Grammar Girl: For Writers and Language Lovers. Mapping the American Tongue: The Dictionary of American Regional English (DARE), with Joan Houston Hall
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Mar 5, 2026 Joan Houston Hall, linguist and longtime editor of the Dictionary of American Regional English, guides a tour of American regional speech. She describes how DARE documents folk words, maps local pronunciations, and collected recordings from 1,002 communities. Short, vivid stories illustrate quirky regional terms, fieldwork methods, and how dialect maps reveal surprising linguistic landscapes.
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DARE Focuses On Durable Regional Folk Words
- DARE defines regional words as those used in some U.S. places but not everywhere and includes folk words absent from standard dictionaries.
- Joan Houston Hall emphasizes durability over slang, collecting everyday terms like egg turner and red up used across communities.
Spatula Familect Versus Regional Terms
- Mignon describes her family using one word spatula for both a flipper and a bowl scraper, which clashed with regional distinctions recorded in DARE.
- Joan agrees she also calls both spatulas, illustrating household-level familects versus regional terms.
DARE Maps Reflect 1960 Population Density
- DARE maps use a population-density–distorted U.S. map based on the 1960 census so dense states appear larger and sparse states shrink.
- Blank spots on a map indicate lack of usage for that word, not absence of people.