Do you Speak American

I got to watch about half of this last night on PBS. The affiliate that my parents get is out of State College, so the program was delayed because of a Penn State basketball game. I would say that only in western Pennsylvania would a college sporting event pre-empt regular public television programming, but I lived in Kentucky, where this was also a common occurance whenever the Cards or Cats were playing.
What I saw was interesting, though every segment left me wanting more. I guess trying to cover a country with 24 documented dialects in three hours would cause you to short-change some of the topics. The website does help fill in some blanks, though.
One of the interesting hypotheses of some of the linguists is that inland Southern is spreading and could be someday the accepted standard American English, as opposed to Midland English. There is still a slight prejudice about inland Southern, as Jeff Foxworthy noted on the program that no one wants to hear their brain surgeon talk like one of his redneck jokes. But inland southern has already become the official dialect of the military, country music, and NASCAR (except for Ward Burton who still clings to his oh so wonderful coastal Southern accent). In the program they showed a country singer who was from Oregon originally but sang all his songs like he grew up in Johnson City, Tennessee. So anyway, just in case inland Southern becomes the standard, I might oughta not get irritated with Randy as he picks up more of that dialect since he's fixin to live there a little longer.
Another thing I wanted to point out here for the benefit of some of you four was the producer's desire to be sure to include Pittsburghese. I had emailed some months or years ago to some of you how Pittsburghese was the clue on a L&O:Criminal Intent. A murder suspect told the police that she had to redd up the room, and the detective used this as a clue to her past as a resident of Western Pennsylvania. It was unblievable that Pittsburghese would be understood by a national audience. For the Do you Speak American program, they included and emphasized Pittsburghese, which I found really weird. I mean, it's not like folks on Saturday Night Live are affecting a Ynzer accent for a Stillers sketch and getting laughs like they used to do "Da Bears." Of course, Barbara Johnstone from CMU, internationally known expert in Pittsburghese (what a thing to be), was the guide for that portion of the program. I will say it was very strange to hear Robert MacNeil ask very seriously what a jagoff was, treating it as a bonafide foreign word. There's a link, too, to the Pittsburgh Speech and Society website which includes a mini-dictionary of some of the unique Pittsburgh vocabulary. MacNeil treated Pittsburghese as so completely unique (in a good way rather than in a freak-show way) that all you Ynzers should be lahd and prahd.
Oh, and for RheaAnn, of course Texan was featured. They went to the statehouse in Austin to feature all kinds of Texan accents. Molly Ivins pointed out that some of them really do sound like King of the Hill, but Molly mostly spoke about the Texan gift of creative and exaggerated metaphor. It made me think of Rodney Rodgers :-).
And if you think you have the American dialects figured out, try this quiz. It isn't like the quizzes on Corbin's blog that tell you what kind of sock you are, but it is pretty neat.