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New Yorkers Laugh In The Face Of Twitter's Character Count
By
Jaya Saxena
Published Jan 11, 2011
Modified Jan 11, 2011
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By
Jaya Saxena
Published Jan 11, 2011
Modified Jan 11, 2011
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According to a new study from Carnegie Mellon University's School of Computer Science, Twitter is making it easier to detect regional dialects, and may be making the dialects stronger. Researcher Jacob Eisenstein (too close to "Einstein" not to believe him) said some regional variations were expected, like New Yorkers talking about the Knicks or cabs, but others make little sense given Twitter's posting rules. For instance, instead of shortening "you" to "u," New Yorkers have a tendency to write "youu," wasting precious Twitter space. Hey, maybe we just keep missing the "s" while typing yous guys?
After studying 380,000 messages, Eisenstein found that New Yorkers often use "deadass" as an adjective instead of the "hella" used in northern California, and that while most Americans shorten "something" to "sumthin," New Yorkers use the confusing "suttin." Linguists now hope they can use Twitter to track dialect changes around the country. Eisenstein said, "It will be interesting to see what happens. Will 'suttin' remain a word we see primarily in New York City, or will it spread?"
He also told CBS 2, “One thing I think that it shows is that people really have a need to communicate their identity - their cultural identity and their geographic identity in social media." And for New York, no matter how many letters we add to the end of words, that identity is usually cranky.
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regional dialect
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Jaya Saxena
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