Person’s Twitter ‘accent’ can reveal where they are from
January 8th, 2011 - 5:04 pm ICT by ANIWashington, Jan 8 (ANI): Just as a person’s accent is a dead giveaway of his region, the way a user writes on Twitter too can indicate his whereabouts.
Jacob Eisenstein and his colleagues at Carnegie Mellon University’s (CMU) School of Computer Science developed an automated method that analyses Twitter word-use and shows that regional dialects appear to be evolving within social media.
They collected d a week’s worth of Twitter messages in March 2010, and selected geotagged (added geographical identification to media such as photographs, video, websites, SMS messages or RSS feeds) messages from Twitter users and then made a database of 9,500 users and 380,000 messages.
They found that certain regionalisms are already well known and associated with specific areas of the country, reports Live Science.
For example, a Southerner’s “y’all,” a Pittsburghers’ “yinz,” as well as the usual regional divides in references to soda, pop and Coke.
But other phrasing has evolved with social media itself. For instance, in northern California, something that’s cool is “koo” in tweets, while in southern California, it’s “coo.”
In many cities, something is “sumthin,” but tweets in New York City favor “suttin.”
New Yorkers are “deadass” tired and Angelenos are simply tired “af,” which stands for “as f***.”
Although these habits may have cultivated due to the limited 140 characters, Eisenstein geography’s influence also is apparent.
The statistical model could predict the location of a tweeter in the continental United States with a median error of about 300 miles.
Here’s a list of some commonly used slang on Twitter.af: as f*** (very) - LA/Southern California coo: cool - LA/Southern California fasho: for sure - LA/Southern California gna: going to - Boston iono: I don’t know - Northern California lames: lame people - Lake Erie Region koo: cool - Northern California lls: laughing like s*** - Washington D.C
Eisenstein will present the study on Jan. 8 at the Linguistic Society of America annual meeting in Pittsburgh. (ANI)
- Twitter to introduce in-stream ads for users' timelines - Nov 02, 2010
- Twitter hopes to earn money with special deals - Jul 18, 2010
- Ocean cooling 'contributed to global warming hiatus during mid-20th century ' - Sep 23, 2010
- Chinese officials take to blogging on local websites - Apr 27, 2011
- Fight scene of 'Dark Knight Rises' shot in NY - Nov 07, 2011
- 'India has world's youngest internet population' - Feb 24, 2012
- Warne's chat show gets mixed response - Nov 25, 2010
- Twitter co-founder Williams steps down as CEO to focus on profitability - Oct 05, 2010
- Report: UberMedia to acquire TweetDeck for $30 million - Feb 14, 2011
- Idea launches 3G services in Kashmir - Oct 19, 2011
- Rockmelt: A Social Browser Emerges In The Web - Nov 09, 2010
- Social networking sites flooded with Japan earthquake news - Mar 12, 2011
- Gmail outage affects users worldwide - Apr 18, 2012
- Women form bulk of Mexico's Twitter users - Mar 09, 2011
- Boy George abandons Twitter - Apr 24, 2012
Tags: carnegie mellon university, cmu school, continental united states, dead giveaway, eisenstein, fasho, going to boston, iono, lake erie, lake erie region, median error, new yorkers, phrasing, regional dialects, regionalisms, sms messages, soda pop, southerner, statistical model, twitter