Textbook recommendation?

[AAllan at AOL.COM]

Well, you might look for this book by (ahem!) Allan Metcalf:

_How We Talk: American Regional English Today_. Paperback, published by
Houghton Mifflin in 2000. Covers all regions of current American English and
ethnic varieties and the movies too; and presumes no linguistic background.
Some discussion of historical origins too.

And it even has some items never before included in a work on American
dialects! like "spendy" - which this book is not.