Accent

Accent

The New York City area has a distinctive regional speech pattern called the New York dialect, alternatively known as Brooklynese or New Yorkese. It is often considered to be one of the most recognizable accents within American English.[150] The classic version of this dialect is centered on middle and working class people of European American descent, and the influx of non-European immigrants in recent decades has led to changes in this distinctive dialect.[151]
One of the more notable features of this dialect is its r-lessness. The traditional New York–area accent is non-rhotic, so that the sound [ɹ] does not appear at the end of a syllable or immediately before a consonant; hence the pronunciation of the city as "New Yawk."[151] There is no [ɹ] in words like park [pɔːk] (with vowel raised due to the low-back chain shift), butter [bʌɾə], or here [hiə]. In another feature called the low back chain shift, the [ɔ] vowel sound of words like talk, law, cross, and coffee and the often homophonous [ɔr] in core and more are tensed and usually raised more than in General American.
In the most old-fashioned and extreme versions of the New York dialect, the vowel sounds of words like "girl" and of words like "oil" both become a diphthong [ɜɪ]. This is often misperceived by speakers of other accents as a reversal of the er and oy sounds, so that girl is pronounced "goil" and oil is pronounced "erl"; this leads to the caricature of New Yorkers saying things like "Joizey" (Jersey), "Toidy-Toid Street" (33rd St.) and "terlet" (toilet).[151] The character Archie Bunker from the 1970s show All in the Family was a good example of a speaker who had this feature. This particular speech pattern is no longer very prevalent.

Kanagawa Prefectural

Kanagawa Prefectural Board of Education

Kanagawa Prefectural Board of Education (神奈川県教育委員会) is the board of education of the Kanagawa Prefecture, Japan.
The board consists of six members; one of them is elected as the chair (教育委員長), and one of them is appointed by the board as the superintendent (教育長).
The board administers to municipal education systems. It also directly operates high schools in the prefecture.

New York

New York

New York is a global center for the television, advertising, music, newspaper and book publishing industries and is also the largest media market in North America (followed by Los Angeles, Chicago, and Toronto).[141] Some of the city's media conglomerates include Time Warner, the News Corporation, the Hearst Corporation, and Viacom. Seven of the world's top eight global advertising agency networks are headquartered in New York.[142] Three of the "Big Four" record labels are also based in the city, as well as in Los Angeles. One-third of all American independent films are produced in New York.[143] More than 200 newspapers and 350 consumer magazines have an office in the city[143] and the book-publishing industry employs about 25,000 people.[144]
Two of the three national daily newspapers in the United States are New York papers: The Wall Street Journal and The New York Times. Major tabloid newspapers in the city include The New York Daily News and The New York Post, founded in 1801 by Alexander Hamilton. The city also has a major ethnic press, with 270 newspapers and magazines published in more than 40 languages.[145] El Diario La Prensa is New York's largest Spanish-language daily and the oldest in the nation.[146] The New York Amsterdam News, published in Harlem, is a prominent African-American newspaper. The Village Voice is the largest alternative newspaper.
ABC Studios in Times Square.The television industry developed in New York and is a significant employer in the city's economy. The four major American broadcast networks, ABC, CBS, FOX and NBC, are all headquartered in New York. Many cable channels are based in the city as well, including MTV, Fox News, HBO and Comedy Central. In 2005, there were more than 100 television shows taped in New York City.[147]
New York is also a major center for non-commercial media. The oldest public-access television channel in the United States is the Manhattan Neighborhood Network, founded in 1971.[148] WNET is the city's major public television station and a primary provider of national PBS programming. WNYC, a public radio station owned by the city until 1997, has the largest public radio audience in the United States.[149] The City of New York operates a public broadcast service, nyctv, that produces several original Emmy Award-winning shows covering music and culture in city neighborhoods, as well as city government.

Honshū

Honshū

Honshū (help·info) (本州, ? literally "Main Land") is the largest island of Japan, called the Mainland; it is south of Hokkaidō across the Tsugaru Strait, north of Shikoku across the Inland Sea, and northeast of Kyūshū across the Kanmon Strait. It is the seventh largest island, and the second most populous island in the world after Java.
The island is roughly 1,300 km long and ranges from 50 to 230 km wide, and its total area is 230,500 km², around 60% of the total area of Japan. It is larger than the island of Great Britain, and slightly larger than the state of Minnesota. Honshū has 5,450 km of coastline.
Mountainous and volcanic, Honshū has frequent earthquakes (the Great Kantō earthquake heavily damaged Tokyo in September 1923); the highest peak is the active volcano Mount Fuji at 3,776 m, which makes it the world's 7th highest island. There are many rivers, including the Shinano River, Japan's longest. The climate is temperate, but has marked difference between the eastern or southern (Pacific or Inland Sea coast) side, and the western or northern (Sea of Japan coast) side. A mountain range runs along the length of Honshū from end to end. In addition to Mt. Fuji, the Japanese Alps are features of Honshū.
It has a population of 98,352,000 (as of 1990; in 1975 it was 89,101,702), mostly concentrated in the available lowlands, notably in the Kantō plain where 25% of the total population reside in the Greater Tokyo Area, which includes Tokyo and Yokohama, Kawasaki, Saitama and Chiba cities. Most of the nation's industry is located along the belt running from Tokyo along Honshu's southern coastal cities, including Kyoto, Osaka, Nagoya, Kobe, and Hiroshima.
The economy along the northwestern coast by the Sea of Japan is largely fishing and agriculture[1]; Niigata is noted as an important producer of rice. The Kantō and Nōbi plains produce rice and vegetables. Yamanashi is a major fruit-growing area, and Aomori is famous for its apples.
Eminent historical centers include Kyoto, Nara, and Kamakura.
The island is nominally divided into five regions and contains 34 prefectures, including metropolitan Tokyo. The regions are Chūgoku (western), Kansai (southern, east of Chūgoku), Chūbu (central), Kantō (eastern), and Tōhoku (northern).
The prefectures are:
Chūgoku region — Hiroshima-ken, Okayama-ken, Shimane-ken, Tottori-ken, Yamaguchi-ken. Kansai — Hyōgo-ken, Kyoto-fu, Mie-ken, Nara-ken, Osaka-fu, Shiga-ken, Wakayama-ken. Chūbu — Aichi-ken, Fukui-ken, Gifu-ken, Ishikawa-ken, Nagano-ken, Niigata-ken, Toyama-ken, Shizuoka-ken, Yamanashi-ken. Kantō — Chiba-ken, Gunma-ken, Ibaraki-ken, Kanagawa-ken, Saitama-ken, Tochigi-ken, Tokyo-to. Tōhoku — Akita-ken, Aomori-ken, Fukushima-ken, Iwate-ken, Miyagi-ken, Yamagata-ken. Honshū is connected to the islands of Hokkaidō, Kyūshū and Shikoku by tunnels or bridges. Three new bridge systems have been built across the islands of the Inland Sea between Honshū and Shikoku (Akashi-Kaikyo Bridge and the Ohnaruto Bridge; Shin-Onomichi Bridge, Innoshima Bridge, Ikuchi Bridge, Tatara Bridge, Ohmishima Bridge, Hakata-Ohshima Bridges, and the Kurushima-Kaikyo Bridge; Shimotsui-Seto Bridge, Hitsuishijima Bridge, Iwakurojima Bridge, Yoshima Bridge, Kita Bisan-Seto Bridge, and the Minami Bisan-Seto Bridge), and the Seikan Tunnel connects Honshū with Hokkaidō.

The Greater Tokyo

The Greater Tokyo

The Greater Tokyo Area is a large metropolitan area in Japan consisting of most of the Japanese prefectures of Chiba, Kanagawa, Saitama, and Tokyo (at the center). In Japanese, it is referred to as the Tokyo Area (東京圏, Tōkyō-ken?), Capital Area (首都圏, Shuto-ken?), One Metropolis, Three Prefectures (一都三県, Itto Sanken?) or South Kanto (南関東, Minami-Kantō?).
It is the world's most populous metropolitan area (35,197,000 at 2005 estimate[1]), covering an area of approximately 13,500 km² (5,200 mi²).[2] It is the second largest in the world in terms of built-up or urban function landmass at 7,800 km² (3,000 mi²).[3] (Only the urban area surrounding New York City at 8,700 km² is larger). It has 35 cities with 200,000 people or more, 21 cities with at least 300,000 people, and 10 with over 500,000 people, and the only city in the world to have a suburb (Yokohama) with more than 3 million people.[citation needed] It is first in the world in terms of railed transit usage, with 22 million passengers using rail as their primary means of travel daily on its 136 predominantly heavy rail lines.[citation needed]

New York City

New York City

New York City (pronounced /nʲuːˈjɔɹk/) (officially The City of New York) is the largest city in the United States, with its metropolitan area ranking among the largest urban areas in the world. For more than a century, it has been one of the world's major centers of commerce and finance. New York City is rated as an alpha world city for its global influences in media, politics, education, entertainment and fashion. The city's cultural centers for arts are among the nation's most influential. The city is a major center for foreign affairs, hosting the headquarters of the United Nations. Residents of the city are known as New Yorkers. The current mayor of New York City is Michael Bloomberg.
New York City comprises five boroughs, each of which is coterminous with a county: The Bronx, Brooklyn, Manhattan, Queens and Staten Island. With over 8.2 million residents within an area of 322 square miles (830 km²), New York City is the most densely populated major city in the United States.[3][4][5]
Many of the city's neighborhoods and landmarks are known around the world. The Statue of Liberty greeted millions of immigrants as they came to America in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, at Ellis Island. Wall Street, in Lower Manhattan, has been a dominant global financial center since World War II and is home to the New York Stock Exchange. The city has been home to several of the tallest buildings in the world, including the Empire State Building and the twin towers of the World Trade Center, which were destroyed in the September 11, 2001 attacks.
New York is the birthplace of many American cultural movements, including the Harlem Renaissance in literature and visual art, abstract expressionism (also known as the New York School) in painting, and hip hop,[6] punk,[7] salsa, and Tin Pan Alley in music. In 2005, nearly 170 languages were spoken in the city and 36% of its population was born outside the United States.[8][9] With its 24-hour subway and constant bustling of traffic and people, New York is known as "The City That Never Sleeps;" it was first linked with "Gotham" by Washington Irving in 1807.[10]

Architecture

Architecture

The Empire State Building, New York City's current tallest building, viewed from Park Avenue.The building form most closely associated with New York City is the skyscraper that saw New York buildings shift from the low-scale European tradition to the vertical rise of business districts. New York City has about 4493 skyscrapers, more than any other city in the world. Surrounded mostly by water, the city's residential density and high real estate values in commercial districts saw the city amass the largest collection of individual, free-standing office and residential towers in the world.[45] New York has architecturally significant buildings in a wide range of styles. These include the Woolworth Building (1913), an early gothic revival skyscraper built with massively scaled gothic detailing able to be read from street level several hundred feet below. The 1916 Zoning Resolution required setback in new buildings, and restricted towers to a percentage of the lot size, to allow sunlight to reach the streets below.[46] The Art Deco design of the Chrysler Building (1930), with its tapered top and steel spire, reflected the zoning requirements. The building is considered by many historians and architects to be New York's finest building, with its distinctive ornamentation such as replicas at the corners of the 61st floor of the 1928 Chrysler eagle hood ornaments and V-shaped lighting inserts capped by a steel spire at the tower's crown.[47] A highly influential example of the international style in the United States is the Seagram Building (1957), distinctive for its facade using visible bronze-toned I-beams to evoke the building's structure. The Condé Nast Building (2000) is an important example of green design in American skyscrapers.[42]
The character of New York's large residential districts is often defined by the elegant brownstone rowhouses, townhouses, and shabby tenements that were built during a period of rapid expansion from 1870 to 1930.[48] Stone and brick became the city's building materials of choice after the construction of wood-frame houses was limited in the aftermath of the Great Fire of 1835.[49] Unlike Paris, which for centuries was built from its own limestone bedrock, New York has always drawn its building stone from a far-flung network of quarries and its stone buildings have a variety of textures and hues.[50] A distinctive feature of many of the city's buildings is the presence of wooden roof-mounted water towers. In the 1800s, the city required their installation on buildings higher than six stories to prevent the need for excessively high water pressures at lower elevations, which could burst municipal water pipes.[51] Garden apartments became popular during the 1920s in outlying areas, including Jackson Heights in Queens, which became more accessible with expansion of the subway.[52]