Say these words to yourself:
Creek.
Roof.
Route.
Whether you said “crick” or “creek,” “ruf” or “roof,” or “rowt” or “root,” says a lot about where you are from. And the chance that your neighbor may say those words differently says a lot about Lansing and Tompkins County.
“There are a lot of things going on that we are not conscious of,” said John Whitman, chairman of the Linguistics Department at Cornell University. “Tompkins County is complex.”
We sit at a crossroads of language, according to Whitman.
Continue reading the full article online in the Ithaca Journal.
