In "North Carolina English, 1861 1865," Michael E. Ellis offers an" Oxford English Dictionary" like take on regional language based on more than two thousand letters and diaries composed by North Carolinians during the Civil War. These documents are part of a larger project, the Corpus of American Civil War Letters (CACWL), aimed at locating, photographing, and transcribing letters written during the period from all parts of the country. With little formal education, the correspondents were men and women who wrote by ear, often reproducing their spoken language through unconventional...