After 120 years, the end is finally near.
“There is nothing like it anywhere else,” said Joan Houston Hall.
In 1889, the American Dialect Society began to write the Dictionary of American Regional English. For 80 years, the project moved along without much direction. Until UW Madison professor Frederick Cassidy took it over.
Cassidy created questionnaires and sent them out to 1002 communities all around America asking questions to discover regional dialects. For example, if you were playing hopscotch in Missouri what would you be doing? You’d be playing ‘hop-skit’. In New York you would run outside to play ‘potsy’. And in Indiana you’d be playing ‘hippity-hop’.