Granfalloon

I want to be clear that this is in no way meant to be an informative research paper or a professional thesis re: linguistics and what they have to do with the Philadelphia accent. Much research has already been done on the subject with more skill than I am likely able to provide. Any research done on my part was mostly accidental and a result of my having grown up in New Jersey and then moving to the Philadelphia area around age 18. The facts presented are pulled from memory and are employed more to share my own thoughts and feelings than to prove a point. In other words, this is just a tribute.¹ In an effort to defend why a particular city’s accent deserves a tribute at all I would like to talk about the recognizability of that accent. My first experiences with Philadelphia’s own were subtle and made me consider if what I was hearing really was in fact an accent; if I was just being overly sensitive to word pronunciation; or if the people with whom I chose to surround myself in coll