Strange Nebraskan Names

Working out by the Interstate makes me realize how people outside of Nebraska pronounce some of the town names. For example, the city, Kearney (pronounced "kar-nee") gets butchered by the travelers. I have noticed that they pronounce it keer-nee. Another example of this strange pronunciation is the town of Cairo (just like the city in Egypt...except it is pronounced "care-o"). It's funny when a person asks me how far "keer-nee" is and I say "'Kar-nee' is about 35 miles away." They always give me the strangest look. Anyway, I found this web quiz, that is really cool at determining where your accent places you. After taking it, I was obviously placed in the midlands (big shocker).

The "F" word

So I kept hearing about and seeing the "History of the 'F' Word" book and decided to look it up. I didn't find the book, but I did find this very amusing article called "The F Word" by M.J. Stephey. The article is about the banning of the F word from television and the ensuing trials.

Accents

Check out this lady. Her name is Amy Walker and she does accents from all over the world and she is crazy good at it. ">

Broadmoor Criminal Lunatic Asylum

I was looking up Dr. Minor and Broadmoor Lunatic Asylum and I found an interesting report.

http://victoria.cdlr.strath.ac.uk/_assets/gallery/pdf/SAKV.pdf

The above site is a copy of a commisionars report on the asylum and the inmates. I found it interesting that originally the asylum was made for female inmates. The male wing didn't open till sometime later. To the left is the modern Broadmoor hospital.

Trucker Dialects

Over the weekend I was working at the gas station (which is off the interstate about 6 miles west of Grand Island), and of course had many customers come in with different accents.
It always amazes me at how people pronounce, or lack there of, their words. Besides having customers from all over the U.S., I also get a lot of truck drivers. Usually the truck drivers are from other countries, trying to make a living. On Saturday, I had a guy come in who spoke English, but had a very strong accent, I'm pretty sure that he was from Poland, but besides having the accent, he also had a very distinct northern sounding dialect.
I was looking on the Internet and found this map. It comes from the book, Do You Speak American? and is pretty cool.
http://www.pbs.org/speak/speech/mapping/map.html