Question: You said you were a researcher towards a new linguistic Atlas of France. What is this???

Damien Hall answered on 18 Jun 2011:

Hi fatlouie21!

A linguistic atlas is a map-book about language (or, these days, also an Internet site full of maps about language!). The difference is that the maps in a linguistic atlas show where people speak the same and differently. So they have major things like towns, and natural features like rivers and mountains, on them, but usually not things like roads and railways, as you’re not using them to get from place to place! The maps look like this:

http://als.wikipedia.org/wiki/Datei:Traditional_dialect_isoglosses_in_northern_England.PNG

(except this is a map of England and I am working on France). On this map, you can see that there’s not much geographical detail (only the counties of England), and you can see the kind of lines I will be drawing. The lines on this map separate different pronunciations of words:

– the red line is about the word night – above it they say it as if it was spelt the same as ‘neat’, and below it they say it in the way people are taught at school
– the blue line is about the word long – above it they say ‘lang’ instead, and below it they say ‘long’
– the yellow line is about the word blind – above it they say it as if it was spelt ‘blinned’, and below it they say it the way people are taught at school.

Which side of those lines do you live on? Or are you Scottish? (You might have to speak to old people to get them to say these words in a regional way, if you’re from North of the lines.)