Dictionary of American Regional English

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The Dictionary of American Regional English is a dictionary that documents the different dialects of American English. It is published by Harvard University Press. Its offices are located in Helen C. White Hall at the University of Wisconsin in Madison and its current chief-editor is Joan Houston Hall. The project was started in 1963 by Frederic Gomes Cassidy. He raised funds for the project, trained the fieldworkers and served as editor-in-chief. The original questionnaire had 1,847 questions in 41 categories. From 1965 to 1970 the field workers conducted week-long interviews with 1,002 test subjects in 1,002 communities in all 50 U.S. states. 40,000 expressions recorded earlier by the American Dialect Society are also incorporated into the dictionary. The editors also include local idioms found in regional novels and small town newspapers.

Contents 1 Informants 2 The DARE questionnaire 2.1 Categories 3 See also 4 Reference 5 External links

Informants

After each location was chosen, it was the responsibility of the fieldworker to find people, informants, to complete the questionnaire. Informants had to be born and raised in or near the community they were representing. Members of families with long histories in the community were preferred and people who had traveled extensively or lived in other communities were generally avoided. Older people were generally preferred to younger people. Small biographies were recorded for each informant that contained, at a minimum, the five following pieces of information: age, race, gender, educational level, and the type of community in which they lived (urban, large city, small city, village or rural). In addition to responding to the questions asked, each informant was recorded as they read "Arthur the Rat" [1] and as they spoke freely for twenty minutes or more about a familiar topic.

The DARE questionnaire

The questionnaire had a total of 1,847 questions in 41 categories. Some of the field workers asked the test subjects to name wildflowers shown in photographs, but the process was cumbersome and was carried out only in some of the interviews.

Categories

The first 15 categories are listed below in the original order:

• Time
• Weather
• Topography
• Houses
• Furniture
• Household utensils
• Dishes
• Foods
• Vegetables
• Fruits
• Honesty and dishonesty
• Beliefs
• Emotions
• Relationships among people
• Manner of action or being

See also

• American English
• American and British English differences
• New York-New Jersey English
• Southern American English
• General American

Reference

• Dictionary of American Regional English Volume One (ISBN 0-674-20511-1)

External links

• Dictionary of American Regional English
• American Languages: Our Nation's Many Voices Online Interviews with speakers of American English dialects from across the United States, each speaker reading "Arthur the Rat." "Arthur the Rat" is a short tale devised to obtain phonetic representation from throughout the country of all phonemes in American English. Fieldwork recordings were made of informants from all over the United States reading this passage between 1965-70. This collaboration among the Max Kade Institute for German-American Studies (MKI), the Center for the Study of Upper Midwestern Cultures (CSUMC), the Dictionary of American Regional English (DARE), and the University of Wisconsin Digital Collection Center is a funded by a grant from the Institute of Museum and Library Services.