Discover the fascinating linguistic variation of American English with maps from Joshua Katz's book, Speaking American.

There are 8 major English dialect areas in North America, listed below the map at left. These are shown in blue, each with its number, on the map and in the Dialect Description Chart below, and are also outlined with blue lines on the map.

Accents and Dialects of English from around the world. Select samples from our map to hear subjects speak their native dialect or accent of English: American dialects, English dialects, French Accents, German Accents, Spanish accents, and more.

English speakers from different countries and regions use a variety of different accents (systems of pronunciation) as well as various localized words and grammatical constructions. Many different dialects can be identified based on these factors.

2019年1月7日 · English is the 3rd largest language by native speakers, after Mandarin Chinese and Spanish. Combining native and non-native speakers is considered the most commonly spoken language in the world. Today, about 400 million people use English as a mother tongue, 700 million people speak English as a foreign language.

2013年4月15日 · The map and list below show the major (and a few minor) geographic dialects and subdialects of English spoken in the United States. Many of these may be further subdivided into local subdialects that are not shown here.

2018年1月3日 · The surprising data illuminate the linguistic quirks that make American English such a fascinating dialect. Take a look at 27 of his maps that show how differently Americans speak:

Map 1 shows four major dialect regions: the Inland North, the South, the West, and the Midland. The first three show a relatively uniform development of the three major sound shifts of American English, each moving in different directions.

After you have explored LALME's mapping features, read these three passages of Middle English verse to the best of your ability. Using the maps, textbook, and knowledge from lecture, see if you can figure out where they came from!

This website contains over 30 interactive dialect maps illustrating our findings. Check out the following example maps, or start exploring the full collection of lexical, phonological, and grammatical variables.