Rick Aschmann built an ambitious interactive map documenting North American English dialects based on pronunciation patterns. The project identifies 8 major dialect regions across the U.S. and Canada, with the first six spreading westward from the eastern seaboard to reflect historical settlement patterns. Users can click on individual states or provinces to hear audio and video samples from each location.

A companion web-based survey gathered 3,903 responses by December 2012, providing empirical data for the dialect boundaries. The map displays major dialects in blue with subdialects in red, and viewers can toggle between layers for different views. Aschmann has continued refining the project over years—adjusting the Canadian raising line to explicitly exclude French-speaking areas in Canada, correcting El Paso's dialect color, and adding St. Bernard Parish in Louisiana.

The creator describes the project as a personal hobby, comparing himself to stamp or coin collectors. While acknowledging the map is "complicated and confusing," he maintains the subject matter itself is complex. A separate survey of individual word distributions (like "soda" vs "pop" or "greasy" vs "greazy") complements the phonetic patterns map.