re: #186 ObserverArt

I went to Philly in ‘76 for the big bicentennial celebration. We had some college friends from Philly and Jersey we hung out with.

It took a little time to get used to their speech for us Ohioans. First impression was they were faster and a little higher pitched.

And they were different from the Pittsburgh and Erie art students I met in college.

Even Ohio has three forms of dialect. Always amazed me that a couple hundred miles can change language use and speech styles.

My view of it is that the area covered by each distinct dialect in America is proportional to the speed of transportation at the time that area was settled by white people. Thus, Boston, New York, Philadelphia, and Baltimore all have very distinct accents, but by the time you get to the midwest, for example, there’s a generalized “Minnesota/Wisconsin” accent, and California has essentially one accent.