North American Dialects: Where do they stop and start? (#1)

     A couple of years ago I saw an article making the rounds on some of my Facebook friends walls. It was all about the different dialects to be found in the US and Canada and their delineations. I couldn't believe it. Someone had actually answered my question. Where are the regional dialects in the US and what is it that differentiates it from other regions?

     Rick Aschman composed a map from the data provided in the Atlas of North American English (ANEA), which most if not all of the English dialects as well as some commonly spoken native languages North of Mexico. In this map there are 8 broader dialectical families with some variation withing most of them. His map appears below. The link to his main page is here, if you want to take a closer look. I highly recommend that you do.

http://aschmann.net/AmEng/#SmallMapCanada 

  

     I have absolutely no ability to say how accurate this is but if you followed the link you may be able to hear some of the audio files they have in support of this mapping. This is the work of many people over years, maybe decades and I would have to study it for longer than I have been alive to feel comfortable in opining on its validity. It does make me want to look into it further but it does overwhelm a bit. 

     From the time I moved to the US as a child and realized even the people in my extended families did not speak in the same fashion I was curious as could be. My family in Vermont sounded different from that which lived in Chicago and those from Texas did not sound the same as the ones living in North Carolina. Though we all spoke the same language, there were so many shifts in common speaking patterns I would catch myself imitating them after a little time spent listening to them. Each summer after visiting with my Texan cousins I would continue using Ya'll for about a month. 

     I wasn't the only one curious about this. When I lived in Turkey I was asked by several people what my American accent was. The most commonly recognized and imitated the world over is the Southern Accent. I was never able to share what my accent was knowing only that it was American. Now, barring accent shifting from imitating my surroundings, I can say that I have a Western American Accent. Fancy that! 

~Sarah

Introduction or What About Me?

Who am I? Well, I am... that is, a work in progress, I am human after all. That being said my name is Sarah, I am a female American student in my late twenties. I am a bibliophile.

     I not only love books but I love to read them. As a teenager I wasn’t grounded from social activities but from reading. That isn’t to say it is the only thing I enjoy. Among my other interests are cooking, music, cinema, dance, and history. There are very few styles or genres in which I cannot find at least one thing I enjoy, so I don’t really have favorites.
     Currently one of the things which most consumes my time is being a student. I am in this particular English course focusing on linguistics because I chose to be.

    The subject of linguistics has always interested me. I grew up bilingually (English/Spanish) and as I grew older I came across Tolkien. His philological exploration of diverse languages, writing systems, and creating languages has completely fascinated me. After my run-in with Mr. Tolkien I took one year of French through language immersion and then one year from a bad instructor. This briefly dampened my passion for language. This did not enough to prevent me from doing an Italian crash course to help out a friend’s parents as they visited the U.S., with translation and general conversation, even a bit of cooking. I failed with German but next I moved to Turkey and though not fluent I am conversant in Turkish and can read a fair amount.

     In Turkey I was able to teach English to 3-5 year old children. It was an incredible experience seeing how quickly children attain a new language, even though they may already have two under their belt. This occurred after a brief stint doing habilitation with a highly functioning autistic boy. Children have a much greater facility with language than adults.
     Through all of these linguistically based experiences I have had a great many opportunities to explore language. This semester I look forward to deepening my knowledge and through this my enjoyment of how we as humans relate to one another. 

~ Sarah