June 26, 2014

  • Ain't mine, it's y'alls

    Our friend @Mzkeekz found a language web site http://languagesoftheworld.info/ which turns out to be fun.  It is about English dialects, among other things.  There are also articles about Romance languages, Latvian, Russian, Sanskrit -- the gamut.

    Maps: The Harvard Dialect Survey, conducted by Bert Vaux and Scott Golder, is a compilation of regional American differences.  Researcher Joshua Katz of NC State University used it to construct maps.  [ link ]  Do you say soda or pop?  grosery or groshery (grocery)?  reely or rilly (really)?  law-yer or loy-er?  ant or ahnt (aunt)?  Katz explores these questions.

    yall-map

    you guys 42.53% of respondents
    you 24.82%
    y’all 13.99%, chiefly in the South
    you all 12.63%
    yous or youse 0.67%
    yins 0.37%, chiefly in Appalachia
    you ‘uns 0.20%, also chiefly in Appalachia
    you lot 0.18%
    some other term 4.62%

     

    The deepest divide
    Among the regional differences, the use of y'all is the deepest and most obvious linguistic divide in America.  It separates Southerners from non-Southerners.  I have a gut revulsion when I hear the word y'all.  I can't help it.  I grit my teeth and anticipate something flagrantly anti-science or misogynistic or racist.

    Y'all know Obama is a communist muslim foreigner.

    Y'all know climate change is just a liberal hoax.

    Y'all know homosexuality is a sin.

    I apologize if you belong to the y'all persuasion.  There is nothing stupid or illiterate in the word y'all.  I know that it is a fully grammatical element of language.  But my experience has been reinforced many times.

     

    Take This Quiz
    It is a brief language survey of your regionalisms, grosery or groshery, reely or rilly, and at the end, it will produce a map (poorly designed as the colors red and blue are indistinguishable by one man in twelve) -- a map of everyone in the USA who talks like you.  In my case, it located me exactly:

    speech-map

     

    Again, if you feel offended by my views, sod off.
     

Comments (15)

  • the test put me between Chattanooga Birminham and Montgomery with a little bit of the texas panhandle thrown in for good measure...which is exactly where I am. So I'm part of the y'all persuasion but I think the texas part makes me unoffendable =)

  • This is fun! :-)
    I fluctuate between "you guys" and "you all"...ha! I think because of where I grew up and where I have relatives...but, I mostly use "you guys".
    Some of those terms make me laugh...like "youse". I think I'll start yousing that one! ;-) :-P
    HUGS for you!!!
    :-)

  • Using the word "freeway" for that big, fast road apparently places me in Southern California where I belong. (And I'm guessing so does "they are pronounced the same.")

  • Truly fascinating. A test I took five years ago set me squarely in E PA... where I belong. And so my stints in Boston and Mississippi somehow never changed my native speech patterns, whew.
    The situation is Hebrew is similar, as one might expect: we do have a 'standard pronunciation; that of the national radio and TV voices, yet, of the 120 Knesset members, I can guess with certainty the national origin of at least half. (this, of, course, differs from US regionalism, and is more accurately a result of mother-tongue influence.
    I'll take this test and have more to say..

  • Ok the test puts me in E PA, but I didn't particularly respect the questions: off-putting being asked what I call a drive-through liquor store for example(!)
    Also, the 'results' page mentions three smaller maps... which are absent.
    In short, I vastly prefer the previous test I took, although I don't recall the creator's name.

    • The Beer Depot was the name of our local drive-through liquor store, and it of course was our generic name as well. It never occurred to anyone that you could have a collection of them.

  • here is a nice satisfying quiz I took a few minutes ago:
    http://www.youthink.com/quiz.cfm
    It pu me, as expected, in the 'Mid-Atlantic (Philly-area) group.
    The odd thing is that the answers I supplied seemed so 'obvious', as in: Who in his right mind would choose any other option?' And yet, of course they do, otherwise we would all be from Philly.
    I worry that not hearing much spoken English for 20 years has narrowed my playing-field of what English sounds like.
    (And I do need English sub-titles for most modern fast-paced which I (rarely) see.
    Finally, my mother and father had very different pronunciations for many words, such that I have two(2) forms of the word 'iron' for example: one for flattening clothes ('AYE-ern')and one for the metal and tools like a digging iron. (AHRN, one syllable)
    Thanks for bringing this fascinating topic back to my awareness

    • What else has changed? In cities of the Great Lakes region, we have the Northern Cities Shift (NCS) LINK

      "n the NCS region, that extra vowel sound is an integral part of the big shift. The tensing of the short a starts a domino effect. First, the short o rotates into the newly created short-a void. People in Detroit have a jab, not a job. (Or don’t have one, as the case these days may sadly be.) NCS speakers then slide the wha sound into the slot formerly occupied by short o. They now pronounce caught like people from Boston do, but they pronounce cot the way other people say cat. One link down the chain, but tilts toward bought, and further down the short e in words like bet starts to sound like but. The final link in this chain may be the short i of bit elbowing its way in the direction of bet, though its course isn’t entirely clear just yet."

      You can search in youtube for: "accent tag" And listen to a vid of Chris in Chicago.

      (BTW I clicked your link, but there was no language quiz.)

  • Funny, I was going to send you a link on 'regional English' dialect. Apparently, their algorithm thought my dialect was Singaporean and that my native tongue was Arabic! (lol)

    -> http://www.gameswithwords.org/WhichEnglish/

    I did a similar test that you posted and I got West Coast. Hmmm...

    • Interesting test!
      Hella test (I'm saying it in Californian)!

      Top three guesses for my English dialect:
      1. American (Standard)
      2. US Black Vernacular / Ebonics
      3. Singaporean

      Top three guesses for my native (first) language:
      1. English
      2. Swedish
      3. Dutch

      They're going to have to do something about their Singaporean detector I think. It's out of control. Also, there are too many cats pushing those dogs around. Just saying.
      See my previous comment to Solberg. I am in the "Northern Cities Vowel Shift."

  • Though I moved to CA at age ten, the survey pinned me to Grand Rapids, MI. Evidently, pronunciation and vocabulary are established early in life.
    BTW, I fear this is good-bye as Xanga ha once again informed me that my subscription has expired with no instructions as to how to renew. Last I heard it was $250 a year, which is a bargain since it means I get to read your blog. But if I can still read my subscriptions for free, I don't think it's worth it to write.

  • You survived in California for all those decades with a Michigan accent, that can't be easy. My blog is a bargain at any price, certainly. But you can read it free in WordPress
    http://dimebone.wordpress.com

    You have my email, so basically you can write me a steamy lascivious message at any time.

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