The differences between dialect from people who live in the city and those who live in the country setting could be considered night and day to many people. I grew up in Dayton, Ohio, which could be considered an urban location for anyone growing up. My elementary school and high school are renown across the state for developing the bright minds of tomorrow and grammar is something that is stressed from an early age. On top of the fact that my school is strict on grammar, my mother was the English teacher at the local middle school and constantly corrected my grammar mistakes as a child and still continues correcting me every chance that she has. Every summer, I traveled to my farm to work for a few weeks to earn spending money for the remainder of the summer. My father believed that this is a great opportunity to truly learn the value of a dollar. Needless to say, my dialect was quite different from the farm grown boys from Chillicothe, Ohio. For the most part, I would try to stray away from using the larger words in my vocabulary, but sometimes they would slip out during hot days in the fields.

Words like “Ya’ll” and “Ain’t” are words that I quickly became acclimated to while I attempted to make friends with the farm hands. We would bounce urban and rural dialects back and forth and I believe that it made us closer. The experience with these men was very culturally rewarding for me because I was never exposed to this type of dialect during the actual year. After I left the farm, I would bring with me more than just work experience, I would also have a little different dialect with my friends. I believe that the experiences that you have carries along your everyday vocabulary. Even the friends and aquaintences can be used as tools to build your everyday vocabulary into something that you can be truly proud to show off to anyone that you might meet in the future.