Articles

The 4 articles from the website of American Dialect Links that I read are:

"Canadian" raising in the Northern Midwest (http://babel.ling.upenn.edu/~nagy/nwav/WWWabs/Dailey.html)

Chicago Vocabulary (http://members.aol.com/mistamoose/vocab.html)

Alaskan slang words (http://www.decorphoto.com/ak-slang.htm)

Learn How to Talk Like a Trinidadian (http://www.usm.maine.edu/~amoroso/Timothy/TriniTalk.html)


The problem was that many links in the website are disconnected, so I wasn't able to read some articles that seem to be interesting (such as "How to Talk Like a California Dude" and "CANADA - Speaking Canadian"). Among the ones that I read, "Alaskan slang words" was my favorite. It's really curious how Alaskans refer to other American states as "Lower 48" , how they call a cold night a "three-dog night" (because two dogs are not enough to warm you up enough!) and how they describe the only two season they have throughout the year (winter and road construction season). In a well-humored way, the authors describe some traditions and curiosities about the state of Alaska and make their reader learn a little more about their state's particularities. I think that "Chicago Vocabulary", an article with the same purpose of describing a place through local slang, is not so efficient in its purpose, mainly because the text is too long and there are many references that only local citizens can understand (such as Resurrection Mary, "A legendary ghost that has been known to hitch rides with men, get out of the car, and run into the cemetery" or Reversibles, "Express lanes on the Kennedy, which reverse direction depending upon the time of day"). To be honest, I did not understand the point of "'Canadian' raising in the Northern Midwest" simply because I'm not sure of what a "raising" is. Finally, "Learn how to talk like a Trinidadian" is interesting because it describes the diversity of languages that took part in building the Trinidadian dialect. I found it particularly interesting that, in Trinidad and Tobago, "college" stands for secondary school. That's because in Brazil a similar word, "colégio", is also used to refer generally to second school. Due to this similarity, some Brazilian students who are beginning to learn English sometimes misinterpret "college" as "colégio" when "universidade" would be the best translation. Nevertheless, the article that I liked most is "Alaskan slang words".