In this study, eighty interviews with young and older adults from south-central Wisconsin and western North Carolina were analyzed in order to measure the speaking rate (in syllables per second) of each subject. The speaking rates will be compared cross-dialectally to support or disprove the familiar claim that southerners speak more slowly than northerners in the UnitedStates. Also compared will be the speaking rates across gender and age. Lastly, sets of sentences that the subjects were asked to read will be measured for speaking rate and compared with the spontaneous speech of the interviews, to investigate the difference in rate of speaking and reading.