I'm wondering if there is a historical explanation as to why the New in "New York" is pronounced /nu/ (as in "Noodles") rather than /nju/ (as in RP "New Year").
Has this always been the case? Or did the pronunciation change over time?
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tchrist
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J. Schübel
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2In my American English, "new" is noo in both "New York" and "new year". In British English, "ew" is a falling diphthong beginning with y (yod). The y may well be kept in some American English. – Greg Lee Oct 07 '19 at 08:15
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2I personally pronounce new and noo identically. – Jason Bassford Oct 07 '19 at 08:18
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2I'm not American, but judging by American TV and movies Americans commonly pronounce new as noo in all contexts. Conversely I pronounce it nyoo in all contexts including when saying New York. – nnnnnn Oct 07 '19 at 08:21
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An interesting pair of words is "Cuba" and "tuba". They shouldn't rhyme, but in the US most people accomplish this by mispronouncing both of them, adding a glide to "Cuba" and dropping it from "tuba". – Ray Butterworth Oct 07 '19 at 13:12
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This brings up the question as to when and where the yod was -introduced-, given that none of these terms had it in Old English. – Mitch Oct 07 '19 at 13:15
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It is called yod-dropping:
Yod -dropping ..... was formerly considered nonstandard in England, but is today also heard among well-educated RP speakers. (The /j/ after /s/ is not normally dropped in RP in medial positions, however – compare pursuit /pəˈsjuːt/.) In General American yod-dropping is found.......... also in:
After /t/, /d/ and /n/, for example tune /ˈtuːn/, dew /ˈduː/, new /ˈnuː/
(Wikipedia)
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The phonetician J. C. Wells in his Accents of English (1982) gives an historical account of the phenomenon known as yod-dropping, which can be seen in the pronunciation of new as /nu/ as opposed to /nju/. I'll try to sum up his views by providing some excerpts from his book:
Pairs such as threw-through, brewed-brood used to be distinguished by the use of a diphthong in the former member of each pair as against a monophthong in the latter. The diphthong of the /ɪŭ/ type, developed into a rising /ju/ through the transfer of syllabicity from the first segment to the second; in certain environments the /j/ then disappeared, a development we may refer to as early yod dropping. The pairs mentioned are accordingly homophones in most accents.
In London the falling diphthong /ɪŭ/ had by the end of the 17th century given way to a rising /ĭu/, phonetically identical with the inherited /ju/ of youth etc. This development brought into existence a large number of new initial consonant clusters involving /j/. Several of them were intrinsically awkward to pronounce, so that we find that from the beginning of the 18th century the /ĭ/or /j/ element disappeared in certain environments, leaving a vowel identical with /u/ and creating new homophones such as threw-through.
The environments in which early yod dropping applied most generally are (i) after palatals (including palato-alevolars), as in chute, chew, juice, yew; (ii) after /r/, as in rude, crew, shrew, grew; and (iii) after consonant plus /l/, as in blue, flue, blew, glue.
The accents of East Anglia are notable for having extended yod dropping to most or all postconsonantal environments, for example in few /fu/, music /muzɪk/, cube /kub/, Hugh /hu/.
Other accents occupy intermediate positions, retaining /j/ after labial, velars and /h/, but perhaps not after some alveolars.
In RP there is variability in the environment of a preceding /θ, s, z, l/ as in enthusiasm /ɪn'θ(j)uzɪæzm/, suit /s(j)ut/, lewd /l(j)ud/; the yod is consistently retained after /n/, as in /nju/ new, and also after /t, d/, as in tune /tjun/, duke /djuk/ (where there is the further possibility in casual speech of yod coalescence to /tʃun/, /dʒuk/).
In General American, and also in part of the south and midlands of England, /j/ is lost after alveolars /t, d, n, l, s, z/ but not after labials or velars. In these environments General American predominantly has plain /u/, thus tune /tun/, duke /duk/, new /nu/ etc. Some easterners and southerners, however, have either /ju/ or the diphthong /ɪu/, and General American is not entirely uniform.
