1981: A 13-year-old girl goes missing from her coastal California home. Her parents tell her siblings she ran away, and they are never to speak of her again. For the next 20-plus years, the siblings keep their silence, and it seems that the girl has vanished without a trace.
2003: Suspecting foul play, the siblings finally report the case to the police. The parents are questioned. A short time later, a woman surfaces claiming to be the long-lost daughter. She has a driver’s license in the right name, but she’s elusive in her interviews with the police, her siblings aren’t sure it’s her, and something else just doesn’t add up:
Her accent. The missing girl spent her early years in Upstate New York and points West. So why does she have a Southern drawl?
Natalie Schilling, forensic linguist, talks about her involvement in ‘The Case of the Mystery Dialect’ with host Mignon Fogarty, in this bonus segment from The Grammar Girl podcast:
If you prefer to listen to the podcast, you can hear it below, or click here.
