Dialexicon: map of US accents by county

Sat Dec 19 19:22:44 UTC 2009

The project seems pretty naive. The words were chosen to illustrate "each phonetic sound we make in the English language." "Cheese" was probably included just to get an /i/ and the consonants in there. I doubt the designer of this project is aware of whether/how these sounds vary regionally. In any case, words read in isolation are unlikely to demonstrate many of the interesting variable patterns in American English such as the Southern Shift and the Northern Cities Shift.

-Matt Gordon
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From: American Dialect Society [ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU] On Behalf Of Damien Hall [djh514 at YORK.AC.UK]
Sent: Saturday, December 19, 2009 12:59 PM
To: ADS-L at LISTSERV.UGA.EDU
Subject: Re: Dialexicon: map of US accents by county

On Dec 19 2009, Herb Stahlke wrote:

[...]

>"cheese" isn't a bad choice.  It will show whether the speaker has the
>Southern Vowel Shift, which centralizes the onset of mid and high
>vowels.  In such varieties of Southern, "cheese" would be /tS at i:z/

Thanks. I did think that if /i/ would show anything it might be about the
South, but my memory of the Southern Vowel Shift's effect on non-low vowels
extended only to its moving /E/ up and /e/ down, I'm afraid. You've
refreshed my memory, but I should have looked it up!

Damien

--
Damien Hall

University of York
Department of Language and Linguistic Science
Heslington
YORK
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UK

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