Where is the Speaker From?

Try this regional dialect quiz!

Do you speak motherese?

If you’re a mother anywhere on earth, you probably have employed this speaking style. Motherese, or “infant-directed speech” is an important teaching tool.

Accommodation theory: why Hillary Clinton lapsed into a southern accent.

Clinton added a Southern lilt to her voice when she addressed a civil rights group headed by the Reverend Al Sharpton.
An explanation for this behavior is here.

 

The rock hyrax surprises with syntax skills and regional dialects.

The rock hyrax is a surprisingly sophisticated communicator, a study published in a Royal Society journal suggests.

Smoky Mountain Speech

The people of the Smoky Mountains speak a colorful, twangy mountain talk that reflects their history and geography. Christine Mallinson, Becky Childs, Bridget Anderson and Neal Hutcheson tour these linguistically rich hills. (The research cited in this essay was first published in 2003.)

Do You Tweet Southern?

Twitter keeping regional accents alive, study finds.

Talking the Yanks Under the Table

Are Britons are objectively cleverer and more amusing than Americans, or do they just sound that way?

Devil of a time with City of Angels’ name

Texas Gov. Rick Perry, President Theodore Roosevelt and Bugs Bunny might appear to have little in common, but they do share one distinction: they’ve all mispronounced Los Angeles.

Yoo talkin’ to us?

Researching whether New York is losing its distinctive accent.

Oregon woman wakes up from surgery with British accent

After oral surgery, she found herself a victim of apparent “foreign accent syndrome.”