I come from Long Island. Indeed, I was born in the hospital of the town Phebe's from, Oyster Bay. Write what you know, they say, and though she and I have a lot of differences, we share some similarities. We both left at eighteen. Our parents are college educated, and one parent has a master's degree (my father; her mother). But they still spoke with the accents of the area in NY from which they came. Her parents are from Hell's Kitchen in Manhattan. My father was from Brooklyn and my mom from Kingston in Upstate New York (note this, all you foreigners to NY, it is always Upstate New York, with a capital U, which refers to everything in the state outside of the shadow of NYC).
As a result of Phebe and my moving away so early and going head long into higher education, our accents changed. When I lived in the UK (she did a study abroad there), I got called out by a guy fixing my watch. He said, "You sound educated New York." Wow. Didn't realize that happened! I even lost the kawfee pronunciation. Brits are way into accents, as it is a traditional way of telling where someone is from in the British Isles. Even I can hear it, after living there. The Yorkshire accent sounds incredibly obvious to me, for example. Cities that have been heavily infiltrated, their accents have mild, i.e., the Cockney accent of London. We have the same thing in America. Nonetheless, New Yorkers retain their accents. Well, easily understood if you knew New Yorkers. The rest of the world should change, not them. The only time it does change is education, especially if out-of-state, like Phebe and me.
To a degree, Emily Goldstein as well. She's from north of Manhattan, about forty five minutes commute for her parents. Emily is a recent transplant to North Carolina. She attended NC State University. Her parents were from Queens, which has a strong accent, combined with a touch of NY Jewish (Yiddish) influence. North of Manhattan starts to encroach upon Upstate NY, and one can hear it in the accents. They mild compared to the Five Boroughs of NYC. If you're from the South (US southeast), though, it'll still blast you out a window. Since Emily is a junior at State, her accent has just begun the change to the "sounds like educated New York" thing.
The Wix blog is giving trouble with bringing in outside website pages -- I got a tech ticket into 'em for it -- and the copying and pasting articles in grows tiring fast. So, I'm going to attach the articles and give you the web addy.
A couple of things about these articles. The first one is from Newsday, which is the biggest newspaper on Long Island. The second one from the Long Island Press includes Billy Joel. When my parents moved us to hoity toity Lloyd Harbor on Long Island, Billy Joel and Christie Brinkley lived only a few miles away on the causeway. There used to be jokes of men driving into the water off the causeway when Christie went jogging.
I recommend going to the Newsday site, because there's a videojournal on the accents.
Long Island Press https://www.longislandpress.com/2016/05/04/9-celebrities-with-a-long-island-accent/
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