TheDictionary of American Regional English(DARE ) is wedge - full of weird and tremendous watchword about just about everything under the sun , fromheavy rain(it ’s raining the devil and pitchforksin Florida ) anddoughnuts(also known asfettiglichin German - speaking community in Missouri ) tobeing mad(all horns and rattlesin the West ) andgetting drunk(in Georgia , you’recork high and nursing bottle late ) . Now you may find out those idiom , sayings , and slang terms straight from the horses ’ mouths .
Eighteen hundred field recordingsfrom DARE are now freely available online . Hosted by the University of Wisconsin ’s Digital Collections Center , the recordings lie in of interviews guide throughout the country between 1965 and 1970 . Echoing “ the diversity and personality of America , ” as Dr. Robert H. Moore , founding appendage of DARE ’s Board of Visitors , puts it , the recordings capture dialect variations , regional accents and pronunciation ( through reading of a taradiddle called " Arthur the Rat " ) , some of which have disappeared , as well as an unwritten history of that clip .
So why did it take so long to make the recordings available ? Because of privacy . Since completing the mark volumes of the dictionary , staff , students , and volunteers from DARE spent four age remove personal data from the recordings ( hence , the casual beep ) .
But there ’s still a lot to hear — more than 900 hours ’ worth , to be exact . According to DARE ’s jam release , you could learn about everything from “ home remedies to burial customs , aqualung dive to solid dancing , making moonshine to landing on the moon . ” You ’ll also hear honest treatment about faith , race , war , and political sympathies .
The list of wide - range topics you could plug into the searchable database do not disappoint . There’sbootleggingandbasketmaking . Cockroachesandcooking utensil . There ’s the intriguingDairy Queen competition . There areghost storiesand thehistory of pineapples . There’smaking jam , making molasses , andwhiskey devising . There’spossum hunting and eating . There aresubways , superstition , supernatural powers , and much more .
Whether you ’re a story buff , a trivia oddball , a word grind , or an accent connoisseur , the DARE field recordings have something for you .
