Everyone is a New Yorker

If you talk to the people there, you'll hear all kinds of accents, because everyone is from someplace else. Their parents immigrated in the 1920s from Armenia, China, Germany or the Ukraine, or they are part Dutch, part Norwegian and part Canadian. I once met two girls in a bar and thought they were travellers. When I asked them where they came from, the first answered Italy and the second said Sweden. I was impressed by their very good English, but they had lived all their lives in the US. In other words they were Italian-American and Swedish-American but presented themselves with their heritage.

Even with my somewhat British accent, I can still be asked if I am from New York, and some New Yorkers told me that I should pretend to be from the East Village so that the cab drivers wouldn't drive around the blocks some more to get extra money. Here you can hear more of what  one New Yorker had to say to tourists. His name is Michael. You can see him on the picture above.

A French woman had lived in Manhattan for 20 years and she still had a somewhat French accent, and a guy from Israel also considered himself a New Yorker. What they told me, though, was that to be a real New Yorker, you had to listen to National Public Radio and read The New Yorker. So I did. Do you want to check it out?

 

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Tasks:

1. See if you can find the web site of the New Yorker and see if you can find any interesting articles.
2. Find National Public Radio and download it to your iPod or computer. Listen to it!
3. Find an overview of immigrants to the US and find out who came to New York and when they came.
4. Do you know any books or films that deal with immigration to New York? Search the web and see if you find something of interest.