How Not to Spend This Weekend... But Maybe

Have we already written about this? Goodness gracious.

This is just a hobby of mine, that I thought might be interesting to a lot of people.

Some people collect stamps. Others collect coins. I collect dialects.

 --Rick Aschmann

If you’ve ever wondered why someone from Squeaky’s Massachusetts neighborhood sounds like they’re permanently auditioning for a role in The Town while someone from North Dakota sounds like they’re politely asking a casserole for permission, then welcome—truly welcome—to the delightfully insane universe of the North American English Dialects. This is not a sleek, minimalist, “click here for three fun facts” kind of website. No, this is a commitment. It’s the internet equivalent of opening a drawer and discovering it leads to a fully cataloged museum of vowels. And honestly? Respect.

The main event is a sprawling, gloriously overwhelming dialect map of North America, which divides the continent into eight major dialect regions and an alarming number of subdialects that seem to multiply the longer you stare at them. The boundaries aren’t random—they follow historical migration patterns, especially the westward spread of English from the East Coast, which is both fascinating and slightly humbling if you thought your accent was just “normal.” Spoiler: it is not. None of ours are. We are all linguistic snowflakes, except instead of snowflakes, we are vowels doing interpretive dance.

And speaking of vowels—this site is obsessed with them. Not in a creepy way (but yeah), but in a deeply earnest, linguist-with-a-hobby-that-got-out-of-hand way. The focus here is pronunciation: how people actually say things, rather than what they say. You’ll encounter concepts like the “pin–pen merger,” which sounds like a Zman review post but is actually about whether those two words sound the same in your mouth. The site makes it clear that these tiny differences are not tiny at all—they’re basically geographic fingerprints, revealing where you’re from whether you like it or not. It’s like linguistic CSI, but instead of fingerprints, it’s how you say “bag.”

Now, here’s where things get fun: the audio samples. Hundreds of them. Possibly more than you emotionally prepared for. The map is linked to a massive collection of recordings—many pulled from YouTube—so you can click around and hear these dialects in action. This transforms the experience from “huh, interesting map” into “oh no, I’ve been clicking on accents for 45 minutes and now I’m judging strangers based on how they pronounce ‘roof.’” It’s immersive. It’s educational. It’s a mild personality shift.

The site itself feels like it was built in an era when the internet was powered primarily by enthusiasm and possibly Colombian "coffee." It is dense. It is text-heavy. It occasionally looks like it might have been formatted during a long weekend in 1998. But that’s part of its charm. Rick openly discusses updates, corrections, and the avalanche of emails from equally fascinated visitors, which gives the whole thing a slightly chaotic, very human energy. This isn’t a corporate product—it’s one person saying, essentially, “I collect dialects,” and then proceeding to absolutely go to town.

What sneaks up on you, though, is how thoughtful the whole thing is beneath the visual clutter. The site quietly dismantles the idea of a single “correct” English, showing instead that language is shaped by history, migration, and community. It even highlights differences between American and Canadian English—like the fact that Canadians generally merge “cot” and “caught,” while many Americans stubbornly refuse to. Suddenly, accents stop being quirks and start being stories. This is gheorghiness.

By the end of your visit, you’ll likely emerge slightly dazed, mildly more informed, and deeply suspicious of how you pronounce everyday words. You may start testing friends. You may say “orange” out loud several times in a row. You may question everything. And that, I suspect, is exactly what this site wants. It’s not just a map—it’s a gentle, vowel-filled reminder that language is messy, regional, and wonderfully human… even if it occasionally makes you realize you’ve been saying “milk” wrong your entire life.

Enjoy.