[HN Gopher] North American English Dialects
___________________________________________________________________
North American English Dialects
Author : skogstokig
Score : 137 points
Date : 2026-04-16 03:38 UTC (19 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (aschmann.net)
(TXT) w3m dump (aschmann.net)
| nielsbot wrote:
| These are fun relevant videos:
|
| Accent Expert Gives a Tour of U.S. Accents - (Part One) | WIRED
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=H1KP4ztKK0A&t=271s
| paganel wrote:
| This page/project itself is another proof of the cultural
| significance of YT, one of the very few positive things brought
| by the Internet post-2010.
| nephihaha wrote:
| I feel that the Maritimes are somewhat simplified here,
| especially Newfoundland and Labrador which has some of the most
| distinctive accents on the continent, at least among older
| people.
| suddenlybananas wrote:
| I'd agree completely but this could just be due to logistical
| constraints of the ANAE, I took a course with Charles Boberg
| (one of the authors of the ANAE) and he was definitely aware of
| that, I vaguely recall learning from him that the
| Newfoundlander accent traditionally doesn't have t/d flapping
| which is totally unique in North America. Great class, he
| definitely has an incredible knack for precisely imitating
| accents.
| walrus01 wrote:
| It's absolutely oversimplified, someone from a small coastal
| town in Newfoundland does not sound at all like a person from
| much of the same area labeled "atlantic canadian" in Nova
| Scotia, or in larger cities like Fredericton or Moncton in NB.
| Putting basically all of NB, NS and NF as one large pink blob
| on the map is a drastic oversimplifiaction.
|
| It also seems that whoever created this kind of gave up when
| figuring out Canadian speech patterns spanning longitude from
| east to west. Somebody from Kenora or Dryden or Timmins Ontario
| does not speak like a person from North Vancouver, BC.
| Vancouver region English is much closer to general west coast
| as it's spoken in a big city in WA, OR or California.
| nsavage wrote:
| I'm from Ontario and its very simplified in my experience as
| well. Maybe the problem is the sample audio clips they have
| are all 'posh', its not how most people speak. Two large
| examples I can think of that even have their own wikipedia
| pages are the Ottawa Valley Twang
| (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ottawa_Valley_English) and the
| 'Torontomans' (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Toronto_slang).
| I grew up in Toronto, and the latter isn't just something
| funny you see on tiktok, people actually talk that way.
| nonameiguess wrote:
| It's oversimplified for any region whatsoever. You're citing
| right here what people speak like in big west coast cities
| but I grew up in California and would have been able to tell
| apart people who grew up in Anaheim versus San Gabriel Valley
| versus San Fernando Valley versus West LA, let alone LA
| versus San Francisco. I couldn't have _explained_ what the
| difference is but I could have heard it. Everybody will be
| more attuned to the tiny regional differences of the place
| they actually come from, but a map like this would be
| impossible to make if you tried to draw out the boundaries
| and explanations for 400 million separate regional dialects.
| Steltek wrote:
| And right next door, the Maine accent is lumped in with Boston.
| The differences aren't worth correcting anybody unless you're
| talking about a project like this.
|
| I'm not an expert on accents or anything but I think you can
| hear it in "dinner". Boston is the typical "R's don't exist"
| thing. Maine is more like "dinnyah" - your jaw kicks back a
| bit.
| nephihaha wrote:
| I am not American but can hear slight differences between
| Maine and Boston. Urban accents are often different to their
| hinterland, let alone those with different formative
| influences.
| shevy-java wrote:
| Goose language? Or yankee doodels?
|
| I was taught British English. I think America English is in many
| ways simpler, but my brain is wired to british spelling as well
| as pronounciation for the most part. Now it depends who has good
| spoken british english. One of my all-time favourites is Rowan
| Atkinson, but his english is kind of more theater-trained really;
| if you compare it to the Monty Python guys for instance. War
| criminal Tony Blair also has a good spoken english - not that I
| like the guy or find anything useful he said or did, but british
| english wins. Or we could go scottish - I don't quite like it as
| much as british english (Patrick Stewart also has a good
| intonation, but it's also more theater-trained than "real", per
| se), but one of the coolest thing ever is Gerard Butler teaching
| people scottish. What keeps scots apart from English is the
| language really. (Though, I also have to say, Sean Connery's
| dialect was nowhere near as funny or entertaining as Gerard's
| dialect. Guess even in Scotland there are diffferences.)
|
| Irish english sounds more melodic - no wonder they kept on
| winning Eurovision. Paul David Hewson's voice in his prime is a
| great example.
|
| I've also found African American english very interesting. One
| thing that keeps on tripping me up is "asking" versus "axsking".
| To me only the british pronounciation works, but I hear sooooo
| many axxing examples on youtube that I concluded that this must
| be widespread in the USA. I always have to think of an axe when I
| hear it though.
| DeathArrow wrote:
| >Now it depends who has good spoken british english.
|
| My favorites are David Attenborough and BBC in general.
| zabzonk wrote:
| The BBC actually has an official "Pronunciation Unit", which
| tells people like newsreaders the "proper" way to pronounce
| words and placenames. Unfortunately, particularly in the
| latter case they often get it wrong. For example, my late Dad
| was born in a small West Yorkshire town called Sowerby
| Bridge, which the unit insists should be said Sourbee Bridge.
| Everyone, without exception, who lives there knows it is
| Sorebee Bridge. Writing in to the BBC complaining about this
| and many other similar errors is a popular hobby.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/BBC_Pronunciation_Unit
| bitwize wrote:
| Local pronunciations of place names are often different
| from what's expected, and whether intended to be such or
| not, are often used as shibboleths to distinguish locals
| from outsiders. The examples of Couch Street (/'kutS/) in
| Portland, Oregon and Tchoupitoulas Street
| (/,tSap.@.'tu:.l@s/) in New Orleans, Louisiana come to mind
| in American place names.
| bigfishrunning wrote:
| Lancaster PA (LANG-KISS-TER) checking in
| devilbunny wrote:
| Tchoup is just unpronounceable to most outsiders; the
| shibboleths are the streets that are pronounced very
| differently from what it would be anywhere else. Like
| Calliope (rhymes with TALLY-hope) or Burgundy (emphasis
| on second syllable).
| bitwize wrote:
| Or Chartres ("Charters") or Melpomene (/'mel.p@.,mi:n/),
| I get it. My wife has corrected me on quite possibly each
| and every one of the streets with a locally specific
| pronunciation.
|
| Ooh, thought of another good place name like that: Quincy
| (/'kwIn.zi/), Massachusetts! Massachusetts has a fair
| number of those, owing to its English settlement
| heritage.
| jjgreen wrote:
| Fartown?
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fartown%2C_Huddersfield
| bitwize wrote:
| I wasn't referring to place names that sound like dirty
| words (as Couch St. sounds like "Cooch"); an uncountable
| number of Gropecunt Lanes in England would certainly
| qualify. I was rather referring to place names with
| counterintuitive pronunciations locals are expected to
| know, so that outsiders are immediately clocked by
| pronouncing it wrong. Couch St. definitely qualifies in
| both categories though.
| zabzonk wrote:
| In this LLM age, I guess that would be Gas Town :-(
|
| https://steve-yegge.medium.com/welcome-to-gas-
| town-4f25ee16d...
| bityard wrote:
| Oh, we have a TON of placenames in Michigan that are
| pronounced much differently than they are spelled. A lot of
| these are just Native American and French names/words that
| most people don't know how to pronounce anyway, but a few
| are just special for no apparent reason.
|
| Examples:
|
| Orion = "or-ee-un", Ionia = "eye-ON-nee-ah", Charlotte =
| "shar-lot", Milan = "MILE-an", Saline = "suh-LEEN"
| gtr wrote:
| Patrick Stewart is from Yorkshire not Scotland, by the way.
| throw0101a wrote:
| > _Patrick Stewart is from Yorkshire not Scotland, by the
| way._
|
| I thought the House of Picard was from France...
| bigfishrunning wrote:
| Acting!
| walthamstow wrote:
| "Arksing" is also present in Caribbean English and came to
| London via there. This and other 'incorrect' pronounciations
| come from slavery-era creole dialects, I think.
|
| I like people who speak a more modern English from my part of
| London. Check out TV personality Big Narstie or football pundit
| Clinton Morrison. You'll love 'em.
| gbacon wrote:
| A fun follow is Scots Word of the Day by Len Pennie.
|
| https://youtube.com/@misspunnypennie
| walrus01 wrote:
| This has missed the Atlantic Canadian Cape Breton dialect, which
| if you listen to some age 70+ people who've lived their whole
| lives in the Sydney, NS area is significantly distinct from
| Halifax or other areas in the south/southwest of Nova Scotia.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_Cape_Breton
| buu709 wrote:
| Most of Newfoundland being lumped in with the Atlantic
| Provinces too. For the most part you can tell where on the
| island someone is from based solely on the accent. Hell, I've
| lived & worked with people from the south coast and I still
| have a hard time even understanding them sometimes.
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| Yeah, was saying this in my own comment generally, it's
| extremely weak on Canada generally. Definitely showing his lack
| of education on the topic.
| Simulacra wrote:
| I think it would take a mighty sensitive ear to tell the
| difference between someone who is in Charleston, versus Savannah.
| SamHenryCliff wrote:
| Nope. Southern Drawl is very distinct from Appalachian
| Hillbilly. To me it's as clear as Boston versus Long Island.
| walthamstow wrote:
| A recent series of Alone was won by a guy from Goose Bay,
| Labrador. To my ear, as a Brit, it just sounds Irish, right down
| to saying 'tree' for 'three'. I can only imagine that's where the
| initial settlers were from and the isolation meant it never
| changed much.
| unsupp0rted wrote:
| Spoilers! That season/series was a really fun watch.
|
| In previous seasons/series they didn't have the formula down
| yet, so 2/3rds of the episode were one literally starving
| person after another, just sighing into a camera about how
| hungry they are, how cold it is, and how nothing is changing.
|
| Whereas in this one some people did incredibly well, others
| tapped out after setbacks, illness, or made thinly-veiled
| excuses about illness (even though they just lost the drive to
| stay in it). 5/5 would recommend.
| walthamstow wrote:
| Great show. There were some series which were a bit sad and
| just became about who was the poorest and most desperate to
| stick it out for 500k.
| WalterBright wrote:
| Being cold, miserable, lonely, wet, dirty, uncomfortable,
| and hungry for 60 days just seems hellish. And then, as #2,
| you came away with nothing.
|
| The curious thing is they all claim to be survival experts,
| but they don't know how to build a proper fireplace (either
| burning down their shelter or asphyxiating themselves).
| None of them who used a fish net would take it out of the
| river during a storm, so it isn't destroyed. And there were
| always contestants who would spend all their calories
| building a log cabin, and then starvation would force them
| out.
| taylorhughes wrote:
| Reminds me of the awesome (old) New York Times dialect quiz,
| which was weirdly accurate:
| https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/upshot/dialect-quiz...
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Paywalled, but I am reminded of people who study dialects being
| able to discern where someone is from using a kind of binary
| tree approach. In some cases a single word differentiating
| which side of a specific hill they were born.
| hoppyhoppy2 wrote:
| You could try this gift link:
| https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/upshot/dialect-
| quiz...
| neaden wrote:
| If you liked that the person who made it wrote a book called
| Speaking American that I enjoyed:
| https://bookshop.org/p/books/speaking-american-how-y-all-you...
| 999900000999 wrote:
| Is anyone archiving these accents ?
|
| As much as I'm happy that kids now have access to YouTube, and
| thus can use the neutral influencer dialect, something about our
| culture is being erased.
|
| I grew up speaking both a neutral California accent and bits of
| AAVE. AAVE itself is drastically different depending on the part
| of the US you're in. I can barely understand southern AAVE. NYC
| AAVE is much faster, but I think NYC people think faster in
| general.
|
| I really do believe YouTube can bring gaps. If your a kid in
| Albania you can see life though the eyes of someone in Oakland.
|
| And hop on a zoom 30 minutes later to chat. This would be
| unimaginable 50 years ago.
| roxolotl wrote:
| They have audio samples if that's what you mean. The ones from
| where I grew up were spot on but rare even when I was growing
| up in the 90s.
|
| https://aschmann.net/AmEng/#AudioFilesOfLocalDialects
| ghaff wrote:
| Radio followed by television has done a lot of homogenization
| even if you don't have the more formalized received
| pronunciation you had/have in the UK. Even something
| stereotypical like a "Boston accent" was mostly a Southie
| accent on the one hand and an essentially English (Boston
| Brahmin) on the other. Most urbanites in particular never had
| others and many weren't even from Boston.
| jonahrd wrote:
| I looked through and found one rejected video from Montreal.
| It's crazy to me, to reject someone with a French accent.
| It's how people talk here! Many consider themselves perfectly
| bilingual and grew up speaking both languages. Even the more
| Anglo-Quebecois have a very specific vocabulary and accent
| heavily influenced by French.
| asveikau wrote:
| I used to visit French speaking Canada when I was in
| college. I found it interesting to see people who could
| switch between an Anglo-Canadian accent and a French-
| Canadian accent, to my ear sounding native at both. This
| wasn't everyone obviously, but there were people like that.
| thaumasiotes wrote:
| > And hop on a zoom 30 minutes later to chat. This would be
| unimaginable 50 years ago.
|
| It was pretty easy to imagine 50 years ago. For example, Star
| Trek started airing 60 years ago. The Jetsons started airing a
| few years before that.
| 999900000999 wrote:
| And it would be basically free and accessible to anyone? Two
| 50$ cell phones can Zoom using library WiFi across the globe
| Izkata wrote:
| It was on the way there even before Star Trek: https://en.w
| ikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_videotelephony#AT&T...
|
| The next one down is a home system on a subscription,
| though just after Star Trek and expensive at the time.
| neaden wrote:
| I think the conflict is on the term unimaginable. People
| back then definitely imagined the equivalent of Zoom and it
| being free even if they didn't know technically how it
| could happen.
| 999900000999 wrote:
| Remember when long distance calling was really expensive.
|
| It was for serious business, not small talk. If you
| somehow knew Zoom would happen you could have created
| Zoom and you'd be very rich.
|
| TBF, unimaginable is a strong word. Impractical would be
| better.
| WalterBright wrote:
| Back in the 80s, Zortech was located in London while I
| lived in the Seattle area. International phone calls were
| too expensive, so we would communicate by fax. Late at
| night, sending a fax cost about a dollar a page. (No email
| then.)
|
| An unanticipated result is I have a record of our
| conversations, which would have all been lost if it was
| phone calls.
| kevin_thibedeau wrote:
| Picturephones were developed in the 30s and demoed at the '64
| world's fair.
| interloxia wrote:
| The video call sequence in 2001 from 1968 comes to mind too.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vWwo6JpMceg
| pessimizer wrote:
| > AAVE itself is drastically different depending on the part of
| the US you're in.
|
| That's because AAVE is a really dumb term that only caught on
| because a black man (McWhorter) introduced it.
|
| It was a convenient way to advertise your inclusiveness while
| simultaneously dismissing the way black people speak by lumping
| them all together (a lot of woke has been insisting that all
| black people, or even all _non-white_ people are fungible, like
| commodities.) Even better, you could show that you listen to a
| black linguist who, iirc, is the son of professors who grew up
| in a university environment, knowing no more about black
| language variation than any number of white people.
|
| The way black Americans speak is as varied as the way white
| Americans speak, and is often far more similar to their white
| neighbors than to the black people in the next state over.
| Also, black Americans don't call themselves "African-American"
| unless they were raised in a white environment. Never have.
| tptacek wrote:
| This doesn't look like John McWhorter to me. Does it look
| like McWhorter to you? It looks like Geoffrey Pullum. You
| know, _that_ Geoffrey Pullum?
|
| https://web.stanford.edu/~zwicky/aave-is-not-se-with-
| mistake...
| 999900000999 wrote:
| > and is often far more similar to their white neighbors than
| to the black people in the next state over
|
| Actually you might be right depending on how integrated the
| area is:
|
| Exhibit A: Your Old Droog Exhibit B: Lord Sko
|
| As an adult my normal speaking voice is closer to a relaxed
| California accent. It's clear , but it always leaves room to
| weasel out of certain situations.
|
| If I could I'd probably use a Mid Atlantic Madmen accent.
| That accent gets things done.
| Izkata wrote:
| AAVE is the modern politically correct term for what was
| already called Ebonics for decades (by black people).
| bityard wrote:
| > Also, black Americans don't call themselves "African-
| American" unless they were raised in a white environment.
| Never have.
|
| I'm guessing you either don't remember or weren't alive in
| the 1990's. It was a whole grassroots movement and pretending
| it didn't exist is extremely insensitive, to put it mildly.
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/African_Americans#Terminology
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Some of the YouTube links are broken or have moved Private. Too
| bad.
| asveikau wrote:
| I am the type of person to notice accents a lot, one
| interesting thing I've noticed is how much NYC AAVE has the
| vowels of other NYC accents, like the stereotypical "cawfee"
| vowels. A lot of AAVE across the country sounds kind of like
| the south to my ear, but NY is one place where the local AAVE
| has a lot in common with other local accents.
|
| This is even more true if you find old recordings.
| soupfordummies wrote:
| Check this out if you haven't seen it before:
|
| https://accent.gmu.edu/browse_language.php?function=find&lan...
| flumes_whims_ wrote:
| Wikitongues is doing this with languages.
|
| https://www.youtube.com/@Wikitongues/videos
| dave4270 wrote:
| New Orleans drops mic... I'm from River Ridge in the Jefferson
| Parish suburbs ( within the city area ) and if I meet a stranger
| somewhere else in the country they, after one or two sentences,
| usually think I'm from New York. But slipping into one of the
| many dialects we have here is never far away, depending on who
| you are conversing with. Only locals will understand, but my wife
| used to tell me that after 2 sentences my dad and I would start
| talking like we were "from Kenner" and she couldn't follow the
| conversation. To non-locals, Kenner is directly next to River
| Ridge.
| ghaff wrote:
| Yeah, when I lived there, a lot of native New Orleans dialect
| had a lot in common with Brooklyn to my ears.
|
| Started work there at the same time as a school classmate who
| grew up in Jacksonville. Spent a lot of time doing engineering
| work on offshore drilling rigs. Told my friend I really had
| trouble understanding people a lot of the time. He said he did
| as well :-)
| selimthegrim wrote:
| Also a lot of Chalmatians still possess a strongly related 'yat
| accent. Is there a "River Ridge, brah" joke too?
| dave4270 wrote:
| No, that would be a union violation. "Kenna, brah" is an
| institution. And I can't believe I just read "Chalmatians" on
| HN. Full disclosure, I went to Holy Cross when it was still
| in the Ninth Ward. Chalmatian has been part of my vocabulary
| since the 80's. I'm sure every big city has its neighborhoods
| with individual cultures, but our heavily mixed population
| combined with insular land masses tend to create very
| distinct niches that all have the common thread of "The City
| that Care Forgot".
| selimthegrim wrote:
| I lived across from where the old Patton's plant used to be
| until a couple years ago and then I moved to Mid-City.
| brianleb wrote:
| Ha, grew up in Harahan. When I left the LA for college, people
| were shocked to find out where I was from based on how I
| talked. I would hear areas of New England, 'no discernible
| accent,' and also Canadian. Apparently the Canadian comes out
| when I say words like out, about, and house. I can't hear it
| but my friends all swore up and down they could.
|
| There are so many unique dialects hyperlocal to New Orleans,
| it's amazing.
| chkaloon wrote:
| Glad to see the special mention of the Mat Su Valley in Alaska.
| Lived there for 10 years, originally from Wisconsin. And yes, the
| two are VERY similar. Not the exactly the same, I did notice a
| difference when I moved back to WI, more nasal. But the Mat Su
| Valley was populated by Midwestern farmers during the Depression,
| so it makes sense.
| bluedino wrote:
| Fred Armisen does a great bit on North American accents
|
| https://youtu.be/G72tZdjnS2A?si=oMaLfGgJAZxaoAHn
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| My daughter (grew up in California) wondered what the "Kansas
| accent" was (I grew up in Kansas). I often called it a drawl.
|
| She goes to college in Kansas now and is still confused. Perhaps
| growing up with me it just sounds "normal".
|
| I'll point her to the band, "The Embarrassment" in various
| interviews:
|
| [1] https://youtu.be/0gyChDSjrXc
|
| [2] https://youtu.be/kJBDRdDjgWY
| bityard wrote:
| I grew up in a poor rural part of Michigan. Day to day, you
| didn't meet many people who lived there by choice so the
| demographic (and Midwestern accent) was pretty homogenous. In
| high school, our class had a new kid who moved up from Kansas
| and to us, he sounded _extremely_ southern. His first week at
| school was pretty much everybody asking him to say stuff in his
| funny accent.
| subpixel wrote:
| Really hard-core, old-school Charleston accent missing:
| https://youtu.be/rxNZrFyl2DA?si=VV7OWi-fY2m3twIA&t=1835
| canjobear wrote:
| Charleston is displayed on the map as a "transitional or
| anomalous area"...
| kyleblarson wrote:
| A slightly less cultured and different but nonetheless
| entertaining Carolina accent:
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PtQCUrMZWOc
| tralarpa wrote:
| The title says "dialects" but most comments here are only about
| accents.
|
| Can people here give examples of non-standard grammar or
| vocabulary (that goes beyond some temporary slang or subculture
| words)?
| ludicrousdispla wrote:
| 'mensch' and 'schmuck' are commonly used words in NYC that are
| not known to people in the South, unless they have studied
| German (and yes I had to fight capitalizing them.)
|
| Another example... 'they're all' is shorthand for 'they're all
| gone' in Pennsylvania.
| lief79 wrote:
| Never heard that second one, which part of PA? I'm Philly
| burbs.
| 1-more wrote:
| schlep too. To a much lesser extent mishegas and tsuris.
| There's a continuum for knowing Yiddish words where at one
| end it's "lived in NYC" and then passes through "had
| playdates with a Jewish friend" through sequentially "have
| 1/2/3/4 Jewish grandparents." All of these things possible
| anywhere in the world, but I agree very much an NYC thing.
| 1-more wrote:
| Biggest two I can think of are
|
| 1) AAVE's use of Copulas. In most English you form present
| progressive with a copula and the present participle: I am
| walking, I am driving, I am working. The copula contains no
| information on its own. In many languages, a low information
| word is dropped. In Spanish you say "(yo) soy Americano"
| meaning "(I) am American." There can be no doubt of the subject
| of the verb "soy" because it is inflected to match the subject,
| so the pronoun "yo" communicates nothing in a normal sentence
| and is dropped. In Russian you take the opposite tack: you say
| "ya Amerikanets" meaning "I (am) American)" so you drop the
| copula. You either need the pronoun or the verb to communicate
| who is American, and in this case the pronoun won. Well in AAVE
| you drop the copula in those present progressive sentences: "I
| walking," "I driving," "I working." But then there's an
| opportunity to put a higher information in all of these
| sentences: you can use "be" as a copula to express the habitual
| aspect. "I be walking," "I be driving," "I be working" (usually
| with emphasis on the "be") mean "I am in the habit of X, but
| don't assume that is what I am doing at this moment." Degrees
| can be expressed here: you can replace "be" with "stay" to get
| _more_ habitual and less present. It 's a trip! I'm scratching
| the surface here but that's a big one.
|
| 2) Related: "Needs" + past participle vs "needs" + present
| participle. I was working with a handyman from Colorado and he
| said "This sink needs sealed" or something like that. I
| (Northeast) would have said "this sink needs sealing." Colorado
| has always had over 50% of the population born outside of the
| state, so I don't know if that's a thing from there or from
| wherever his parents are from (not sure and didn't ask).
| ks2048 wrote:
| There are lots of minor (and fuzzy usage) of regional
| vocabulary.
|
| "pop" vs "soda" is a commonly discussed one. (Google to see
| maps).
|
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_English_regional_voca...
| engeljohnb wrote:
| I'm from Indiana. I'm not an expert, but I do travel across the
| US for work, and here's a few things that are normal to me but
| weird to others.
|
| "Your car needs washed" instead of "you need to wash your car"
|
| Replying "You're good" after someone apologizes.
|
| Adding an S to the end of brand names, especially grocery
| stores.
|
| I don't do this one, but my extended family in Ohio just says
| "please" when they mean "could you repeat that?"
| saltcured wrote:
| More directly, "Your car needs washed" is "Your car needs [to
| be] washed" dropping the passive infinitive "to be".
|
| Another very close variant would be "Your car needs washing".
| cmrdporcupine wrote:
| I've seen this before but I object to the treatment of Canada.
|
| Firstly, there's regional dialects of Canadian English, and I
| don't just mean Newfoundland vs rest of Canada. The Ottawa Valley
| for example has some strong dialect markers. There's marked
| differences between central and southern Alberta (often not
| noticed by people living there, but there). Between coastal BC
| and Ontario, etc. etc.
|
| Secondly because in fact the upper midwest of the US is
| contiguous and overlapping with much of various Canadian dialect
| markers. In fact many of the things people consider to be
| stereotypical Canadian are even more pronounced in upper midwest
| US dialects than they are here.
|
| TLDR he could pay more attention to Canada :-) There's 40m of us
| after all.
| danielodievich wrote:
| At Microsoft TechEd in 1997 in Orlando, Florida, Microsoft bought
| out SeaWorld for the attendee party. I wound up getting really
| wet from the orca that they used to have there splashing people
| and met 3 other guys on the bench in same state. We went
| wandering around laughing and drinking. There was an Australian
| from NSW, New Zealander from Auckland, a French Canadian out of
| Ontario, and me, a fresh off the boat immigrant from Russia. I
| couldn't understand half of what was said! Aussie and kiwi were
| giving each other lots of good natured ribbing. The canuck was
| having fun and so was I as we got progressively more silly. One
| of the best parties at an industry conference I've had. Ahh the
| joy of dialects!
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