BROOKLYN
BROOKLYN, BROOKLYNESE. An informal name for the dialect of the people of Brooklyn, one of the five boroughs of NEW YORK City. Originally a Dutch settlement, Brooklyn is currently both residential and industrial, as well as a centre of transport. The dialect has been stereotyped as artificial, especially in films. A typical feature is the vowel of earl, pronounced/əɪl/, a pronunciation found also in New Orleans and other parts of the South. In some varieties, oil has the same vowel, a pronunciation once common in other forms of English, so that the two words are identical in sound. In stereotypical Brooklynese, the pronunciation of the words is reversed, so that earl is ‘oil’ and oil is ‘earl’. See NEW ORLEANS.
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NEARBY TERMS
BROOKLYN
