we tend to kind of want to make everything a question. I have to leave the house. Well it's really a statement but I tend to raise my pitch on the last word of my sentence. New Yorkers tend to be a bit monotone across the board. Not that when you get over into Brooklyn and the Bronx that they don't have a lot of pitch changes but for teaching standard New York, the difference is they tend to go down at the end of all of their sentences. I have to leave the house rather than I have to leave the house. So that's some food for thought, you don't need to worry about that yet but if you start creating all of your sentences where they go up it's going to give your sound a lilt that will not be authentic to New York."