english_north_america · United States

United States · New York City

Traditionally non-rhotic, which is what gives 'car' and 'four' their vowel-final shape, though rhoticity has been returning steadily since the 1960s and younger speakers are often fully rhotic. The defining feature is the short-a split: TRAP raises to a long in-gliding [ɛə] in some words and stays [æ] in others, and which is which is lexically and phonologically conditioned rather than predictable -- this preset models the raised outcome on the BATH set, which is where it most reliably falls. THOUGHT is high and in-gliding, and LOT stays clearly apart from it: New York has no low back merger. TH-stopping ('thirty-third' with [t] and [d]) is variable and register-sensitive; it is on here because it is what makes the accent recognisable, not because every speaker does it every time.