#dialectology

@favorite-phoneme-creature

I'd have to say English /æ/ as in trap. It just does such vastly different things in different dialects, from the unconditioned raising /æ/ > [eə] in the Northern Cities Shift; to the bizarrely complex, morphologically-conditioned and exception-ridden splits in New York City and (differently!) in Philadelphia; to the broad-A split in southern England and dialects derived from that; to the conditioned merger with /eɪ/ before /g/ in places like Minnesota and western Canada—it's all over the place, totally fascinating from a dialectological point of view.

Map of the different forms of the negator ('not') in Norwegian.

From: Mæhlum & Røyneland 2012. Det norske dialektlandskapet. Cappelen Damm Akademisk.

A map of dialects and language variety differences of North America.

The common name of the tree Arbutus menziesii depends on where you are or where you are from.

North American members of the genus are called Madrones, from the Spanish name madroño (strawberry tree) although this terminology is not used in Canada. The European species are also called Strawberry Trees from the superficial resemblance of the fruit to a strawbrry; some species are sometimes referred to simply as the “Arbutus”.

In the United States, the name “Madrone” is used south of the Siskiyou Mountains of southern Oregon/northern California and the name “Madrona” is used north of the Siskiyou Mountains according to the “Sunset Western Garden Book”. In British Columbia, the trees are simply known by the name “Arbutus.”

All refer to the same tree, Arbutus menziesii, native to the Pacific Northwest and Northern California regions. It is Canada’s only native broadleaved evergreen tree. Some species in the genera Epigaea, Arctostaphylos and Gaultheria were formerly classified in Arbutus. As a result of its past classification, Epigaea repens (Mayflower) has an alternative common name of “trailing arbutus”.”