'Um' vs.
'Um' vs. 'Uh' May Reveal Where You Live
In case you, um, failed the dialect quiz by The New York Timesthat went viral last December, here’s an even simpler predictor of where you live: This map shows that whether you say “um” or “uh” may be traced to where you live.
A linguist at Aston University in the U.K. has used 6 billion words from Twitter to parse out which U.S. counties prefer “um” and which tend to say “uh.” Reporter Nikhil Sonnad at Quartz then mapped the data.
To reveal the regional breakdown, linguist Jack Grieve used a statistical tool called “hot-spot testing” in which individual data points are extracted for comparisons that can make a broader prediction. In this case, the “um” vs. “uh” data provide some of the first clues of a dialect that linguists have been curious about but hadn’t been able to pinpoint: A “Midland dialect” that follows the Ohio River.
“Um” vs. “uh” may not be quite as clear-cut as Duck Duck Goose vs. Duck Duck Grey Duck, however: Another linguist, Mark Liberman, says women and younger people favor “um,” in what he refers to as gendered filled-pause usage on his blog. We, uh, can’t wait to hear what else we are unconsciously revealing via social media.