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mmcirvinI'm fascinated by regional dialects in part because everyone says I sound like I'm from somewhere else. My Midwestern accent was more pronounced when I was very young (it's been modified by some borrowings from Mid-Atlantic, Southern and even Massachusetts English), but it's still pretty recognizable even though I've lived almost my whole life outside the Midwest.
A Harvard kid from the Northeast claimed I sounded like the people in Fargo, but my accent isn't really Scandinavian-flavored Minnesotan (I've never even been to Minnesota). I think it's more Southeast Iowa/Cleveland, gotten from my mother and early childhood: some indistinct mixture of North Central and Inland North. But according to this survey, it looks as if my word usages are not Midwestern or Inland North at all but pretty standard Mid-Atlantic Eastern, as you'd expect from a kid who grew up in suburban northern Virginia but didn't have Southern roots.
Something I always wondered about was the regional distinction, if any, between the two major pronunciations of "aunt". It seemed like it ought to be a North/South thing, but it wasn't. No wonder I was confused: while "ahnt" is mostly Northeastern, I was living near a narrow inclusion of majority "ahnt" that looks like it cuts diagonally through Virginia from Williamsburg through Richmond and Charlottesville. Unless that's just a statistical artifact.
(I say "ant".)
A Harvard kid from the Northeast claimed I sounded like the people in Fargo, but my accent isn't really Scandinavian-flavored Minnesotan (I've never even been to Minnesota). I think it's more Southeast Iowa/Cleveland, gotten from my mother and early childhood: some indistinct mixture of North Central and Inland North. But according to this survey, it looks as if my word usages are not Midwestern or Inland North at all but pretty standard Mid-Atlantic Eastern, as you'd expect from a kid who grew up in suburban northern Virginia but didn't have Southern roots.
Something I always wondered about was the regional distinction, if any, between the two major pronunciations of "aunt". It seemed like it ought to be a North/South thing, but it wasn't. No wonder I was confused: while "ahnt" is mostly Northeastern, I was living near a narrow inclusion of majority "ahnt" that looks like it cuts diagonally through Virginia from Williamsburg through Richmond and Charlottesville. Unless that's just a statistical artifact.
(I say "ant".)