Chrissy

This is an article I saw in National Geographic-sadly, it isn't avaliable online yet so I typed it out for your veiwing pleasure.

North American Dialects
Far from fading away, they're getting more pronounced

Read these words aloud: caught and cot; pin and pen. Do the pairs sound the same? Your answers depend on where you're from. That's because even though most Americans and Canadians speak English, they don't speak the same English.

The diferent dialects developed from the various groups that immigrated to the continent generations ago. Until recently, notes University of Pennsylvania linguist Bill Labov, many experts assumed that "under the influence of universal literacy and mass media, regional dialects were being leveled."

Not so: Local identity and other socail factors exert a stronger influence then even TV on how dialects evolve. "The inland North, the Midland, Canada, and the South are now more diffrent from each other then ever," says Labov, who directed a long-running study on American dialects. The findings will be published this month in The Atlas of North American English, which he wrote with Charles Boberg and Sharon Ash.

In each Region the study found major sound changes in progress. In the North, for instance, vowels are shifting so that the o in "stock" sounds more like the a in "back" Just across the border in Canada, the exact opposite shift is occuring. The changes and intensification of dialects aren't unique to North America. Labov observes that in England and Europe "long-established regional dialects are also getting stronger."

So where are you on the map? If your pens sound like pins, then you're probably from the South. But if "cot and "caught" sound alike, you may be from New England, Western Pennsylvania, the West, Canada-or Scotland.
-Naomi Schwarz

1) With it's dense cities and cultural roots reaching back to the frist colonies, the Northeast has more local dialects then anywhere else in North America.

2)The Southern accent is holding its own, except in the biggest cities, such as Atlanta and Dallas.

3)The English spoken throughout the West, which was settled more recently then the eastern U.S., has not yet developed a uniform regional dialect

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I thought that was fun...on a side note, do you ever wish you could hear how your accent sounds to a foreigner? I think that would be cool.

DigitaL MasteR

Cool thread, seriously very interesting
Well, I guess that people don’t really pay alotta attention to the way they say words as long as it’s the same way the people around them are speaking. But yet sometimes it bugs people when they move to a new place and they get recognized due to their accent, I know some people who changed the way they speak so that they don’t get picked on no more
BTW: You made me curious to know how my accent sounds to a foreigner well the last time I spoke to foreigners they didn’t understand a word :D anyway, they don’t speak English at the first place

Me born in CA and living there

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DigitaL MasteR: Alex