From New York to Los Angeles, people everywhere develop speech patterns unique to their region; however, these varied dialects are discriminated against at times. While this phenomenon is nothing new, ...

A man I know recently spent several weeks visiting his native South Africa. Upon his return to the United States, he found himself one day passing through a certain section of Oakland. Everyone on the ...

Later, I emigrated to the U.S. to teach linguistics at Wayne State University and began researching and teaching what academics call African American Vernacular English, or the everyday speech of ...

Why are we asking for donations? Why are we asking for donations? This site is free thanks to our community of supporters. Voluntary donations from readers like you keep our news accessible for ...

Not everyone in the United States speaks the same English, as a recent American Dialect quiz made very clear. In an essay originally published on her blog, Harmless Drudgery, lexicographer and Merriam ...

Linguists have figured out a lot about the many different regional dialects of American English. They know why Brooklynites say “cawfee,” for example, and why Bostonians say “Hahvahd Yahd.” They’ve ...

The study of dialect must always possess a peculiar interest to those interested in the development of spoken language. English, as spoken in America is not characterized by the strongly marked ...

As outrage over the shooting deaths of African-American teens continues to fill the airwaves, Stanford linguistics Professor John Rickford says more attention needs to be paid to prejudices toward ...

Bert Vaux’s dialect survey is endlessly fascinating, prompting thousands of folks to figure out which American dialect they speak. This video mixes audio of people taking the survey with Joshua Katz’s ...

Later this week the American Dialect Society will announce its word of the Year. Renee Montagne discusses word contenders with linguist Ben Zimmer, who is the language columnist for The Wall Street ...