22 Maps That Show How Americans Speak English Totally Differently From One Another

[sl8]

From 2013.

https://www.businessinsider.com/22-maps-that-show-the-deepest-linguistic-conflicts-in-america-2013-6

22 Maps That Show How Americans Speak English Totally Differently From One Another

Walt Hickey Jun 5, 2013, 12:24 PM

Everyone knows Americans don't agree on pronunciations.

That's great, because regional accents are a major part of what makes American English so interesting.

Joshua Katz, a Ph.D. student of statistics at North Carolina State University, published a group of awesome visualizations of professor Bert Vaux and Scott Golder's linguistic survey, which looked at how Americans pronounce words (via detsl on /r/Linguistics).

His results were first published on The Abstract, the NC State University research blog. The complete set of Katz's maps, updated with the results from over 350,000 new survey responses, are compiled in the new book "Speaking American," out October 25 from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt.

[...]

[no_hypocrisy]

1. Despite being a lifelong resident of NJ, I've been told that my "accent"

resembles Mid-Atlantic.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mid-Atlantic_accent

I shrug my shoulders and guess that's the accent I acquired for being associated with highly educated people and I adopted their cadence, their pronunciations, their inflections.

[Walleye]

2. I know in Delaware and the Philadelphia area ice is made of frozen "wooder"

[evolves]

13. In some parts of the south,

it is frozen "wart-er."

[Clash City Rocker]

3. Some of those are interesting

For example, do most people think a highway and a freeway are the same thing? I was taught that if it has stoplights, it’s a highway, and if it doesn’t have stoplights but has off-ramps, it’s a freeway. I didn’t realize that was a controversial opinion.

And how else could you pronounce “Mary,” “merry” or “marry?”

[PJMcK]

7. If it has tolls...

… it ain’t a freeway.

[bamagal62]

4. I found it interesting

That the freeway terminology didn’t include interstate. I call roads that have controlled access interstates. I’ve never called any road a freeway. (But maybe that’s due to my age!) In addition I’ve noticed that in some states people refer to particular highways by the proper number such as “Route 230” and other places use the local name of the road such as “Harrisburg Pike”. When I moved to PA, I found it confusing until I figured out it was the same road! Lol!

[SharonClark]

9. I-235 that goes thru Des Moines (IA) was named the McVicar Freeway in the 1960's

by the DM City Council. Only old-timers call it that.

[LeftInTX]

31. A stretch of I-10 where I live was named McDermott Freeway in 1995

[KarenS]

5. yes,,,,

I have lived in both Lancaster CA (Lan-caster) and Lancaster OH (Lank-aster)

Now in Arizona, native born Arizonans living in the rural areas have a definite (almost southern) drawl.

on edit:
and my Dad from rural & southern Ohio always worshed his car while my Husband from not so rural and not so Southern Ohio washes his car.

[bamagal62]

21. And, you better get that

Lank-aster (PA) right or they’ll let you know it! I had to train myself! But, now I can’t say it any other way.😂😂😂😂

[C_U_L8R]

6. Anybody else say 'oydience' (audience)?

Not sure where I picked that up. Maybe Philly or New York.

[Raven123]

8. What about the "yu'ns" version of you all? Known in Pittsburgh, I believe

[prodigitalson]

10. funny how different English speaking populations invented their own 2nd person plural pronoun

since it's the same as the 2nd person 'you' which can be confusing. I'm from Texas so it's y'all (contraction of you all). I would like to see a map of all the different versions. When I worked in New Jersey I heard 'you guys' a lot.

[Lars39]

30. And then there's "all y'all"...

[wnylib]

37. And youse guys.

[Lars39]

39. Yep.

And try not to use the wrong phrase in the wrong region.

[prodigitalson]

44. yeah. I almost edited my post

heard that a lot in Jersey too.

[prodigitalson]

45. The only time I use all y'all

it's proceeded by the command form of a certain obscene verb.

[Lars39]

47. lol

[sl8]

43. Did you see the map at the link that shows 4 versions - you guys, you, you all, y'all? nt

[prodigitalson]

46. hah, no I totally missed it....thanks

lol absolutely nowhere is the actual correct pronoun of 'you' used in casual speech.

[brer cat]

12. It's common among older residents here in southern Appalachia.

I cringe every time I hear it.

[Wicked Blue]

18. It's yinz

People from Pittsburgh call themselves yinzers.

[bamagal62]

19. And both my kids lived in pittsburgh for 4 years.

And they never heard one person say yinz. But they were mostly in Squirrel Hill or Shadyside. So, maybe it’s mostly said by those that don’t live in the city center??

[Wicked Blue]

26. Squirrel Hill is an upscale neighborhood

So maybe they don't use yinz as much.

My son-in-law, who grew up in Butler County, doesn't say yinz, but told me lots of folks in the Pittsburgh area do use it. I've seen bumper stickers that say "Yinzer".

He and my daughter lived in Pittsburgh for several years and now live in the eastern suburbs.

[debm55]

28. But when in different area, there are yinzers and yunzers. I live about 10 miles south of Pittburgh,

Also towel and tile are pronounced the same. Also add the my hair needs wrashed and car needs wrashed, Instead of I have to wash my hair. In my section of Pittsburgh, it's yunzers but I hear yinzers closer to downtown.

[FakeNoose]

35. "Yinz" is old-style Pittsburgh

It's actually "less-educated" Pittsburgh, if you really want to know.

Having lived in Pittsburgh for over 30 years, I can truthfully say that very few Pittsburghers use "yinz" in their regular speech patterns. But we call ourselves "Yinzers" anyway because it distinguishes us from all the rest of Pennsylvania.

It's definitely unique to Pittsburgh and southwestern Pennsylvania.

[debm55]

36. FakeNoose, People in my area say yunz." I'm a yunzer, You're a yinzer, Wouldn't you want to be a

Last edited Fri Nov 4, 2022, 05:52 PM - Edit history (2)

yunzer too, Drink Dr.Pepper." Dr. Pepper would be more popular here if they had that jingle.

[wnylib]

38. People in towns and villages in the

Pittsburgh area say y'uns. When I was a kid, a family from Somerset moved in across the street from us (Erie), that was the first time I heard it.

I had an aunt who moved to Pittsburgh after she was married and raised her kids there. None of them said it.

[dalton99a]

11. Kick

[Walleye]

14. I can still hear a little bit of Baltimore in Nancy Pelosi's speaking

[twodogsbarking]

15. People from Boston say fork but it sounds like something else.

[sl8]

16. +1. Also, "We don't drink! We don't smoke! Norfolk!"

[sanatanadharma]

17. Boston MA

I grew up in Massachusetts, about 90 miles from Boston. I knew then that they spoke differently 90 miles from my home.
I left MA and lived in the midwest, planes, southwest, southeast, and northwest.
Fifty years later I went to a HS reunion and to Boston.

In Boston, my wife and I could not understand the English we heard.

[Wicked Blue]

23. They used to call sub sandwiches 'grinders' there

And in Massachusetts a milkshake was (is?) called a frappe, except in Boston, where old-timers call it a 'cabinet.'

I briefly lived in Worcester (1972), worked briefly as a waitress, and had learned the term 'frappe'. But I was stumped when an elderly woman ordered a 'coffee cabinet.'

Thinking she might be slightly senile, I gently told her we didn't sell furniture.

Stunned silence. Then another waitress table informed me that she wanted a coffee frappe.

I grew up in NJ, where it was called a milkshake or shake, except if you were at a Buxton's restaurant where they called it an awful-awful (awful big, awful good.) If you managed to finish 3 of these monsters, you got a 4th one free.

Also in Massachusetts, a store that sold alcohol was called a 'packie', short for package store.

[sanatanadharma]

27. As a youth, I could get a ginder after church...

... but the package stores were closed due to the 'blue laws'.

[debm55]

29. My husband is from Boston, They sometimes add an r to the end of a word.

Last edited Sat Nov 5, 2022, 12:29 PM - Edit history (1)

or if it ends in a an r already they drop it completely

[wnylib]

41. I noticed from JFK that they

add an R where it doesn't belong and leave them out where they do belong.

[RocRizzo55]

20. Fuggedaboutit

Personally, I speak Brooklynese. Old Brooklynese, where we pronounce toilet as "terlet" and oil as "earl." I must be old, because nobody talks like this any more.

[Wicked Blue]

24. My husband grew up on the Lower East Side of Manhattan

and he still "axes" questions instead of asking.

[LittleGirl]

22. That was fun.

Grew up 80 miles from Chicago so I carry those ways of speaking. I’ll never forget living in New Hampshire and someone called the log company employees “wood boogers.” I still chuckle about that. Soda vs pop. Lived in the south long enough to pick up ya’ll. My Mother was from the south and she never completely lost her southern twang even after living in yankee land for over 75 years.

Thanks for sharing. Made my day.

[Farmer-Rick]

25. It's not all that different

Most people can still understand each other when they speak...... except for a few areas.

I'm from Maryland/Pennsylvania area. When I went to Newport RI, and invited my parents up to visit, they could not understand a lot of the locals...but I had no problem with understanding them.

But when I went to Georgia, sometimes I could not understand a certain accent. I'm not sure what it was and it only happened maybe twice a year. It was a very thick Southern accent that to my ears sounded like a foreign language but people around me understood it just fine.

It happened at a checkout counter and for the life of me I could not understand the clerk. So, the people around me started interpreting for me, like they were use to it. Anyway, I never found out what that accent was.

[LeftInTX]

32. I find Cajun accents hard to understand

[Higherarky]

33. Boil water or bile watta

Last edited Fri Nov 4, 2022, 11:36 PM - Edit history (1)

Laudromat/laudrymat/warshateer/
washateria

Bayou/baya/bie

Didn't/dint/didunt

Et cetera/ek setra

[Skittles]

34. all I know is ON and OWN are *NOT* supposed to be pronounced the same!!

NOPE!

[wnylib]

42. When I moved to Cleveland from Erie, PA,

people told me that I pronounced "don" like "dawn." I don't hear the difference.

In South Buffalo and some small towns near there, people used to say "care" for "car" and "hat" for "hot." Very seldom heard there anymore, but we used to tease our Buffalo cousins about it.

[Aristus]

48. For years after I moved from Texas to the Northwest.

people would look at me strangely when I said “Y’all”, and a few would laugh when I said “Howdy”.

My Texas accent has largely deserted me. But I will say “Y’all” until the day I die.

[debm55]

49. Basement or cellar? Or none. Went to the link you provided and it was interesting. Would be

interested in getting his book.

[electric_blue68]

50. Some of these were so interesting, funny, and I had No idea!...

too tired to point them out right now except for...

I had no idea until about ? 15+ years ago when I heard about it on Public Radio that most people
don't distinguish between
Merry - Mary - Marry !!!

To me - I guess it's somewhat subtle but Distinct.

[missingthebigdog]

51. I once heard this explanation:

Due to an anomaly in the jet stream, the r’s which are dropped in the northeast from words like car (caw) and park (pawk) float up and are redistributed to the south, where we use them in words like warsh (wash).

[sl8]

53. No arguing with science. :) nt

[Conjuay]

52. I've noticed

Georgians referre to a pen as an “ink pen”, and I’ve noticed southerners pronounce “kids” with two syllables- “key-ids”.