Back to the Books

Being home for the first time in 8 weeks, I've begun to pick back up on the regional dialect, the accent of the place I come from (despite having only left the house twice in the last two weeks for obvious, Coronavirus related reasons). I never really even noticed that my region had a peculiar accent, I never thought I sounded all that different from anyone on TV. When I went to college, I didn't think I sounded that weird either, however, I had many people tell me that I have a strange accent. I decided to research whether or not linguists agree that my area is known for a unique accent or dialect and I can say conclusively that I did not come up with a conclusive answer to my question, but I will share with you what I did learn. https://www.reddit.com/r/MapPorn/comments/f4z8ae/detailed_map_showing_accents_in_the_united_states/ First, I'd like to start with a map. The link for it is posted above. I found a lot of dialect maps, some on more reputable websites than red

Quick note: This is my first blog post in a long time due to the hectic nature of this semester so far, but I will be hopefully posting two blog posts a week for the next couple weeks in order to get back on track. --- To say that everybody is talking about the coronavirus would be inaccurate: that was a week and a half ago. Covid-19 has gone from a distant, little known phenomenon to a topic of conversation and jokes to what it is now which is a fact of life. The virus has any of us who are following the guidance of authorities seriously staying indoors - indefinitely. Something that has such an impact on the daily lives of not just our country, but the entire world must be impacting the language we use, and it is. The first word I'd like to discuss is the term "pandemic". The World Health Organization (WHO) declared coronavirus a global pandemic earlier this month, but "pandemic" is not within the everyday vocabulary of most people, so what does it mean?