The Irishman. For all the stories that have been set in and around the city, there’s a pronounced lack of authenticity when it comes to speaking the way the locals do—not a matter of failed attempts, but a failure to attempt it at all.
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Writing in the New York Times in 2014, Daniel Nester called the Philadelphia accent “arguably the most distinctive, and least imitable, accent in North America,” but on screen, that distinctiveness seems to work against it. You’re more likely to hear fictional characters talking like they come from Pittsburgh or Baltimore than from the pockets of the city—mostly old-school Irish and Italian neighborhoods—where people drink “wooder” by the glass. That makes