The Telsur Project is a survey of linguistic changes in progress in North American English, supported by the National Science Foundation and the National Endowment for the Humanities. It is the creator of the Atlas of North American English [ANAE], by William Labov, Shaeron Ash and Charles Boberg. The Atlas is published in January 2006 by Mouton/de Gruyter. It is accompanied by a CD-ROM version and a web site developed by a team headed by Prof. Jürgen Handke at the University of Marburg. A demonstration copy may be viewed on the Mouton web site. When a university library has purchased the Atlas, all those who have access to the library's electronic data bases will be able to download the full text of the Atlas in .pdf form, and utilize the web site.

Chapter 11 of the Atlas of North American English provides an overview of the dialects defined by the Atlas on the basis of ongoing linguistic changes. This chapter.establishes the dialects of North America on the basis of the status of the low short vowels /æ/ and /o/ and their role in active chain shifts and mergers.. The full range of topics presented in the Atlas may be seen in the Table of Contents of the Atlas of North American English.
 
  This site will no longer maintain the preliminary maps that were presented during the preparation of the Atlas for publication. It will however present a series of studies based on the Atlas which deal with general questions of language change, transmission and diffusion.

Links

• Sampling methods of the Telsur Project.
• Do you speak Bostonian?  Article on the Phonological Atlas from the January 25, 1999 edition of U.S. News & World Report. Page 1  Page 2
• New Yawk Talk  March 12th NPR interview of William Labov on his 40-year study of the various accents of New York City.
• In Search of the First Language Transcript of March 1997 Nova television program on PBS.