… in a research project having to do with dialect …
We are doing research on different accents in “North American” (US and Canadian) English. We know that Americans and Canadians have a great deal in common in the way they speak, but there are also differences. These differences are influenced by geography, gender, age, ethnicity, and many other factors. In order to study the ways that North American accents differ amongst each other, we have put together a survey of common words, and we’d like you to participate!
We’d like recordings from anyone who has grown up speaking English in the US or Canada. We would like to get information about as many different types of North American English as possible. The more diverse our participants, the more representative it will be of the ways Americans speak. There are no right or wrong answers in this survey. We’re interested all all the different varieties of English on this continent!
If this is of interest to you, and you’d like to help out, please click here to find out more. Thank you very much.
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Should I be skeptical about a survey that assumes I could have grown up speaking English in Canada, in a high school with a zip code or city, state?
I’ve spent 40 years around Philly where I was born. Then there were a couple of years in CO and 10 years in Silicon Valley. Does it matter that I may have modified my speech patterns by spending so much time from my birth location? I also used to redily pick up southern redneck when using a CB…
I think these are questions that are typical for a survey of this type. Ultimately, there is more variation in the population than the categorical variables suggest, but that does not mean the variables can’t be managed. Having a “Now (with X= age) and High school” dichotomy in this sort of thing is common. In fact, that may make these survey results comparable to other data.