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Maps That Show How Americans Speak English Differently From Each Other

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

#61

http://www.businessinsider.com/22-maps-that-show-the-deepest... I have never known anyone to use the third phrase.

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...

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

#63

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…

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.

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

#64
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.

LA is just called LA, though people do say downtown LA. I've only heard of San Francisco being referred to as the City by West Coasters.

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

#66
post #45
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.

It wasn't a game of "which of these does not belong."

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.

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

#68
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).

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

#69
post #65

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." So, wow, laulau! Mo bettah da map include us, eh!

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.

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

#70
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.

Yeah, I'm surprised San Francisco wasn't one of the options. Clearly the administer of this survey isn't from the Bay Area.
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