Atlantic City Area Dialect: Do We Pronounce Certain Words Funny?

We’ve had so much fun with this on-air this morning, Thursday, April 6, 2023 with our listeners.

In the Atlantic City area, for many generations, certain words are pronounced very differently here than you will find anywhere else.

Here are a few doozies:

• Water = Wooder
• Hundred = Hunerd
• Monday = Mondee
• It's same for Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday, Saturday and Sunday, too.
• Washing = Washin
• Trenton = Tren-in
• Atlantic City = Lantic City
• Arkansas = Ar-can-zis

The list really does go on and on.

in many respects, South Jersey basically has its own form of the English Language.

This is also remarkable because you can travel the entire state of New Jersey in less than 250 miles.

Despite this relatively short distance, there are distinctly different dialects between South Jersey and North Jersey.

Here’s another fascinating fun fact. In the state of New Jersey, population a little more than 9,000,000 people … you can hear the following:

• South Jersey dialect
• North Jersey dialect
• Philadelphia dialect
• New York dialect

Some stretch this into Philadelphia … which I don’t personally agree with.

I believe that Philadelphia has a dialect all of its own. It doesn’t compare to South Jersey … but, it is somewhat comparable to North Jersey.

When you travel the state of New Jersey, you will hear the word coffee become “caw-fee” or “Call-fee.”

Chocolate can morph into “Chaulklit."

The word radiator is pronounced with both the hard and soft “a.”

A lot of the difference here comes down to the pronunciation of vowels in South Jersey and as you head further north, the dropping of "r’s.”

We rarely think about how we pronounce the words that we speak.

In the end, it comes down to this. The way we speak and the words that we use are a direct byproduct of where we live and another big factor are the people that we have the closest contact with.

This was a lot fun. I hope you enjoyed it and perhaps it gave you something to think about.