We've all heard the "Joisey" jokes, when out-of-staters imitate the way New Jerseyans "tawk," most commonly by pronouncing "coffee" or "dog" with an aggressive "aw" sound. But where does the "Joisey" thing come from?

Whether we like it or not, some of these stereotypical Jersey pronunciations may have some truth, but the issue is not straightforward. Accents across the state tend to vary depending on a multitude of factors, such as a person's ethnicity or native region.

"The tricky thing here is that I would say there isn't just one New Jersey dialect," said Jonathan Howell, a linguistics professor and researcher at Montclair State University. "You can think of a dialect as being a bunch of features of a language, and it's hard to find one thing, one aspect of language, that is completel

See Full Page