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Maps That Show How Americans Speak English Differently From Each Other

businessinsider.com

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Re: Maps That Show How Americans Speak English Differently From Each Other

#51

Post by mc-lovin »

tokenadult wrote: post #2

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 t…

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.

Re: Maps That Show How Americans Speak English Differently From Each Other

#52

Post by duairc »

zwtaylor wrote: post #47
mindcrime wrote: post #19

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'al…

Additionally, there are still areas in Philadelphia where "youse" is more than acceptable.

We also say "yous" in Dublin. Other parts of Ireland generally say "ye".

Re: Maps That Show How Americans Speak English Differently From Each Other

#53

Post by Azulsky »

usea wrote: post #50
Azulsky wrote: post #23

For #15 the Louisiana term is Poboy, despite the best attempts by Subway to convince us otherwise.

I have lived in Louisiana my whole life, and I've always considered po-boys and subs to be different things. A po-boy uses french bread.

Well there is always the argument over what a proper poboy is, and what the texture of authentic french bread is.

Re: Maps That Show How Americans Speak English Differently From Each Other

#54

Post by CatMtKing »

mhartl wrote: post #28

If you look at the concentration of blue in the Bay Area, you can see that they need to add a city to "What is 'the City'?": http://www.businessinsider.com/22-maps-that-show-the-deepest... Hint : It's not San José.

You know, I'm a little surprised that Socal doesn't have a similar concentration around LA.

Re: Maps That Show How Americans Speak English Differently From Each Other

#56

Post by antoko »

anigbrowl wrote: post #5
tokenadult wrote: post #2

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 t…

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 liste…

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 :)

Re: Maps That Show How Americans Speak English Differently From Each Other

#58

Post by antoko »

mindcrime wrote: post #19

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'al…

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.

youwse / you lot / your lot (northern UK)

guys (used as non-gendered) (bay area)

y'all / you all (Texas)

Re: Maps That Show How Americans Speak English Differently From Each Other

#60

Post by vacri »

Zikes wrote: post #29
russelluresti wrote: post #26

I am firmly on the side of "y'all".

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.
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