Friday, December 31, 2010

HOW YOUSE DOIN'?  An incredible map and taxonomy of North American English Dialects, including 620 (!) audio exemplar samples of various dialect distinctions.  Where does "cot" sound like "caught" and "father" rhyme with "bother"?  Click and see.

14 comments:

  1. looking italian9:53 AM

    TSOP: Frank Rizzo Jr.

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  2. The Pathetic Earthling10:13 AM

    That's Hella Cool.

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  3. Along the same lines: Kansas' International Dialects of English Archive
    http://web.ku.edu/~idea/

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  4. ' Where does "cot" sound like "caught" and "father" rhyme with "bother"? ' 

    Everwhere?  Uh... oh.  Yeah.  I mean: my house?

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  5. isaac_spaceman12:45 PM

    I realize the map is descriptive, not prescriptive, but I have a moral objection to anything that grants New Yorkish or the Chicago dialect equal dignity with Western American English. 

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  6. this reminds me of one of my favorite freshman orientation activities at college.  a linguistics professor came and had us sit on the floor according to our geographic hometown location.  then he asked how different sections of the room would say words like "marry, merry and mary" or "roof" or ask about certain vocabulary (e.g. do you say coke, soda, or pop?).  hysterical fun.

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  7. Anonymous12:52 PM

    Agreed. My roots are Oklahoma/Kansas/Kansas City, Mo. There should also be a map on what people call certain things: Soda/pop/Coke (What type? Dr. Pepper), as well as other word choices.

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  8. Anonymous12:30 PM

    The w would find this useful for decoding about 40% of the dialogue in The Fighter.

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  9. Joseph Finn6:27 PM

    Seriously.  We don't speak in dialect here in Chicago.

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  10. kenedy jane6:45 PM

    Thanks for sharing!  Growing up as an Air Force brat, one of my interests was the different dialects (and common words/phrases) in the different areas where I lived.  When people try to figure out where I'm from based on my speech, it's a bit hopeless.  Rather than explain that it's a mix of Michigan, Colorado, New York, Florida, Nebraska, and Texas with a splash of a couple of years in Australia, I just say I'm from everywhere.  For some bizarre reason, the hardest pronunciation for me to 'unlearn' when returning from Australia at age 13 was AL-YOU-MIN-EE-UM rather than aluminum.

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  11. calliekl7:12 PM

    To really nail down that accent, an entire new study could be done of eastern MA. There are noticible differences between Lowell/Chelmsford/Billerica area (the Rt 3 corridor) and the rest of the state. Arlington/Medford has a clearly different accent than Southie... in Southie, half rhymes with calf, but in Arlington, half is pronounced more like hoff.

    Oh! I have a question for the Philly residents... how do you pronounce compass? Us New Englanders (and many others I've met) pronounce it cuhmpess, while my h and his family (from Levittown) say COM-pass, like .com. I continue to find this strange. And why is creek pronounced crick? That makes no sense to me at all.

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  12. J. Bowman7:20 PM

    A lot of my college friends who stayed in Boston have moved out to Lowell and Chelmsford over the last decade. The effect on their speech patterns has been... amusing.
    Don't even get me started on Fall River.

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  13. CUHM-puhs.  I've heard the crick thing and have no answer.<span> </span>

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  14. Jennifer4:24 PM

    Yeah, it hella is.

    What the hell is the difference between "Dawn" and "Don?" I'm so confused.

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