Pennsylvania’s dialects are as varied as its downtowns — and dahntahns – Patriot-News

The bottom line is few kitchen tables can be as linguistically cluttered as a Pennsylvania table when the family comes to town.

Based solely upon pronunciation and grammar, researchers generally split the United States into a number of linguistic regions. Those regions come together in Pennsylvania — which makes the state kind of a crossroads of the English language.

Thanks in part to immigration patterns and relative geographic isolation, Pennsylvania is home to six — count’em six — distinct English dialects.

My Pennsylvania friends and readers may enjoy the article linked above. It would be fun to learn more about linguistics.

I’m pretty sure the greater DC dialect, if it exists, if the most homogenized in the United States. I think there used to be a distinct dialect for D.C.’s gold coast, but that is probably just about gone.

Oh and its soda, not pop. More on that sometime soon.