Dialect Happiness!
There was a really awesome article in Newsday (local newspaper) recently about my dialect. Highlights of the article include the part where they say that there are four main varieties of Long Island dialect: Italian, Jewish, Irish, and Hispanic. Also, it explained in part why I am so totally opposed to the idea of the existence of angma! Everything they said was spot on (I checked), except that I don't believe that r-dropping is universal because I don't know anyone from my neighborhood who drops R's.