Written by gabriella

English with an Accent

Puzzler: The name of what widely spoken world language consists of four consecutive United States postal abbreviations? 

To help you out – here are the fifty state abbreviations:

AKALARAZCACOCTDEFLGA
HIIAIDILINKSKYLAMAMD
MEMIMNMOMSMTNCNDNENH
NJNMNVNYOHOKORPARISC
SDTNTXUTVAVTWAWIWVWY

_____  _____  _____  _____ = name of widely spoken world language

I heard this brain teaser while listening to the podcast Linguistics After Dark (Episode 12: Dead Language Power). This Puzzler made me think about the variation of dialects and accents of English across this country.

Puzzler hint #1: Use a state abbreviation from these columns in this order: 9, 8, 3 & 5.

As an accent nerd, I listened to the podcast The Allusionist (Episode 63: The Evolution of Accents) next to learn how language dialects differ. I learned that pronouncing the letter /r/ or not is a distinguishing factor among English speakers. The linguistic term rhoticity refers to sounds of the letter /r/, with rhotic dialects pronouncing the /r/ in words like “car” and “butter,” and non-rhotic dialects not pronouncing the /r/ in those words. In Shakespeare’s time, the letter /r/ was pronounced strongly, contrasting with the non-rhotic “Received Pronunciation” accent often thought of as quintessentially British. 

Puzzler hint: #2 Use a state abbreviation from these rows in this order: 2, 3, 1 & 2.

I listened to a podcast about language discrimination called The Vocal Fries Pod (Episode from 4/15/24: Gorsh! We All Have Accents) which included a conversation with three linguists and authors of the book English with an Accent: Language, Ideology, and Discrimination in the United States. The book discusses language ideologies, which are sets of beliefs or attitudes about language or a particular way of speaking. Their goal is to educate people that there is no structural basis for one dialect being better than another. 

Answer: MA (Massachusetts)+ND (North Dakota) + AR (Arkansas) + IN (Indiana) = Mandarin!

Goodbye, Peace out, See y’all later, I’m out, See ya, Bye!

Read more:

Eli & Sarah (Hosts). (2024, September 2). Dead Langauge Power (No. 12) [Audio podcast episode]. In Linguistics After Dark. https://linguisticsafterdark.com/2024/09/02/episode-12.html.

Taylor, D.(Host). Evolutions of Accents [Audio podcast episode]. In Twenty Thousand Hetz. https://www.20k.org/episodes/accents.

Nordquist, R. (2019, November 4). Definition and Examples of Rhotic and Non-Rhotic Speech. ThoughtCo. https://www.thoughtco.com/rhoticity-speech-4065992.

Gillon, C. & Figueroa, M. (Hosts). (2024, April 15): Gorsh! We All Have Accents () [Audio podcast episode]. In The Vocal Fries Pod. https://vocalfriespod.com/2024/04/15/gorsh-we-all-have-accents-transcript/.