The present study offers an examination of attitudes and perceptions of the Ukrainian language by respondents who have lived at least half of their life in Ukraine; they were asked to draw on a map of Ukraine where the most correct Ukrainian is spoken and where the Ukrainian that grates on one’s ears is spoken. Recruitment for the online survey was conducted by placing ads on several Ukrainian-language Facebook pages, along with a link to the survey. The findings presented are from a total of 90 analyzed surveys. Respondents’ maps were analyzed and compared using QGIS software. The research demonstrates that that there is a tug-of-war of correctness between Kyiv and Lviv. It also shows that there is an overall tendency of native speakers to evaluate the Transcarpathian region as the area that grates one’s ears.

Sociodemographic information, such as a speaker’s regional origin, is intimately related to the judgments and social evaluations that listeners assign to that speaker. This association between linguistic form and social information can also lead to linguistic profiling, a harmful form of discrimination. The present study examines the geographic classifications and social attitudes attributed to ten phonetic variants used within regional varieties of Iberian (i.e., European) Spanish. We are specifically interested in understanding listeners’ geographical classifications and language attitudes held toward Andalusian Spanish, which is a less privileged regional variety spoken in Spain’s southern region, as compared to north-central Peninsular Spanish (NCPS). The results of an online survey show that 165 listeners were fairly consistent when geographically classifying Andalusian-sounding stimuli as originating from the south of Spain. Importantly, the respondents also attributed less favorable social meaning to the Andalusian-sounding stimuli in comparison to the NCPS-sounding stimuli. We link the findings to broader themes in sociolinguistics, such as language-based discrimination, linguistic insecurity, and the social motivations of language change.

The overall aim of this article is to show that pauper letters are a valuable, but as yet largely untapped resource for historical dialectological research. Offering a case study based on 31 poor-relief applications sent by 10 individuals to parishes in Dorset between 1742 and 1834, the article aims to identify regional variation, especially as associated with Dorset and/or the Southwest of England more generally, by comparing variant spellings and morphosyntactic usages contained in the letters with features listed in modern dialect surveys (mainly Wakelin 1986; Altendorf & Watt 2008; Wagner 2008), as well as in Dorset poet William Barnes’ Dissertation and the reconstruction of his idiolect by Burton (2013). It is possible to isolate 297 occurrences of 52 different phonological and morphosyntactic features in the pauper letters; 11 of these features are salient across the letter selection (i.e. represented by at least three paupers) and are suggestive of the provenance of the letters. The article also offers surprising findings such as the absence of the prototypically Southwestern fricative voicing, features unrecorded by modern synopses (e.g. unmarked possessive), and the presence of a feature (-ind for -ing) which had fallen out of common use in the fifteenth century.

The late twentieth century in the United States marks the decline of regional vowel systems like the Northern Cities Shift and the Southern Vowel Shift, replaced by supralocal systems like the Low-Back-Merger Shift. We chart such change in acoustic data from seven generations of White speakers (n = 135) in the Southeastern state of Georgia. We analyze front vowels affected by both the SVS and LBMS (dress, trap), plus price and face, known respectively to monophthongize and centralize in the SVS, and LBMS-implicated lot/thought. The SVS is most advanced among Georgians born in the mid-twentieth century, particularly in face-centralization. In Generation X, retraction of front lax vowels begins, leading toward the LBMS. These results, which hold across genders and education levels, support findings that regional vowel systems declined precipitously following a Gen X “cliff,” raising questions about how such language changes are rooted in demographic transformations of that time period.

This article examines regional and stylistic variation in the merger of front vowels /eː/ and /ɛː/ in Finland-Swedish. The study investigates the merger by comparing formant data from 141 speakers from four Swedish-speaking regions in Finland. Additionally, intraspeaker variation is explored by incorporating samples from three contextual styles. The results indicate cross-regional differences between Finland-Swedish dialects, with a more distinct variant of /ɛː/ being used on the monolingually Swedish-speaking Åland Islands, compared to other regions. However, the findings show that speakers from mainland Finland also demonstrate significantly different formant values for the vowels, particularly in formal speech styles. These results challenge the assumption of a complete /eː-ɛː/ merger in Finland-Swedish, instead pointing to a near-merger, whereby two sounds sound the same to speakers, despite them being differentiated in production. The findings also shed new light on stylistic variation in the variety.

This paper discusses the regional variation in four ongoing sound changes in the Dutch vowels /eː,øː,oː,ɛi,œy/ that are conditioned by a following coda /l/. The synchronic diatopic diffusion of these changes is charted using the Dutch teacher corpus, a comprehensive dataset containing word-list data from four regions in The Netherlands and four in Flanders. Comparisons are made of the five vowels preceding nonapproximant consonants and preceding coda /l/. To avoid manually segmenting the oftentimes highly gradient vowel–/l/ boundary, GAMMs are used to model whole formant trajectories. Comparisons are then made of trajectories and of peaks of trajectories. The results are used to classify the nature of the four sound changes in terms of phonetic and lexical abruptness/graduality and to show that the changes are intertwined in such a way that they can only be considered as separate facets of a single, currently ongoing vowel shift.

We study regional similarities and differences in language use on an anonymous mobile chat application in the German-speaking area. We use a neural network on 2.3 million online conversations to automatically learn representations of words and cities. These linguistic-use-based representations capture regional distinctions in a high-dimensional vector space that can be clustered and visualized to discover patterns in the data. We find that the resulting regional patterns are closely linked to the traditional division of German dialects, even though most of the conversations are written in standard German. The resulting maps correspond to traditional dialect divisions and language-external spatial structures, with a few notable exceptions that can be explained through external factors.

Our method also facilitates two qualitative analyses, allowing us to discover geographically-pertinent words for various regional levels, as well as creating regional group-specific style profiles based on various linguistic resources. The results of our study strongly suggest the existence of region-specific patterns of language use (“digital regiolects”) representing distinctive strategies of linguistic stylization in relation to linguistic resources and topics. As a methodological contribution, we show how linguistic theory can drive the application and direction of neural network-based representation learning, and how their judicious application provides the basis for qualitative analysis of large-scale data collections.

Older people are higher contributors to mortality excess and most sensitive to environmental influences, e.g. temperature. As the population ages, variability in temperature is liable to impact a large proportion of life insurance or pension policies in a portfolio. Climate change is projected to significantly affect future mean temperatures. Moreover, future changes in mean temperature are estimated to vary across different regions of the United Kingdom. Accordingly, the present paper investigates the potential impact of future mean temperature changes on older-age mortality in England & Wales and Scotland. The corresponding effect on older-age mortality differences between England & Wales and Scotland is also investigated.

Introduction: Within Manitoba, little is known about the current state of pediatric emergency department (ED) use or the state of provincial data collection. This study sought to gain a baseline understanding of pediatric ED use in Manitoba, including child demographics, visit characteristics, variation across the province, drivers of ED use, and data completeness. Methods: A retrospective cohort study was conducted using administrative data from the Manitoba Centre for Health Policy, and included all children aged 0-17 who presented to a Manitoba ED between 2011/12 and 2015/16, as identified from the Emergency Department Information System (EDIS), the National Ambulatory Care Reporting System (NACRS) and physician billing claims. Frequency of use was defined as single, intermediate (2-6 visits) and frequent (7+) and regional trends in child characteristics, ED use, acuity, presenting complaints, and discharge dispositions were observed. Ordinal logistic regression will be used to identify predictors of ED use. Results: Overall, we were able to capture 250,620 ED visits made by 172,306 children; data sources and completeness varied by year. Provincially, children under 5 years of age were the most frequent users of the ED, and use <1 year of age was highest in the North. We observed higher use among low-income children, particularly in rural mid and north, and few differences by sex. By year, the majority of children made single-use of the ED (64.48%), while fewer were classified as intermediate (34.40%) or frequent users (1.11%). Overall, the top presenting complaints were for fever (10.27%), limb complaint/trauma (7.48%), abdominal pain (5.75%), nausea and/or vomiting (4.53%) and shortness of breath (3.68%), with variation by triage level. In rural but not urban areas, mental health assessments were a top presenting complaint and primary reason for transfer to larger centres. Results of predictors of ED use are pending. Conclusion: Results from this study will provide important information about the predictors and variation of ED use by region and top causes for visit, enabling us to better tailor knowledge mobilization efforts and tool development to the local context. Identified gaps in data collection are important to address to advance our knowledge and delivery of pediatric emergency care at the provincial level.

Contrary to previous “sociolinguistic folklore” that African American (Vernacular) English has a uniform structure across different parts of the US, recent studies have shown that it varies regionally, especially phonologically (Wolfram, 2007; Thomas & Wassink, 2010). However, there is little research on how Americans perceive AAE variation. Based on a map-labeling task, we investigate the folk perception of AAE variation by 55 participants, primarily African Americans in Columbus, Ohio. The analysis focuses on the dialect regions recognized by the participants, the linguistic features associated with different regions, and the attitudes associated with these beliefs. While the perceived regional boundaries mostly align with those identified by speakers in previous perceptual dialectology studies on American English, the participants consistently identified linguistic features that were specific to AAE. The participants recognized substantial phonological and lexical variation and identified “proper” dialects that do not necessarily sound “white”. This study demonstrates the value of considering African Americans’ perspectives in describing African American varieties of English.

This study aims at testing whether there are regional differences in the perception of the labiodental fricative contrast in Dutch. Previous production studies have shown that the devoicing of initial labiodental fricatives is a change in progress in the Dutch language area. We present the results of a speeded identification task in which fricative stimuli were systematically varied for two phonetic cues, voicing and duration. Listeners (n=100) were regionally stratified, and the regions (k=5) reflect different stages of this sound change in progress. Voicing turned out to be the strongest categorization cue in all regions; duration only played a minor role. Regional differences showed up in the perception of the consonantal contrast that matched regional differences in production reported in previous studies. The addition of random slopes in the mixed model regression showed the importance of within-regional variation.

A community-based, cross-sectional study was carried out in five regions of India by adopting a multistage random sampling procedure. Information was collected from the participants about socio-demographic particulars such as age, sex, occupation, education, etc. Anthropometric measurements such as height, weight and waist and hip circumferences were measured and three measurements of blood pressure were obtained. Fasting blood sugar was assessed using a Glucometer. Data analysis was done using descriptive statistics, χ2 test for association and logistic regression analysis. A total of 7531 subjects were covered for anthropometry and blood pressure. The overall prevalence of overweight/obesity and abdominal obesity was 29 and 21 %, respectively, and was higher in the Southern region (40 % each) as compared with other regions. The prevalence of hypertension was 18 and 16 % and diabetes was 9·5 % each among men and women, respectively. The risk of hypertension and diabetes was significantly higher among adults from the Southern and Western regions, the among elderly, among overweight/obese individuals and those with abdominal obesity. In conclusion, the prevalence of overweight/obesity and hypertension was higher in the Southern region, whereas diabetes was higher in the Southern and Western regions. Factors such as increasing age, male sex, overweight/obesity, and abdominal obesity were important risk factors for hypertension and diabetes. Appropriate health and nutrition education should be given to the community to control these problems.

The preference for two shell species, Monodonta labio form confusa and Thais clavigera, was compared between two populations of the hermit crab Pagurus filholi from Oura Bay, Shimoda, central Japan and from Hakodate Bay, Hakodate, northern Japan. Hermit crabs from Oura Bay preferred T. clavigera to M. labio form confusa, whereas crabs from Hakodate Bay preferred M. labio form confusa. The shell of T. clavigera was more effective against desiccation and high temperature stress but heavier than M. labio form confusa. The preference of P. filholi from Oura Bay for T. clavigera may be attributable to the greater requirement for protection against higher physical stresses, even though a higher energetic cost related to the shell weight is incurred.