@twoinanddone I’m a fellow regional interpreter. I’ve lived all over the country, have a Southern mother, a native Californian husband, and raised my kids in Massachusetts. My son now attends college in Ohio.
To be a little more specific, NY coffee regular is milk and TWO sugars.
Someone mentioned “stoop” or “stoep.” That’s what I call the little area right outside my front door that leads to my steps. It’s also what the huge area that surrounded the apartment building where i grew up and which was covered was called. When the weather was bad, we kids played “on the stoop.” To me, a porch is a thing that surrounds a big house.
In Philly we say “jimmies” for sprinkles, and “stoops” are found outside row houses.
The “regular” coffee is confusing to me. How do you order non-decaf coffee? In the coffeeshop I visit, I ask for “decaf” or “regular” I put my own cream and sugar in at the bar 
By the way, impoverished vowel set parts of the country, Dawn and Don are different names, pronounced differently. I know that most parts of the country pronounce those names the same, but all of you are wrong. 
Also, frog and dog are not rhyming words.
I grew up near Rochester, NY and we had a stoop on the front of our little ranch house. We also had red and white hots. Red hots are normal hotdogs while white hots are made from pork and are white in color. My favorite words are local towns. We lived near Chili which is pronounced Chi-lye. Charlotte which is pronounced Char- lot.
@“Cardinal Fang” I’m with you on dawn and don but Merriam-Webster and I disagree with you on frog and dog.
While we’re on it, pen and pin aren’t the same word.
One of my advisors is from rural Missouri and adds an l sound to certain words. So idea comes out sounding more like ideal.
So how are Dawn/Don and frog/dog pronounced then? I can’t even imagine any alternatives. Is one pronounced with a long vowel sound?
@CTmom2018 I googled “Who calls a couch a divan” and found that people (not just my mom) from the rural “backwards” area where I grew up did call couches “divans.” I guess they were also called davenports in some areas of the country (I think I remember Samantha Stevens using that term on Bewitched ) That search also reminded me that my mom also called our ottoman a “hassock.”
I also remembered the fridge was the “ice box” and margarine was “oleo.”
“By the way, impoverished vowel set parts of the country, Dawn and Don are different names, pronounced differently. I know that most parts of the country pronounce those names the same, but all of you are wrong”
I don’t think so. Maybe you mean most people pronounce differently? Only in Boston have I heard them pronounced similarly.
Once I was attending a deposition taken by the other side’s Boston attorney on a Bostonian witness . At the break the Midwest based court reporter says to me " " I don’t understand what kind of business are they in where they sell fish AND paper?
I was very confused. The witness was a paper manufacturer and the discussion was about its light weight paper and card stock. And the I realized the court reporter thought that they were saying not " card" …but “cod” !
Remember this quiz from a few years back? https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/upshot/dialect-quiz-map.html
I just took it again and my personal dialect map strongest areas include the city where my mother grew up, the city I lived in for 40 years as an adult, and the area where I lived until I was age six. So that seems pretty accurate to me!
That’s strange, rom. If you don’t have the caught/cot merger (that is, if you pronounce caught and cot differently, and Dawn and Don differently) then usually you’d also pronounce dog like caught and frog like cot.
OK, so there’s this thing called the caught/cot merger. Some of you, like LeastComplicated, are thinking that “caught” and “cot” sound just the same and how could any idiot pronounce them differently. Others of you, like maya54, are thinking those are two completely different words and how could any idiot pronounce them the same.
In most of Britain, and formerly in the US too, “caught” and “cot” sounded different. But for many dialects in the US, those two vowels have merged. The Wikipedia entry has discussion and recordings.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cot%E2%80%93caught_merger
Themap on this page shows where the merger has taken place (red dots):
http://babel.ling.upenn.edu/phono_atlas/ICSLP4/Map_1a.GIF
But that’s an old map, and the pernicious merger has expanded its evil reach since then.
My middle name is Dawn and I pronounce it the same as “Don.” Oh, well!
^ I don’t understand how that is even possible.
We say the vowel sound in Dawn and Caught like Awe as in Shock and Awe.
Cot and Don a short O.
I guess I pronounce each vowel as “ah.” D-ah-n for both.
I say “cue-pawn” for “coupon.” Drives DH nuts. I also pronounce “pin” and “pen” the same.
In my chorus we often have these discussions about " how to pronounce" certain words because we’re pretty diverse. in where we grew up.
“Roof” is a fun one.
Did I miss it, or has no one mentioned double modals? If no one has, I might could do it.
Also, the two end slices of a loaf of bread are called the crust. The brown part on top is the crust, too.
" the two end slices of a loaf of bread are called the crust. "
We called them “the ends”.
I call them the heels.