Back when people only had their own feet, or maybe a horse, to get them from one region to another, populations generally tended to stay in the same area, developing their own local vocabularies and ways of speaking, or dialects. Sometimes the regional variations were so great that people who lived on one side of a mountain range couldn’t understand the language of the people who lived on the other side. With easier travel and global communication languages are (as always) evolving, and some local languages and dialects are disappearing. However, it’s interesting to see how deeply the historical habits have been established, and how where you grew up influences how you speak.

A new map of the United States created by Rick Aschmann shows regional Canadian and American dialects, a fascinating look at pronunciations and word choices in different areas. There are even audio samples that you can click on to hear the differences in the way people say the same words. Do you pronounce the words pin and pen the same way? What about the words cot and caught? Do the words father and bother use the same vowel sound? Click on the map to get more information and listen to the audio recordings.

Dialect isn’t just about how you say things, but also about what words you use to say it. You might put your can of pop into the icebox, or your can of soda in the refrigerator. When you take your nephew fishing at the bottom of the field, you’ll drop your line in either a brook or a creek, depending on where you’re from – and also depending on where you’re from, you might pronounce that last word CRIHK. If you’ve taken some peaches to snack on, you’ll have to get rid of the pit, the kernel, the seed, the stone … it’s so confusing to have all these different words for the same thing that we’re going to have to take a minute to sit down and rest on the chesterfield. The davenport. The sofa.

What words are only used where you live?