Via silent-tristero, I discovered this article in the LA Times on a recent study on dialects in America. You might think that it’d be mostly common sense but, there were some surprises as well:
Work on the atlas already has begun to unveil some surprising facts about the state of North America's dialects, such as the sharp boundaries that exist between them. Some linguists have argued that pronunciation patterns should vary along continuums, the way the northern prairie gradually becomes the southern desert. Labov has found that dialects tend to abut sharply, more like cold and warm weather fronts.
“When you drive from Akron down to Columbus, Ohio,” he said, “you’re crossing one of the great American divides [from the Northern to the Midland dialect], even if you're not aware of it.” [...]
The article also links to the web version of their dialect atlas. There, you can see, for instance, that Oklahoma City is part of the South Midland dialect — the same as Cincinnatti — not the Southern dialect. And, El Paso is part of the West dialect — same as Sacramento — not the Southern dialect either.
Man, Labov is so cool.
We spent a long time talking about him and his research projects in my linguistics class this past semester. He’s done some fun stuff.
This was the class in which I found out that I had the dialect that shows no difference in [cot and caught] but a difference in [father and farther].
Dialects are so much fun.