How do you pronounce the word route? Does it rhyme with “boot” or “bout”? This is part of a complete episode.
In Australia to chuck a sickie, means “to call in sick to work, especially when you’re not ill.” This is part of a complete episode.
A Kentuckian named Sheila moved out of state for several years, but now that she’s returned to work at Western Kentucky University, she finds that many students no longer seem to have a stereotypically “Southern” accent...
How do you pronounce species? Is it “spee-SEES” or “spee-SHEES”? Both are considered standard, but the spee-SHEES pronunciation is far more common. This is part of a complete episode.
Judy from Huntsville, Alabama, recalls her stepmother’s words of encouragement: He that hath a horn to toot and tooteth it not, the same shall not be tooted. This faux-formal bit of advice goes back at least to the 1850s. A variation goes:...
Loretta in Shreveport, Louisiana, wants to know what lexical and dialectal clues linguists look for when guessing where someone is from. She also wonders: Do people with long careers in the military or who grew up in a military family have a...