Our World

Do You Speak American?

I found this cool site that goes into great depth about American English, a "language rich with regional variety and cultural controversy". It has four main sections including: words that shouldn't be?, from sea to shining sea (varieties of American English..how many are there?), what speech do we like best?, and what lies ahead? This site could keep you busy for a couple hours, but just check out a couple of the main topics. It really shows how diverse the English language can be. Just think about it. We all associate "y'all" with people living in the south. "Dude" and "yo" in the west. And who can forget the Boston or New York accent?! It really shows just how diverse a single language can be in certain regions of a country.

Here is the main site...just click on the main sections and will take you there, it may also break off into small sections!
http://www.pbs.org/speak/

This second one is on the same site, but its a little more difficult to find. Here you can try guess where a person is from by listening to samples of them talking. I tried it and I was only able to get the ones right in the south. Pitiful I know!
http://www.pbs.org/speak/seatosea/americanvarieties/map/map.html

posted by Anonymous @ 5/22/2006 07:04:00 PM