The Dictionary of American Regional English
http://thedianerehmshow.org/shows/2012-03-07/dictionary-american-regional-english
Beth Witherell and Jennifer Ellsworth, graduate students who worked on DARE, listen to one of the more than 1,800 audio recordings made in the field. Their job was to transcribe pronunciations in phonetics and select parts of conversations for examples of words to include in DARE.
(Courtesy: UW-Madison Archives)
In Ohio, the strip of grass between the sidewalk and the curb is called a "tree lawn." In other parts of the country, it is a "curb," a "devil’s strip," a "parkway," a "swale," or a "street lawn." More than a dozen names for this can be found in the Dictionary of American Regional English. The fifth volume covers words and phrases from ‘slab’ to ‘zydeco’ and completes a fifty-year project to capture the unique ways people in different parts of the country speak. The dictionary has been used to solve crimes, teach medical students, train actors, and understand political candidates. Joan Hall, chief editor of the dictionary, and linguist Ben Zimmer join Diane to discuss the diversity of American language.
Guests
Joan Houseton Hall
chief editor, Dictionary of American Regional English
Ben Zimmer
the language columnist for The Boston Globe and former On Language columnist for The New York Times. He is also the executive producer of the Visual Thesaurus and Vocabulary.com,
Related Items
DARE in Photos: All photos courtesy of UW-Madison Archives and reprinted here by their permission. All rights reserved.
Program Highlights
In the late 1960s, linguistic field workers were sat across the country in word wagons. They collected words and dialects from nearly 3,000 Americans across the country. Their recordings became the basis of a 50 year project called DARE, Dictionary of American Regional English. The 5th volume reaching Z has just become available.
What's Special About DARE?
"It's a record of the way that we speak in the United States and it really puts together information about different words, different pronunciations in a way that no other reference work does. And so it's invaluable in that way. And you can actually look at it as a kind of a social history of the United States by looking at the way that our lives change in different parts of the country. Because the speakers, for instance, that the linguistic field workers were talking to, way back in the '60s, were often older speakers who were giving examples that could've dated back a 100 years ago," Zimmer said.
The Significance Of "Arthur The Rat"
"When the field workers went to interview the informants in these 1,002 communities, they also asked each person to be recorded. But tape recorders were pretty new then, so some people were a little leery, but most people agreed to do it. They were asked to do two things, one was to read this silly little story called "Arthur the Rat" that was designed, not to make any sense, but to include all of the important sounds of American English. So by having people all over the country read the same passage, we have a wonderful database of comparison. So we can see how they sounded in New England and Central Atlantic and all across the country," Hall said.
How Twitter Has Changed Linguistics Research
Zimmer said that some researchers are now using Twitter in their work because people often identify where they're from in their tweets, which they can plot on maps similar to the ones DARE has produced in the past. "But instead of requiring all of this laborious fieldwork, we can just make these on the fly, if we're interested. For instance, where do people say hella for instance? That's an expression that young folks are familiar with these days as an adverb meaning very. Like if something is hella good," he said.
Influential Areas Of the Country
"Over American history different parts of the country have had different kinds of prestige. And so if there's a certain prestige associated with a certain part of the country, people will imitate that. So in the very early days, it might have been Boston, New York and that -- so that patterns that were common there would then be picked up elsewhere. These days there could be different types of prestige. Among young speakers over the past couple of decades, southern California may be a prestigious variance of English for them," Zimmer said.
You can read the [full transcript here(http://thedianerehmshow.org/shows/2012-03-07/dictionary-american-regional-english/transcript).
Comments
Please familiarize yourself with our Code of Conduct and Terms of Use before posting your comments.
Here in Cincinnati, we have a pronounced linguistic tic that I haven't encountered anyplace else: We ask, "Please?" when we mean, "I didn't hear you clearly, would you repeat that?" or "Come again?" Visitors and newcomers are sometimes perplexed in these exchanges, wondering what exactly it is we locals are begging for.
Then again, our signature dish "Cincinnati chili" is a meat sauce that is served over spaghetti and topped with shredded cheese (ordered 3-way, 4-way or 5-way with onions and/or beans) , rather than a thick, spicy bowl of something between beef stew and soup. -- This item may reside in the realm of local cuisine rather than language (I didn't even mention goetta), but I brought it up because we've taken the chili from chili dogs -- as opposed to Texas chili -- and built food chains (and arguably culture -- see Newt Gingrich's visit to Price Hill Chili last month) around it.
This subject has always been a particular interest of mine since I was young. As a Hoosier, we say "ooosh" for things like bush, etc. We will also say, "couple three" meaning two or three or a few but not meaning six. I have also heard "drouth" meaning drought. Instead of creek, it is inevitably a "crick". Our meals may be breakfast, dinner (midday meal) and supper (the evening meal). Unfortunately, with the advent of TV and other media, we see so many of these local terms of speech disappear and we become more homogeneous and losing part of what makes us unique.
After moving to Western Pennsylvania, we were stunned at first to be asked if our children were "strange", which turned out to mean "shy with strangers".
Here in Bawlamer, Merlin, people wash their hands in a zink and use a camera to take pixtures. And in Merlin, striped bass is called rockfish.
In Brooklyn, when Jackie Robinson played for da bums, he was a terror to pitchers, especially when he got to thoid base.
In Bahstin, a milkshake is called a frappe, and in Rhode Island, it is called a cabinet. And in New England in general, one pahks a cahr.
Regional accents are really part of the great flavor of America.
Add your example of regional English to our collaborative map! http://g.co/maps/cuxp7
Simply sign in to your Google account and click Edit.
When I moved from Maine to Rochester, NY as a teenager I was confused when other girls talked about what they wore under skirts...I had always called those things "pantyhose" or "nylons", and in Rochester everyone referred to them as "stockings" which I thought of as tall socks, like knee socks. I also had to switch from saying "hair elastic" to "hair tie" and from saying "jimmies" for the thing you put on ice cream to "sprinkles". But I absolutely refuse to say "pop" ( or "pap" as it's pronounced in Rochester) when I mean soda. Soda is soda and that's all there is to it!
Hello...
I was raised in Miami and my husband grew up in the Philadelphia suburbs - he puts "Jimmies" on his ice cream, while I enjoy "Sprinkles".
I'm correct, right? (smiles).
You drink Pop and cook with soda.
Growing up in Norfolk, VA -- sort of the south -- we referred to all soft drinks as "a Coke". A typical exchange was:
"Do you want a Coke?"
"Yes."
"What kind?"
"An orange soda."
Please is response to not understanding comes directly from the German -- Bitte. >It means please, but also "what did you say?"
Please address these issues:
Most of those interviewed for the original DARE project are dead. And usage marches on. While the DARE serves as an interesting historical snapshot of American English, the majority of its usages are obsolete, even in regional dialects. It's left primarily as a curiosity for linguists.
Also, please discuss the issue of DARE being entirely unavailable online, at least at present. This is a major oversight in this day.
Here in Alabama, we have a southern drawl and words take seconds longer to say than they typically would. No matter the brand, every soda is coke. And we tend not to pronounce the r's in our words. And you aren't a true southerner unless you use ya'll.
I've heard, and please tell me if this is true, that southern dialects are actually the closest to British dialects.
The Cincinnati "Please?" for repeating a comment comes from the German, Bitte. Cincy had a large German migration in the mid-1800's, and it's had a big impact on our culture -- from food -- goetta, which you'll not find outside the Greater Cincy area -- to the proliferation of public parks and musical entities.
A particularly interesting term that has so many varied descriptions throughout the US is as follows:
Basket dinner
pitch-in dinner
covered dish dinner
carry-in dinner
probably a few more that I don't know.
When I moved to Indiana, I was surprised to hear people refer to bell peppers as "mangoes." That was more than 30 years ago, and I still hear it.
Here on the Outer Banks of North Carolina, we have a distinct brogue that turns 'i' into 'oi'. For example "five" becomes "foive", 9 is "noine", etc. The one local word that sticks out is "mommock", which I heard often heard from my mother growing up, e.g. "Boy, you're mommocking me to death!".
Could you please tell me how to get rid of my Texas accent. Great show.
Please? comes from the German Bitte? or Bitte Shön with basically same meaning as earlier commenter describes.
I was raised in suburban Philadelphia. When I travelled to Catskills for summer camp with, mostly, New Yawkers, I was teased for pronouncing "water", "wooder." I immediately made the correction and left "wooder" behind in my wake.
Thanks for great shows.
Where I grew up in Michigan "I don't care to" meant "I don't want to." I was temporarily confused in Tennessee when someone "I don't care to" and then immediately began to do what I had asked her to do do. I soon learned that in Tennessee "I don't care to" means "I don't mind doing it." And by the way, where I grew up in Detroit that strip of lawn between the sidewalk and the street was called a boulevard.
I grew up in York County, PA and moved to the DC area in college. I always assumed my speech was pretty "average" and was surprised to discover (with the help of the confused looks from my DC friends) how many words, phrases, and intonations were true Pennsylvania Dutchisms. To this day, I smile and think of home whenever I catch myself scolding the dog for being "rammy", grabbing my umbrella because it's "spritzing" outside, eating "fastnachts" on Fat Tuesday, or using "leave" and "let" in ways that still confuse my husband. I'm so glad my version of English isn't nearly as average as I used to think!
Here in Michigan, we call the northern part of the state "up north" when, for example, telling someone where we're going for a vacation. It sound normal to me, but people "from away" (as I'm told they call non-Mainers in Maine!) will remark on this turn of phrase. I guess they just say "upstate" elsewhere.
Then, of course, we call a carbonated soft drink "pop," which always starts a discussion on regional names for, well, pop.
For what it's worth, I went to college near Cincinnati and encountered the "please?" and was told that it was (as your guests suggested) from the German "bitte" because Cincy had a lot of German settlers. When took German in school I found "bitte" used as a question just as "please" is used in Cincinnati.
We moved to NC from MI four years ago, and as a way to rebel against the move, my oldest son refuses to call soft drinks "soda". He insists that the proper term is "pop" (a mid-west term).
I have a question about a pet peeve...the habit, of some, mainly "young" people of making statements sound like "questions" by ending the sentence with an inflection. Any idea where this comes from and/or how it got started??
thanx
.
I have noticed also tone along with a word has changed the meaning of words. EXCUSE ME or EXCUSE YOU is more a insult then asking for clarity.
Also in Texas thatbeit as a whole word was confusing to me when I went for a visit I was visiting from CT and they claimed they couldn't understand me.
Since the population ofCincinnati was overwhelmingly of German descent in the mid- to late 1800s, the use of the word "please" to ask someone to repeat something is a direct translation of the German phrase, "Wie bitte?" which means "How please?"
There are also "pony kegs" in Cincinnati. These have forthe most part been replaced by convenience stores as places where people buy beer. There are still a few still in existence in some suburban Cincinnati communities. They typically have a loading dock to which you would back up your wagon to load a barrel of beer (or "pony keg" of beer.)
First, as a fan of the Frank Capra film, It's a Wonderful Life, I never understood the reference the bartender (Sheldon Leonard played) Nick in Martini's Tavern, when he said "I don't know you from Adam's off ox!" until now. Many thanks for filling a hole in my knowledge of this classic film.
Can your guests identify when or how Americans went from the phrase "by accident" to "on accident" as I hear most young people speaking today?
Love the show as usual.
I'm from SW Ohio and recently moved to eastern North Carolina. Since moving, I have noticed differences in dialect and diction. The most interesting to me is that here in NC people say "I'll get up with you later" to mean "I'll talk to you (or call you) later." I grew up saying "I'll get ahold (sic.) of you later" to mean the same.
A term I learned from my mother, who grew up in northern Virginia, is "wopperjawed." This term is used to mean "crooked" or "askew," often in reference to clothing.
The Dictionary of American Regional English would not have been possible without the long-term financial support of the National Endowment for the Humanities, an independent Federal agency.