Interviewed on “The Diane Rehm Show” about the completion of the Dictionary of American Regional English, with DARE editor Joan Houston Hall. (Mar. 7, 2012)
In Ohio, the strip of grass between the sidewalk and the curb is called a “tree lawn.” In other parts of the country, it is a “curb,” a “devil’s strip,” a “parkway,” a “swale,” or a “street lawn.” More than a dozen names for this can be found in the Dictionary of American Regional English. The fifth volume covers words and phrases from ‘slab’ to ‘zydeco’ and completes a fifty-year project to capture the unique ways people in different parts of the country speak. The dictionary has been used to solve crimes, teach medical students, train actors, and understand political candidates. Joan Hall, chief editor of the dictionary, and linguist Ben Zimmer join Diane to discuss the diversity of American language.
(Show page, audio, related Boston Globe column)