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Tuesday, January 11, 2011

Twitter is full of regional 'accents,' study finds - Boston.com

Twitter is full of regional 'accents,' study finds - Boston.com

Twitter is full of regional 'accents,' study finds

By Jennifer C. Yates
Associated Press / January 11, 2011
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PITTSBURGH—Tweeting about what club "y'all" are going to tonight? Must be from the South. Looking forward to "suttin" special? Then you probably live in New York. Think that new movie was "koo?" Northern California.

The words you write on Twitter can tell people more than just the status of your relationship or how you like the latest Bon Jovi CD. It may just indicate not only how you're living, but where you're living in the U.S.

Researchers at Carnegie Mellon University examined 380,000 messages from Twitter during one week in March 2010 and found that the social networking site is full of its own kinds of geographical dialects.