
North American Regional Dialects and Accents (2016) - fern12
http://aschmann.net/AmEng/#SmallMap
======
jasode
Reddit[1] made me aware of 2 specific examples:

"pin" == "pen" : [http://allthingslinguistic.com/post/81929757765/cather-
wren-...](http://allthingslinguistic.com/post/81929757765/cather-wren-
catherine-fangirl-and-the-pinpen)

"soda" vs "pop" vs "coke": [http://popvssoda.com/](http://popvssoda.com/)

All the examples I've seen overlap closely with the Southern belt of states.

For a more HN-flavored survey, I wonder if there's a clear regional boundary
for _" tuple"_. I've heard it pronounced "too-pull" (sorta like "pupil") and
"tuppel" (like "couple"). Don't know if that's an East vs West coast thing or
a Cambridge/Oxford/England vs MIT/Stanford/USA thing. Maybe it's just random
based on who you heard it from first.

(But let us stay away from discussing "gif". There are standards of civility
here.)

[1]
[https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/14y6tc/til_m...](https://www.reddit.com/r/todayilearned/comments/14y6tc/til_most_southern_us_english_speakers_make_no/)

~~~
Pharylon
On the "soda vs pop vs coke" question, as a child I would have never used any
of those words. Here in Western NC, we said "soft drink" for sweet carbonated
beverages. People my age (late 30s) and older still do, but the younger
generation has picked up "soda."

~~~
FroshKiller
In the Piedmont, we said "drink." Growing up, I knew what "soft drink" meant
and understood the distinction, but nobody among my family & friends used that
phrase.

Also never heard anyone call anything but a Coke a Coke, which is a really
common stereotype of Southern English.

~~~
Pharylon
I'm from the Piedmont too, Gaston County to be specific. I know what you mean.
Most of the time you'd just ask if they wanted a drink, and by context they
knew what you meant. I'd say "soft drink" only if I needed to narrow it down.

"Do you want something to drink?"

"Tea or a soft drink if you have it."

------
strgrd
I think it's interesting that this is a map of almost exclusively caucasian
accents (as the note on the left explains, information on the distinct African
American Vernacular English dialect is not included, partly because the
geographical variations of AAVE are largely independent of 'white' dialects).

Googling around, there doesn't seem to be an equivalent map out there for
AAVE.

~~~
13of40
Actually I think the map shows the dominant dialect/accent, it doesn't deny
the existence of others. The entire west half of the continent is one color,
but off the top of my head I know at least five distinct accents you can find
among white people here. My grandmothers we're both born and raised in
Washington state and had distinctly different speech patterns. My father's
mother's accent was almost British, but I can clearly remember my mother's
mother talking about "worshing" up or going down to the "crick".

------
pklausler
My favorite is the Californian use of the definite article when identifying
numbered roadways, e.g. "I took the 5.".

Here in Oregon, a general (and I must say unfair) disapproval of transplanted
Californians exists, and that use of the definite article is a "tell" that the
natives have learned to look for.

~~~
pluma
As a non-native speaker, that's how I would say it because that's how it would
be said in my native language.

If someone told me "I took 5" I'd expect them to be talking about some kind of
quantity and wait for them to finish the sentence.

Can a non-American native speaker maybe chime in how this works in other
dialects? I'm wondering whether it's Californians who are the odd ones out or
whether it's just uncommon in the US.

~~~
nerfhammer
From other parts of the country you might say things like "I took I-5" or
"Interstate Five", "Route Five", "Highway Five", "US 5" etc.

"I-5" to me sounds a little harsh and hard to say to my ears vs. "I-95" or
"I-80" which have a nicer ring to them, so maybe that's how this sort of thing
could develop if that's just how the major highways ended up being numbered in
different parts of the country.

~~~
Declanomous
We don't preface highways with I in Chicago. We either just use the number (I
took 290 to 294 to 88), or we use their name. Sometimes we use a combination
(I took the Eisenhower out to the Tri-State and then to 88).

~~~
hx87
That works because Chicago is in the north central part of the country, where
highway numbers are firmly in the double digits. In the southwest the numbers
are often single digit, so it's awkward and confusing to use without a
preprended "I-" or "the".

~~~
nerfhammer
I think it's triple digits that become a mouthful with the "I-" prefix. Double
digits sounds best with the "I-", I think.

Triple digits come from being a spur of a two-digit highway incidentally, not
to do with region. I-385 is a spur of I-85, etc.

~~~
InitialLastName
To ultra-pedant it up, generally only odd prefix digits indicate a spur (only
connects to the prefixed highway in one spot), where even numbers indicate a
bypass or beltway (which intersect the main highway multiple times).

------
poulsbohemian
Had a professor in college from the UK. I was completely confused listening to
his accent all semester, as I could never place it. I'd worked with a group of
people from all over -- Southhampton, Liverpool, London, etc -- so I knew the
different accents. Finally one day I broke down and asked him about it. Turned
out his dad had been in the military and he'd never lived in any one place for
very long, so his accent was a jumble.

I am a born and raised Cascadian. That said, years ago I heard Californians
call it "the 5" and thought it was brilliant, so I started using it. Friends
in both Oregon and Washington give me the stink eye for adopting this foreign
style of speech, but it's all in good humor.

Just to really mess with people, I really like to say "cheers" in place of
"thank you" too. Adds some international charm to their day.

~~~
pc2g4d
"Cascadian"

Of the Republic of Cascadia?

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cascadia_(independence_movemen...](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cascadia_\(independence_movement\))

------
taneem
I will be curious to see if people belonging to different internet subcultures
develop their own accents.

Already different groups of people are quite isolated in terms of the video
and audio they consume everyday (vloggers and podcasters).

~~~
Raphmedia
The "Youtube Voice"

[https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/12/the-l...](https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2015/12/the-
linguistics-of-youtube-voice/418962/)

[https://www.vice.com/en_ca/article/aepn94/the-rise-of-
youtub...](https://www.vice.com/en_ca/article/aepn94/the-rise-of-youtube-
voice-and-why-vloggers-want-it-to-stop)

However, much of the internet is written and not spoken. So we gets new ways
to write (doge, memes, 4chan green text, etc.) but not really new accents.

~~~
chiph
> Hey guys! What’s up? It’s Julie.

I've really grown to hate this intro, plus the whole "bouncy" style of
pronunciation. To me, it sounds a lot like "I'm trying too hard to get
attention", like that of a 2 year old repeating "dad. _dad_. DAD."

~~~
nayuki
Remember to end the video with: "Leave your comments down below, and don't
forget to like and subscribe!"

~~~
Raphmedia
"AND smash that bell icon!"

------
dblohm7
I am surprised that the Canadian English block is so large. Having lived in
both places, there is a definite difference in accent between Western Canada
and Southern Ontario.

EDIT: The stereotypical "out" and "about" pronunciation is much more prominent
in Southern Ontario.

~~~
cmrdporcupine
Actually the 'aboot' thing that people stereotype about Canadians is more
prominent in the upper midwest US than it is in most parts of Canada.

I do hear a difference between western Canada and Ontario (I'm from the former
and live in the latter.) But there's also a known dialect difference between
central and southern Alberta (former settled by English/Ukrainian/Germans the
other by American immigrants).

Rural Ontario, well, that's another story.

------
andrewla
Also of interest is the "Harvard Dialect Survey" [1], which gives direct
questions and highlights the regional variances. My favorite is "standing on
line" vs "standing in line" \-- I had never even heard the "on line" variant
until I moved to NYC, where it is ubiquitous.

Apparently now there's the "THE CAMBRIDGE ONLINE SURVEY OF WORLD ENGLISHES"
[2], apparently by the same individual, but I've only just started looking at
it.

[1] [http://dialect.redlog.net/maps.html](http://dialect.redlog.net/maps.html)

[2]
[http://www.tekstlab.uio.no/cambridge_survey/](http://www.tekstlab.uio.no/cambridge_survey/)

~~~
arethuza
"Do you say pop or soda?"

There is no option for "ginger".... not impressed ;-)

~~~
ethbro
Where uses "ginger"? That's a new one for me.

~~~
jamienicol
In Scotland. Where the most popular soft drink, Irn Bru, is a bright orange
colour.

We also use the word "juice", which I feel reflects badly on our diet.

~~~
ethbro
I've had it. You can usually get it in the US in the "Ethnic Food" aisles at
reasonably-sized grocery stores.

Aside from being orange, I don't have recollections of a very gingery flavor
tho...

~~~
lucozade
Normal Irn Bru is just made from sugar and rust (OK, ammonium ferric citrate
if you're being picky) so it doesn't taste like ginger.

I do recall there being a "spicy" variant a few years ago that did taste a bit
like ginger but, as I can't stand Irn Bru at the best of times, I don't recall
the details.

Source: married to a Scot that basically lives off the stuff. Bit surprised
she isn't magnetic.

------
Pharylon
The Ocracoke Brogue has always fascinated me. A tiny, dying dialect that
sounds nothing like the rest of the American South.
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7MvtQp2-UA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x7MvtQp2-UA)

~~~
js2
Tangier cannot go w/o mention -
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AIZgw09CG9E](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AIZgw09CG9E)

------
js2
I was raised in Miami, parents from New Jersey. I don't have an accent. (edit:
I mean "General American with no obvious southern, northern, eastern, or
western features.")

But there's still some tells like "soda" vs "pop" and you can pry "y'all" out
of my cold dead hands. My wife and I had been living in Atlanta a couple years
when I was speaking over the phone to a coworker in Syracuse, NY. Toward the
end of the call she told me I had a lovely southern accent. Hung up the phone,
called my wife, "Honey, it's time to move." :-)

Fun fact: I'm told that in Dallas, TX "y'all" is singular, the plural of which
is "all y'all."

~~~
Pharylon
Of course you have an accent, everyone does. What you mean is you have an
generic American "TV accent."

~~~
arethuza
To be fair, it's very easy to forget that you have an accent.

I remember talking on a conference call many years ago with people from (I
think) Intel and after I'd been speaking for a bit someone announced "Who is
that on the call with the really thick Scottish accent - I can't understand a
word he is saying".

My difficulties with Siri (and I tried _really_ hard to get it to recognise
'Hey Siri' and only got slightly angry) leads me to suspect that my accent may
still be there.

~~~
Pharylon
Very true. Honestly, unless I really listen for it, I don't notice when
someone has my own area's accent vs a "generic TV" accent. And they're pretty
different! I do notice if it's _not_ mine, though. I'm from North Carolina,
and the "Deep South" accent sounds as weird to me as it does to anyone else,
although I'm sure someone else might think we sound similar.

It's the entire reason I can't get into House of Cards. Frank Underwood is
supposed to be from my area of the country, and speaks with some kind of
Charleston-ish non-rhotic accent.

------
madengr
The ones I find fascinating are those of Chinese ancestry in the deep south,
like so:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ypj7J2y-bPQ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ypj7J2y-bPQ)

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2NMrqGHr5zE](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2NMrqGHr5zE)

------
santaclaus
Super cool -- I don't think I've ever heard caught != cot or dawn != don.

This map seems to depict the west as much more homogenous than it actually is.
Angelenos sound very different than Portlanders, for instance (moving south
along the west coast seems to correlate with more modulation of pitch and more
vocal fry).

~~~
mac01021
Where do you live?

I grew up in Eastern CT and the only people I've met for whom "caught" ==
"cot" or "dawn" == "don" are from working class families in Boston.

~~~
ethbro
It's different in eastern VA (where I get most of my accent from), but I have
heard them equate out in more rural GA.

------
52-6F-62
My god. Of all places to include on there my hometown is on that map. See:
south of Toronto and south of Guelph.

Number 683.

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Port_Dover,_Ontario](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Port_Dover,_Ontario)

\--- Great share! Thank you!

~~~
bungie4
See ya on the 13th

~~~
52-6F-62
Maybe so. But I've been transplanted to Toronto the past number of years.

Off topic: if you haven't seen Letterkenny yet, please watch. It _is_ rural
Southern Ontario.
[http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4647692/](http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4647692/)

------
api_or_ipa
I'm surprised they lump most of English speaking Canada together. Vancouver,
Calgary/Edmonton and Toronto (Torono) have, IMO, pretty distinct accents.

~~~
cmrdporcupine
Not only that but there's a pretty clear continuity of dialect _over_ the US
Canada border in many places. Drive into upstate NY from Ontario and there's a
pretty clear cultural and linguistic continuity in many respects.

------
asveikau
If you listen closely to older people in San Francisco, the accent situation
is a lot more complex than I've heard anyone acknowledge.

\- There's what I've sometimes heard called the "Mission accent", which can
easily be mistaken for New York or Boston if you're unfamiliar with it. Rs get
soft or disappear and vowels get very east coasty. I heard the origin of this
is from decades ago when the Mission was an Irish neighborhood.

\- There's an accent which to my DC area ears sounds kind of southern, almost
like the Ozarks. Maybe that has similar roots to the one described here as
pin=pen in the San Joaquin Valley, but I'm not too familiar with those parts.

\- Nancy Pelosi came from Baltimore and has the accent to boot (I heard a lot
of people talking like her in my DC area childhood), but her speech patterns
don't sound too far off compared to older San Franciscans. I presume that's a
phenomenon from the "pocket of Midland accent" that I've seen on this and
other maps.

I think most of this is probably dying out in younger people. (And of course
most 20s-30s types you meet in SF are from somewhere else.)

~~~
Balgair
Many of my in-laws are from the East Bay, so I have something of a window into
these issues. The 'southern' accent of the Valley towns is from their Okie
migrant ancestors. As many fled the Dust Bowl, they carried their accents into
the San Joaquin Valley and the Salinas Valley too. I've spent a bit of time
out there in construction (SJ and Salinas Valleys) and most of the time those
guys have little discernible accent. However, if you get them _very_ angry or
_very_ drunk, it's nearly a southern accent. I've no idea where they get it
from, as I've had a fair few glasses of wine at the holidays and can't recall
hearing the southern brogue, but they all seem to slip into it when they get
rear-ended on 5.

------
jorblumesea
I think accents themselves will become a relic of the past, given the
prevalence of mass media and the internet. Millennials will probably be the
last broad generation to have any hint of an accent.

~~~
BjoernKW
Ever been to the UK? There are some accents that for many American English
speakers wouldn't be intelligible. I doubt those will disappear within a
generation.

There's a general tendency of accents merging or becoming more similar but new
accents develop out of that as well. I think you underestimate the effect
everyday speech has on people. Take the Dutch for instance. They're famous for
almost universally speaking English very well. The main reason for this is
that in the Netherlands foreign language films, TV series etc. come with
subtitles instead of a dubbed version. Still many still have a recognisably
Dutch accent.

Then there's another phenomenon that in language history so far has only
happened to English: There are more non-native speakers than native speakers.
So we might very well end up with something like a universal, worldwide
English accent. It might just not sound like any of the native English accents
at all.

~~~
jamiek88
> There are more non-native speakers than native speakers

That is a wonderful point that I've never thought of before.

You can really envision a lingua franca that is English but not American
English or British English but Global English.

Second and third generation English speakers who live in a non-English
speaking country as a majority of English speakers - will they be like how
English is used in India or something completely different?

Fascinating.

~~~
UncleSlacky
Global English ("Globish") as a simplified subset of English already exists:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Globish_(Nerriere)](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Globish_\(Nerriere\))
also in general:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_English](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_English)

------
MayeulC
Interesting map, it makes me want to make a poster out of it.

Since the map is (as far as I could see) a raster, does anyone have any
recommendations on engines that can overlay information on maps (preferably
open, ranging from svg + inkscape to a custom osm visualizer). I am just
asking for curiosity's sake, nothing professional in mind here.

~~~
maxerickson
Probably QGIS if you are doing something data driven and want a big image as
output (especially if the source data has geographic coordinates associated
with it).

There are a few open map engines, I guess mapserver and mapnik are 2 of the
more prominent ones, and now there are several implementations using OpenGL
(aimed at tiled vector maps in browsers). But that is all more at the toolkit
level rather than the application level.

For simple stuff, using leaflet to draw on top of OSM tiles is a nice
solution.

------
jccalhoun
I was an english major and took an intro to linguistics class. On the first
day the prof had us introduce ourselves and based on the accent he guessed
where we were from down to a part of the state. I don't remember much of
anything from that class but that was pretty cool.

------
nohat00
I call BS on the "don"/"dawn" isogloss on the SF peninsula. If it ever did
exist, it certainly doesn't anymore. There are no cultural or social groupings
along that isoglass that would justify how that line is shaped. Where your
parents are from and your socioeconomic status to have way more influence on
whether or not you have a "don"/"dawn" distinction than whether you are from
San Mateo or San Carlos.

------
mattnumbe
There's a good radiolab episode about American dialects
[http://www.radiolab.org/story/yall-youse-
yinz/](http://www.radiolab.org/story/yall-youse-yinz/)

------
kbutler
This is more interesting and readable to me:

[http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/12/20/sunday-
review/...](http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/12/20/sunday-
review/dialect-quiz-map.html?_r=1&)

also

[http://discovermagazine.com/galleries/2013/june/regional-
us-...](http://discovermagazine.com/galleries/2013/june/regional-us-language-
dialect)

------
clarkenheim
Would love to see an attempt at one of these for the British Isles.

~~~
arethuza
That might be quite tricky - I suspect the regional variations aren't quite as
strong as they used to be but where I grew up (a small fishing village in
North East Scotland) it was possible to identify people from a farming rather
than a fishing background due to them having a different accent even though
they lived perhaps 1km away...

~~~
arprocter
Agree with you there - drive an hour in the UK and the accent and slang could
be completely different (e.g. Manchester to Liverpool), whereas in the US you
could easily still be in the same state.

~~~
jamiek88
Jeez, Liverpool itself has several distinct accents, so does Manchester or at
least Greater Manchester.

You can't drive 10 miles without new accents in populated areas more like!

------
swamp40
Next up - an AI that can pinpoint the region where you were raised.

~~~
jhbadger
There was a quiz in the NYT a year or two ago that did an astounding job of
this without any AI -- it suggested two places for my upbringing based on what
words I used "pop" vs "soda", whether I pronounced "pin" and "pen" the same or
not, etc -- and the two suggested places happened to be where I grew up and
where my parents grew up (which probably influenced my speaking by copying
them as well as my peers).

~~~
bllguo
Well, that's a decision tree! An algo that arguably falls under ML :)

~~~
nerfhammer
Seemed to me like it was some sort of bayes classifier. Either way, clearly
classic ML.

------
Aardwolf
A bit misleading for the region sizes though, the map's projection doesn't
preserve area very well... Canada is much more huge than in reality on it!

------
burntrelish1273
There was a more general 2005 documentary with interviews by Robert MacNeil of
the NewsHour called _Do You Speak American?_

[http://www.pbs.org/speak/](http://www.pbs.org/speak/)

Also, I have serious doubts about the "differences" in SF Bay Area upper and
lower peninsula pronouncing "on." Source: 40 year resident.

------
excalibur
The level of detail on this is astonishing. Great job!

------
germinalphrase
If you're intonthis stuff, the Dictionary of Regional American English[0] is
pretty great.

[0][https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dictionary_of_American_Regio...](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dictionary_of_American_Regional_English)

------
pc2g4d
This doesn't strike me as "dialect" so much as "accent". There seems to be
nothing lexical (nothing about the words you use) and only matters of
pronunciation are covered.

But it's a great map, and I'd love to work on this type of thing somehow!

------
ryanmarsh
First audio sample is of a woman in Alabama describing a tornado. I know HN
hates humor but I couldn't help but laugh at the irony.

~~~
freehunter
Why is it ironic? Alabama gets many tornadoes, so it makes sense that an audio
clip describing a tornado is from a place that receives tornadoes. It's like
saying it's ironic that someone from Buffalo NY is describing snow... they get
it quite often.

It might be ironic if someone from Alabama was describing snow, though.

