Today my manager was telling me about how his daughters have been looking up dialects in the United States, as we were discussing how easy it is to tell if someone is from St. Louis.

So I looked it up and, indeed, the St. Louis dialect has its own Wikipedia entry.

In college people said I talked a little funny, but most everyone was from Chicago. I couldn't tell the difference, but I got a little self conscious and tried to compensate by enunciating really carefully. I'm not sure that it worked.

Every now and then I work with people in St. Louis. Now I get on phone conferences and I can tell right away if anyone from St. Louis is on. But who would really sit down and itemize the distinct differences? Even after reading the article I'm not sure I quite understand what the differences are.