Speaking American: How Y'all, Youse, and You Guys Talk: An Illustrated Guide

In December 2013, the New York Times published an online dialect quiz that became the paper's most-viewed page. Times graphics editor Josh Katz expands that quiz's contents and the powerful response it elicited with Speaking American: How Y'all, Youse, and You Guys Talk: An Illustrated Guide.

This large-format book organizes United States dialect patterns by subject matter: how we live, what we eat, where we go and more. Two-page color-shaded maps visually communicate regional usages, like the predilection for "rummage sale" in southeastern Wisconsin, over "garage sale" and "yard sale." Maps and text zoom in for unusual local outliers, like Pittsburgh's distinctive use of "yins" for the plural "you." Katz notes the rare case where gender is predictive of usage (women are more likely than men to say "bless you," or anything at all, when someone sneezes) as well as the "linguistic fault line running from Texas up through Arkansas, then tracking the Ohio River... toward the Mason-Dixon line," credited to white settlers' expansion patterns. Besides seriously investigating the questions of sneaker vs. tennis shoe, doodle bug vs. roly-poly, semi vs. 18-wheeler and more, Katz clearly enjoys his subject: especially amusing are the "How to Pretend You're From..." sections. For Nebraska, you might pick up some "pickles" at the store--not pickled cucumbers, but a form of legal gambling.

Offering some new material since the famous quiz and elucidating the original, Speaking American is a fascinating survey of U.S. dialects as well as a fun, humorous exploration of a nation. --Julia Jenkins, librarian and blogger at pagesofjulia

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