>
> > Which was what Professor Henry Higgins made a living doing. I wonder if he could have done it anywhere else but in England?
>
> Actually, back in the days of Norwegian Broadcasting's monopoly (before we got Jeopardy and 'Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?"), there was a TV show where linguistic experts tried just that; to pinpoint where people came from based on hearing them tell a story of some sort. They were often able to narrow the area down to wich particular town they came from.
>
> Trav"I was young, and had very little to do but watch TV"holt.

I can't recall any TV shows or anything about that, but here in Finland you can also tell fairly accurately where the person speaking is from (at least if he/she is old enough). In Finland there are two basic dialects (of Finnish), Eastern and Western dialects, from which different local dialects differ more or less. Research showed a few years ago that there was so sharp line between dialects that it could be pinpointed between two houses. The only difference between these two dialects was the way of saying the word boring ("tylsä"), and the half of the village that said it in one way, never said in the other way. This happened in Kaustinen, some 30 km east from Kokkola, my home town. The strange thing is also, that in Kaustinen some people speak a form of the Eastern dialect, even though it is located almost on the west coast. Because of this, people living in Kokkola speak forms of both Eastern and Western dialects (actually, two forms of the Western, one of the Eastern plus Swedish), and thus, you nearly never can pinpoint someone from Kokkola to any point on the map.

And the Swedish they speak there... Don't get me started.

Juho