Mapping How Americans Talk - Soda vs. Pop vs. Coke

#Coke #HarvardDialectSurvey #Pop #Soda

What's your general term for a sweetened carbonated beverage? What word or words do you use to address a group of two or more people? What do you call it when the rain falls while the sun is shining?

Former Harvard professor Bert Vaux asked tens of thousands of people across the U.S. these questions and released the results as the 2003 Harvard Dialect Survey. The data are fascinating; they reveal patterns of migration, unexpected linguistic kinships between regions, and the awesome variety of words we say and how we say them.

The study has wormed its way into popular consciousness and periodically morphs into a meme (just search "accent tag" on YouTube). Last summer, North Carolina State University graduate student Joshua Katz turned Vaux's geographical data into a set of stunning heat maps that went viral.

For the video above, we called people across the country to ask them a few of Vaux's questions, then layered the answers with maps based on Katz's. You'll hear what Philadelphians call a group of people, the many ways of pronouncing "pecan," and what Southerners mean when they say "the devil is beating his wife."

To delve deeper into the world of dialects,  check out Vaux's original study, Katz's maps, and the Phonological Atlas of North American English. See also Deborah Fallows' writing on language across the country for the American Futures project. Thanks to FoBoGro and the Johnson Casket Company for their help.

The Atlantic

Published on Nov 25, 2013

Comments

9 things about MLK's speech and the March on Washington

#MLK #MartinLutherKingJr #MarchonWashington #IHaveaDream "I have a dream this afternoon that my four little children will not come up in the same young days that I came up within, but they will be judged on the basis of the content of their character, not the color of their skin." The Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. spoke these words in 1963, but this was not the speech that would go down as one of the most important addresses in US history. King spoke these words in Detroit, two months before he addressed a crowd of nearly 250,000 with his resounding "I Have a Dream" speech at the March on Washington for Freedom and Jobs on August 28, 1963. Several of King's staff members actually tried to discourage him from using the same "I have a dream" refrain again. As we all know, that didn't happen. But how this pivotal speech was crafted is just one of several interesting facts about what is one of the most important moments in the 2...

A call for equality and freedom, it became one of the defining moments of the civil rights movement

#MLK #MartinLutherKingJr #IHaveaDream I Have a Dream, speech by Martin Luther King, Jr., that was delivered on August 28, 1963, during the March on Washington. A call for equality and freedom, it became one of the defining moments of the civil rights movement and one of the most iconic speeches in American history. Some 250,000 people gathered at the Lincoln Memorial in Washington, D.C., for the March on Washington. The one-day event both protested racial discrimination and encouraged the passage of civil rights legislation; at the time, the Civil Rights Act was being discussed in Congress. The march featured various speeches as well as musical performances before King, a celebrated orator, appeared as the final official speaker; A. Philip Randolph and Benjamin Mays ended the proceedings with a pledge and a benediction, respectively. Early in his prepared speech, King referenced Abraham Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address with “Five score years ago….” He then spoke a...

Remembering Martin Luther King Jr.

#MLK #Assassination #MartinLutherKingJr #Memorial National Civil Rights Museum The Lorraine Motel where James Earl Ray assassinated King on April 4, 1968, is a complex of museums that trace the civil rights movement in the U.S. from the 17th century to the present. #MLK #MartinLutherKingJr #Memorial https://www.civilrightsmuseum.org/

Are we really listening to what MLK had to say?

#MartinLutherKingJr #MLK #CivilRights #DrKing In 2020, the Martin Luther King Jr. holiday falls in a national election year, one that reminds us of the importance of voting rights, citizenship and political activism to the health of our democracy. King imagined America as a "beloved community" capable of defeating what he characterized as the triple threats of racism, militarism and materialism. The passage of the 1964 Civil Rights Act and the 1965 Voting Rights Act, alongside the 1954 Brown Supreme Court decision, represents the crown jewels of the civil rights movement's heroic period. Yet King quickly realized that policy transformations alone, including the right to vote, would be insufficient in realizing his goal of institutionalizing radical black citizenship toward the creation of the "beloved community." King argued that justice was what love looked like in public. 2020 also marks the 55th anniversary of the passage of the Voting...

Triple5Light Therapy

Search This Blog