A team of researchers from Carnegie Mellon University (USA) has concluded that by analyzing the words that Twitter users use, it is possible to find out where they live .
In their study, Jacob Eisenstein and his colleagues examined 380,000 Twitter messages sent from the United States during a week. In total, they examined 4.5 million words, which revealed that the microblogging platform is full of localisms that denote a specific geographical area . For example, the word “cool” tends to be shortened to “coo” in Southern California, while its northern neighbors use “koo.” And the word “suttin”, as an abbreviation for “something” (something), corresponded to messages from New York City. On the other hand, to say that they are very tired, in California they tend to write “hella tired”, while New Yorkers opt for “deadass tired” and in Los Angeles they are simply “tired af”.
Scott Kiesling, an associate professor of linguistics at the University of Pittsburgh, noted that Twitter provides researchers with vast amounts of easily accessible information to explore and examine trends in communication between people. In addition, the researchers warn that it is a mistake to assume that the greater interconnectivity of people thanks to social networks will make languages homogenize, since geographic social circles continue to exist.
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