HEARING THE ACCENT (COMMENT). Our friend Paul Cundari writes: “I was reading your blog – the entry about Local Twitter Dialects – and it reminded me of when I was in school in Michigan . Naturally, I met many Michiganders, and after awhile, when speaking with someone, a town would pop into my head and I’d ask the person if they were from that town. I was correct with a high degree of accuracy, probably around 70%. I can’t tell you why I was able to do this, and I can’t do it for any other place, except perhaps Canada – A?”
There are people who hear the nuances of accents. Mark Twain is said to have claimed that he could identify the town that anybody came from along the Mississippi River. I was talking to a colleague once, and he referred to a “Rye accent.” He meant an accent spoken in Rye, New York, a town of about 15,000 people located on Long Island Sound, a suburb of New York. I challenged him on whether there was such an accent. He specified a characteristic usage, put us on speakerphone, called the Rye Hilton, spoke to the operator, and there was the usage.