North American English Dialect Map

[mthd]

fascinating, if hard to read, map. i am perplexed that san francisco and parts of the peninsula and east bay (but not the whole bay area) are so different from the rest of coastal california. the website http://aschmann.net/AmEng/ suggests that people here speak more like those from the east or atlantic midland region, and that unlike in the rest of the west, there are more than 13 vowel sounds. wierd.