The Atlas of North American English

The Atlas of North American English provides the first overall view of the pronunciation and vowel systems of the dialects of the U.S. and Canada. The Atlas re-defines the regional dialects of American English on the basis of sound changes active in the 1990s and draws new boundaries reflecting those changes. It is based on a telephone survey of 762 local speakers, representing all the urbanized areas of North America. It has been developed by Bill Labov, one of the leading sociolinguists of the world, together with his colleagues Sharon Ash and Charles Boberg.

The Atlas consists of a printed volume accompanied by an interactive CD-ROM. The print and multimedia content is also available online.

Combined Edition: Book and Multimedia CD-ROM

The printed volume contains

• 23 chapters that re-define the geographic boundaries of North American dialects and trace the influence of gender, age, education, and city size on the progress of sound change;
• findings that show a dramatic and increasing divergence of English in North America;
• 139 four color maps that illustrate the regional distribution of phonological and phonetic variables across the North American continent;
• 120 four color vowel charts of individual speakers.

The interactive multimedia CD-ROM supplements the printed articles and maps by providing

• a data base with measurements of more than 100,000 vowels and mean values for 439 speakers;
• the Plotnik program for mapping each of the individual vowel systems;
• extended sound samples of all North American dialects;
• interactive applications to enhance classroom presentations.

Online only Version: Print and Multimedia Content

The online only version offers

• simultaneous access to the print and multimedia content to all users in the university/library network;
• presents a wider selection of interactive data, maps, and audio samples that will be recurrently updated;
• provides students with concurrent access to research material for classroom assignments.

Key Features:

• a multimedia reference tool,
• overthrows previously held hypotheses in North American dialectology,
• sound samples on CD-ROM easily accessible through clearly designed interactive maps.

System Requirements for CD-ROM and Online only version:

Windows PC: Pentium PC, Windows 9x, NT, or XP, at least 16MB RAM, CD-ROM Drive, 16 Bit Soundcard, SVGA (600 x 800 resolution).

Apple MAC: OS 6 or higher, 16 Bit Soundcard, at least 16MB RAM.

Supported Browsers: Internet Explorer, 5.5 or 6 (Mac OS: Internet Explorer 5.1)/Netscape 7.x or higher/Mozilla 1.0 or higher/Mozilla Firefox 1.0 or higher.

PlugIns: Macromedia Flash Player 6/Acrobat Reader.

William Labov and Sharon Ash, University of Pennsylvania, USA; Charles Boberg,   McGill University, Montréal, Canada..