This interesting set of maps is an example of how presentation can triumph over content. The pretty maps total to not a huge amount of information on dialect differences in the United States, a topic that has been posted about here on HN before, but their sheer prettiness prompted me to share the link to my Facebook wall, whereupon Facebook showed me on my home page that five of my other friends have already shared the same link. It's often easier for pretty pictures to go viral than more informative paragraphs of text.
is, I think, something we have also discussed before here on HN. The link from the survey home page that is supposed to lead to the faculty webpage of the principal investigator appears to be a dead link. He is now at a new university,
I disagree about the quality of the information presented herein. As someone whose day job involves recording sound for film (necessarily including lots of dialog) and who is not American, regionalisms in accents are both challenging and fascinating for me, and a frequent topic of discussion between myself and the actors I work with. On smaller films there isn't usually the budget for a dialog coach and since I listen to people for a living that aspect of production often falls in my lap.
I found these maps extremely informative and and they helped to clarify some perplexing edge cases (eg people from Missouri sound southern in general, but on some words they exhibit marked differences from their near neighbors).
Not to put words in his mouth but, I think the GP was referring to the information density rather than the information quality itself. Likely as the comparison he was making was to the presentation quality.
I think you are both capable of being correct... but then I must think that because I agree with both of you :)
It's really unfortunate that the data is presented at such a high level of aggregation.
It would be so much better to have individual level data (perhaps with personal info such as age, etc. removed) so other people could do their own analysis (e.g. clustering).
I don't want this to be interpreted as criticism of Bert Vaux and his colleagues: there is incentive in academia to not share data, since you get credited for the uniqueness of your work, and get no credit for collecting data used by others. I just hope the situation changes.
"Dawn" and "don" are the same for me as well, although I have heard that some localities make a distinction between those two vowel sounds with a varying amount of "roundness" of the lips.
A lot of the pronunciation examples they gave made me speculate whether everyone even pronounces those words the same. It would be easier if everyone would just memorize IPA.
I'm pretty sure I've at least heard that "devil beating his wife" thing once in my life, somewhere... but in terms of routine, daily life, I know of no term for that phenomenon that's common place. shrug
From Texas here - I've heard someone use it. Though their version was "God is beating his wife" instead of "the devil". I heard it as a kid, from my neighbor's dad, when my friend and I were outside playing and it started to rain while it was sunny.
I have always heard it referred to as "a monkey's wedding." Though I think that came from my dad who grew up in apartheid South Africa, so it might be racist...
I'm from South Louisiana. My grandma has told me this from the time I was a young child and it still comes to mind. Went through my head just today, in fact, during an afternoon shower.
a. sunshower (34.29%)
b. the wolf is giving birth (0.04%)
c. the devil is beating his wife (6.43%)
d. monkey's wedding (0.16%)
e. fox's wedding (0.15%)
f. pineapple rain (0.03%)
g. liquid sun (0.74%)
h. I have no term or expression for this (55.15%)
i. other (3.02%)
Some people in North Carolina use what seems to be a subtle variation from that... it comes out "you'uns". It's been a while since I heard anybody say that, though. I think it's more of a country thing.
I was kind of surprised that they left out yinz. I was going to mention it, but I figured someone else already did. There was a show on regional accents on PBS and they compared western PA to the Galapagos Islands of regional accents. I mean get aht!
The one about "What word(s) do you use to refer to a group of two or more people" is missing an option or two. I often use "you lot" or "you kids". To be fair, the latter is more of a joking thing, like parting from a group and saying "you kids be good" or whatever.
The "you lot" bit is, I'm pretty sure, something I picked up from watching British television. Most people in my neck of the woods say "you all" or "y'all". Some use "you'uns".
I was also surprised that "you folks" wasn't on the list. I've used "folks" as a less gendered version of "guys" most of my life, and I thought it was more common than it apparently is.
I've mostly always treated "guys" as gender neutral myself, even though it may be technically incorrect. I'll sometimes say "you guys" to refer to either a mixed group or even an all woman group.
I do use "you folks" as well, somtimes. Not often though. Can't really say why.
So literally no one at all uses the correct "you" ?
I've used various different alternates as I've aged and moved locations but I'm fairly certain "you" (with a silent parenthetical (plural) ) has remained my default throughout.
One of my foreign friends was teasing me about how English doesn't have a word for "a group of people" whereas many other major languages apparently do, and I replied "sure we do, it's y'all".
I think you mean 'for addressing a group of people'. We have plenty of words for groups of people. And we have ways of addressing them, they just take more than one word: "you -foo-". It's like the infinitive in English is two words, (to -foo-) but in most other euro languages it's only one.
My wife spent about half a year in North Carolina for work, where "y'all" seemed to translate to the singular "you", while "all y'alls" was used to refer to "you" plural.
I have used y'all for as long as I can remember (although not exclusively...it is mixed in with "you guys", "you people", and others according to whichever sounds best in that particular sentence), even though the farthest I was ever away from the West Coast for my first 47 years was just outside Yosemite in California, and I knew nobody who was from the South or spoke with any obvious Southern influence.
I think I must have heard it on TV and picked it up.
Anyone else here use it despite no Southern connection among friends or family?
As a Chicagoan, I've never paid the slighted bit of attention that, apparently, literally everyone around me doesn't say "sear-up" as I do. No clue how that came about, with no family ties to the east coast whatsoever.
I find that I pronounce some words differently, depending on context (who I'm talking to). Also, I've altered my pronunciation of some words as I've aged. But, FWIW, when I say "syrup", by default it comes out like "sear-up" for me, but it sometimes comes out as "sir-up". Not really sure why. I'm from North Carolina, but never really paid much attention to how other people say this.
My point was that everyone around San Francisco calls it "the City" (even those in more populous San José), so they would have done well to add it to their set. In contrast, people around, say, Los Angeles don't typically call it "the City", so leaving out LA is not a relevant omission.
Atlantan here. This was my first thought as well. Pretty much anyone in Georgia and a little bit into the surrounding states think that too. People on the coast of Georgia usually refer to Savannah though.
A guy I work with, Terry, an Acadian went to France and he said that the people there understood him as if he was from France and his friend from Quebec they could barely. understand.
The French from France asked Terry when he left and what village he was from Terry kept trying to tell them that he never was from France he had always lived here in the Maritimes they didn't believe him they thought he left France maybe ten years ago.
For me, from Minnesota, they're all the same: vowel like in "made" [eɪ]. I think the others have vowels like in "bed" [ɛ] and "bad" [æ]. These vowels aren't allowed before r in my dialect.
I'm disappointed that my part of the USA is ignored by these maps.
Hawaii has its own form of the English language, sometimes referred to as "Hawaiian Creole," but more commonly known as "Pidgin."
For the language pedants, it is almost always called "pidgin," but it is technically a creole which means that it was formed out of mashing several languages together, but it has become its own full fledged stable language. I am not really a local, but I did live in Hilo for 5 years. I know a lot of words with Hawaiian, English, Japanese, some other European language origins.
Huh. Despite having grown up in California, I tend to fall into Northeastern patterns for a lot of these things. Possibly an issue with the data, or possibly I'm a weird case - immigrant parents, and grew up in neighborhood that's heavily American Jewish (which I assume correlates with Northeastern dialects).
A lot of these stimuli would have been better if they'd used pictures instead of "How do you say [misleading/too specific definition of term that requires some thought to arrive at a word for].
For example: present a picture of someone holding a paper grocery bag with an arrow pointing at it, then ask "What's the word for this item?"
Doesn't work for all of them (e.g. you can't draw a picture of a moot point?) but I'm just sayin'.
FYI, Bert Vaux taught Social Analysis 34 at Harvard, the gen-ed linguistics class that was very popular with undergrads. Most students took either that class or Economics 10 (Macroeconomics / intro to capitalism) as their social studies requirement for graduation.
104 comments
[ 2.3 ms ] story [ 185 ms ] threadThe underlying survey that gathered the data
http://www4.uwm.edu/FLL/linguistics/dialect/
is, I think, something we have also discussed before here on HN. The link from the survey home page that is supposed to lead to the faculty webpage of the principal investigator appears to be a dead link. He is now at a new university,
http://www.mml.cam.ac.uk/dtal/staff/bv230/
still working on linguistics research.
I found these maps extremely informative and and they helped to clarify some perplexing edge cases (eg people from Missouri sound southern in general, but on some words they exhibit marked differences from their near neighbors).
I think you are both capable of being correct... but then I must think that because I agree with both of you :)
It would be so much better to have individual level data (perhaps with personal info such as age, etc. removed) so other people could do their own analysis (e.g. clustering).
I don't want this to be interpreted as criticism of Bert Vaux and his colleagues: there is incentive in academia to not share data, since you get credited for the uniqueness of your work, and get no credit for collecting data used by others. I just hope the situation changes.
Note that I pronounce "dawn" = "don".
Also, I say crayon as "crown", which either isn't very popular, or they just chose poor colors for the heatmap.
I pronounce crayon as "cray'n" -- pretty much exactly as you could pronounce "prayin'"
As in "Don said dawn gets him down".
Don/dawn sound like the "a" in father for me. Down sounds like the "ou" in "Ouch!"
From what I understand, this is common in Kansas. Are you (or at least one of your parents) from there?
A lot of the pronunciation examples they gave made me speculate whether everyone even pronounces those words the same. It would be easier if everyone would just memorize IPA.
Edit: Looking at a couple other comments apparently some people pronounce 'ahh' with the same a as 'ann'? I certainly don't.
I'm in Arkansas, and I've always heard these called "Baptist Windows".
I have never known anyone to use the third phrase.
Also, here is a localized scene from a video game that uses it http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Pk024-oaFv4
The "you lot" bit is, I'm pretty sure, something I picked up from watching British television. Most people in my neck of the woods say "you all" or "y'all". Some use "you'uns".
I do use "you folks" as well, somtimes. Not often though. Can't really say why.
I've used various different alternates as I've aged and moved locations but I'm fairly certain "you" (with a silent parenthetical (plural) ) has remained my default throughout.
youwse / you lot / your lot (northern UK)
guys (used as non-gendered) (bay area)
y'all / you all (Texas)
http://www.nola.com/dining-guide/index.ssf/2012/04/rb_top_10...
I think I must have heard it on TV and picked it up.
Anyone else here use it despite no Southern connection among friends or family?
http://www.businessinsider.com/22-maps-that-show-the-deepest...
Hint: It's not San José.
It probably has to do with the density gradient. With more spread out urban areas having less distinction between "the city" and outlying areas.
I would say crayfish just as it's spelled. I have no idea what it is in Acadian French I'm not French but I know a lot of Acadian people.
It would be funny if the name came from little lobster, maybe "petite homard"? Not even close to crayfish.
http://www.etymonline.com/index.php?term=crayfish http://en.wiktionary.org/wiki/crayfish#Etymology
For what it's worth, it is also spelled, not just pronounced, "crawfish" in Texas and Louisiana.
The French from France asked Terry when he left and what village he was from Terry kept trying to tell them that he never was from France he had always lived here in the Maritimes they didn't believe him they thought he left France maybe ten years ago.
...hmm, I wonder if "a" has any geographic breakdown.
That's the term used by zappos.com and rockport.com, for example. "Tennis shoes" is not a category.
I'm also slightly terrified that the vast majority of the country cannot distinguish Mary/merry/marry.
Mary - mare-ree
Merry - meh-ree
Marry - mah-ree
So, wow, laulau! Mo bettah da map include us, eh!
For example: present a picture of someone holding a paper grocery bag with an arrow pointing at it, then ask "What's the word for this item?"
Doesn't work for all of them (e.g. you can't draw a picture of a moot point?) but I'm just sayin'.