Heather Quinlan's 'If These Knishes Could Talk: A Film About The New York Accent' Trailer (VIDEO)

With Manhattan property getting more and more expensive and funneling old families to the outer boroughs, New York City is losing its accents. "If These Knishes Could Talk," a short documentary that director Heather Quinlan hopes to expand, takes on this issue, documenting the hallmarks and peculiarities of the accents along the way. It will be a sad day indeed when more people refer to "33rd Street and Third Avenue" than to "Toidy-Toid and Toid," but Quinlan makes sure that some of the more unusual linguistic relics will survive; there's a Korean from Staten Island who says "Oriental" with a mobster's twang and a deaf man who insists that New Yorkers even communicate differently in sign language. Quinlan hopes to raise $20,000 to continue production on a longer version of the documentary, and a donation would represent support not just for the film, but also for the socio-linguistic archive from which her work will be built.

(Via Laughing Squid.)

Comments

[carlgt1]

06:04 PM on 05/09/2011

wow, this documentary sounds more ear-grating than "The Collected Speeches of Sarah Palin"

[NorquistNemesis]

03:27 AM on 05/09/2011

Can someone do one on "the South", please?

[cincinnati]

02:42 AM on 05/09/2011

nice start but not enough bang for the buck so far...

[Sonia de Gambaro]

01:28 AM on 05/09/2011

@Zutroy

Al Capone was from Brooklyn. He just did his damage in Chi-town.

This sounds like a cool documentary, hope the feature comes to fruition.

[HiramWdwsn]

12:42 AM on 05/09/2011

fuhgeddaboudit!

[Zutroy]

09:33 PM on 05/08/2011

On the top bar, the link for this article is a picture of Capone. Why?

Capone is from Chicago, HP.

[Bucket-Of-Love]

05:41 PM on 05/08/2011

What accent??

[Eyeful]

01:34 PM on 05/08/2011

It's more than an accent. It's an attitude.

[patrickjkiger]

01:29 PM on 05/08/2011

I can't wait to see the documentary.

[Trickery]

09:34 AM on 05/08/2011

This is pretty cool, but it's a shame how accents can turn people on and off depending on the situation. For instance, applying for a job in the Midwest.

[ognyc]

11:16 AM on 05/09/2011

They're doing you a favor...if you have an accent you have too much personality to work in the midwest...I'm NYC born and bred, and I lived in the middle for the better part of a lost decade...good riddance to living among the cannon fodder...

[repugnicansfearme]

09:20 AM on 05/08/2011

Geh da f**k oudda here?