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.
As a proud Wisconsinite who has lived in many areas of the country, I always get a kick out of the reaction I get when I ask people where the "bubbler" is. To my knowledge, no other area of the country refers to a drinking fountain this way.
I am hearing it much more of late.
A lot of people will say "my uncle borrowed me the money" for "my uncle lent me the money".
I hear it mostly from people in Tennessee and Kentucky. At first it was jarring to my ear but I am getting used to it.
Please correct the spelling of Dr. Hall's name - it's Joan HOUSTON Hall
A local museum. The National Museum of Language in College Park, Maryland, is hoping to mount a traveling exhibit of the Dictionary of American Regional English in 2014. We're excited about the publication of the 5th and final volume. In the meantime, we are offering an exhibit on the differences between American and British English, Emerging American Language in 1812. See http://languagemuseum.org/exhibits.html#english
Please discuss dialects in the West, especially the Northwest. How do these relate to those in the Midwest and the East?
This topic fascinates me!
As a child, living in Texas, I wrote a paper on what I considered "unique" words. The one I still remember most is the name of a city in Texas, Dublin. One would think it is in homage to Ireland, but I recall it was because homesteads were so far apart that in difficult weather, or during the winter seasons, families would "double in" for safety purposes and to share resources.
Also, being from Texas, and now living in Michigan, I always tease my mid-western husband that I don't eat "pee cans" but "puh cahns!"
I found it interesting how people end a phone conversation. Some say "bye bye" some say "bye now".
I also moved to NC (from OH) and refuse to call pop "soda." I love it here, but I think we're right :)
Since this dictionary was started many decades ago, I am wondering how the societal changes are reflected in the dictionary.
ie the inclusion of minority (African Americans, Chinese, Native Peoples).
Scott
Wichita, KS
I love this show, and I love the Diane show it is always interesting. My daughter just came back from Scotland and so many of the words she learned living there for ten years I remember from my childhood growing up in Pittsburgh Pa.
To respond to an earlier post: "Bubbler" for water fountain is still fairly common in parts of New England.
Here in the south, Kentucky in particular, I have found that "the locals" refer to a green pepper as a Mango! Having grown up in Hawaii, I know what a mango is! Also, after some time in southern Ohio, the dialect there does something with their vowels. For instance, if you were to mean "I went fishing in the bushes", it would be said like "I went feeshing in the booshes"....!
Regarding the expression "dull as a hoe:"
In my family, we use the expression "dull as a hoe," rather than froe, but I use a froe in my work. Its long blade set at a right angle to the end of a wooden handle, and used to split away sections from a bolt of wood. Its the sort of tool that is beaten for relentlessly and tossed in the shed.
I am from Massachusetts, and we pronounce route (road), root (cheer for), and root (part of a plant) the same way. My friends from the upper Midwest had three different pronunciations: rowt, root, and rut, respectively. I've always wondered why there was such variation for the Midwest but not New England.
Great Show!
I just wanted to comment on your question about starting sentences with the word "so". I have seen this very often. It is almost always done by scientists or doctorate level researchers. I think it is a result of reading and writing scientific papers.
Just a thought.
Every time my wife and I hear the begining of the show, we smile, and say, "It's Diane Rehm in Waars-hington".
Where does that "R" come from?
Diane, BLESS YOU for bringing up the "So,..." that so many people start a response with! I hear that a lot lately, and it makes me kind of nuts, because it implies that the speaker is continuing a previous line of thought, even though it's a new line of discussion. Arg. Another linguistic pet peeve I have is people saying "myself" constantly when "me" would be better, simpler, and more correct to my mind. It sounds like the speaker is trying to be very formal, when in fact I think it makes them sound insecure about their ability to articulate. It makes me think of reality programs.
Thanks & keep up the great work!
This discussion is so fascinating to me. I'm a native Rhode Islander. When I lived in CA for a while, my students would ask me to share my "Rhode Islandisms".... a bubbler is a water fountain, a grinder is a sandwich, we pahk the cah in the yahd, we eat stuffies (stuffed quahogs). I could go on and on... I'll be sure to pick up the 5th edition! Thank you for your topic!
One change in language that seems to have developed in the past few years, that I originally found annoying. This is people's (usually young poeple) answering "Thank you" by saying "no problem." It sounds condescending, though in most cases I'm sure that condescension is not intended. Yes, I suppose that I still find this annoying.
Another annoyances: the overuse of the word "absolutely" in response to questions.
Yet another annoyance: the fear of objective pronouns--particularly saying "I" when "me" should be used.
i live in Kentucky. I had an uncle from a rural area that i worked with who liked to say "Stack those boxes agin the wall".
Thanks for this fun topic.
I have heard that Appalachian English is the closest dialect to Shakespearean English. Is this true or was it true in the past and now outdated?
MOlly in Cleveland
Wondering how broadcast media has influenced standardization of American English. My mother was born in Panama and moved to the states when she was in High School and has a obvious midwestern dialect now. She is in her 70's and told us that radio and TV were very influential when she was growing up and learning to speak english.
How come people do not say "your welcome" after someone says thank you. People now respond with "No Problem" or say thank you in reply.
I grew up in Georgia and there were actually two dialects that we Southerners recognized. They were Southern and Country. For example:
Windaah (window) - Southern
Winder - Country
Also was the use of Kindly before asking someone to do something for you. ie. Kindly move your things off the table.
Someone on the show made the comment that the sound technology of the 1960s-1970s when the dialect examples were created was "primitive". Actually, it might be argued that the sound quality used today is poor. Microphones used today are over sensitive and pickup mouth noises and punctuated sounds. Ceramic microphones with those characteristics were rejected as objectionable since the 1930s when they were first introduced. Microphones and recordings made today tend to be tinny.
You only have to listen to the Caedmon recordings of Dylan Thomas reading his poetry to realize that the sound quality in 1950-3 was just fine.
Moving to northeast Tennessee from western Pennsylvania, I discovered after a period of perplexment, that "I don't care to" in Tennesee means yes!!!... while in Pennsylvania, that phrase means the opposite!! "No, I don't want to."
Great show. It reminds me of something I heard once, which is that a dictionary is a history book, not a law book. Language is always changing, much to the dismay of sticklers who would wish it weren't so.
I am from Arizona but had lived in New England for a number of years part of which was spent up in Northern Maine in a town called Greenville off Moosehead Lake. I made a very dear friend there that had lived there since his birth 70 years ago. I noticed a number of differences in word pronunciations and word use but the one that I messed up all the time was calling the evening meal 'dinner'. Apparently in that area they called the noon time meal dinner and the evening meal supper. I had invited to take him and another friend out to dinner once and they showed up ready to go at 11:30 a.m.. Since I had reservations at 6 p.m. I ended up taking them out for two meals that day... a pricey mistake but one we still laugh at today.
Thank you for adding 'I swanee" (phonetic spelling for me). I grew up in Georgia and heard and said myself "I swanee". I had no idea what it really meant but the females of the family said it in place of "I swear" or "I declare". So many memories with that phrase, among many others that we used in the South.
The misuse of lie and lay used to be a colloquial issue but is now distressingly commonplace. Is this in the dictionary?
In middle Georgia, we refer to the element that heats up on a stove as the "eye." I've used the term in other parts of the country-Texas, Colorado- and found it was not understood.