Bert Vaux, who ran the Harvard Dialect Survey that was so popular and linked to here (including the most famous pop, soda, soda pop, coke, soft drink, and still in a few places in Northern Coastal New England tonic question) is now at Cambridge and has updated the results to include the English the rest of the world speaks. I'd like to know who that one person from Transylvania is. Once I started checking their responses, I suspect they were originally from New England or upstate New York.
It will not be immediately apparent that there are loads of results for the UK, and even some for Australia and NZ, which should remind you to go back and look at Canada (remember Canada?), Alaska, and Hawaii. It is interesting how the Canadians track British usages in some places and American in others, and this varies regionally.
For the first question I grew up saying grinder, but that no longer even makes the list. In Williamsburg they said deli sandwich and I may have kept that for a while when I got back, as grinder was going out and sub was coming in. I thought the reference to driving a standard would have been more widespead and common. But have fun with it.
No comments:
Post a Comment