MICROACCENTS IN THE UNITED STATES—DUST BUNNIES.

MICROACCENTS IN THE UNITED STATES—DUST BUNNIES. I have posted several times about microaccents, including this post about dialects in France. At the time of the French Revolution, France had some 55 major dialects and hundreds of subdialects. “The local patois would identify the neighborhood in France where you grew up.” Ryan Sager had an article in the Wall Street Journal (February 21) about the forthcoming publication of the fifth and last volume of the Dictionary of American Regional English (DARE). Sager uses the example of dust bunnies (the fluff that collects under your bed) to illustrate the number of dialects (or subdialects) in the United States. DARE lists 174 different names for dust bunnies, including: dust kitties, house moss, woolies, bunny tails, frog hair, cussywop, woofinpoofs and ghost manure. DARE has been compiled by hundreds of people over almost 40 years. This article from the University of Wisconsin quotes a National Science Foundation reviewer: “From its inception, this project took seriously the principle that a language is, in fact, the sum of its parts, and its parts are dialects.”