Fun dialect quiz

[gingersmom]

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/12/20/sunday-review/dialect-quiz-map.html?_r=0

 

I grew up in NY, NJ and CT.

 

Apparently I talk like people from NY and NJ. Based on my accent people always think I'm from Massachusetts (I went to school there).

[Guest]

I've done that one before, and it was correct for the area I spent the most time growing up :)

[MistyMountain]

I always get NJ/NY on these. I no longer have an accent but I still use or know a lot of the terms that are unique to the region like mischief night, lightning bugs, sun showers and sneakers etc. I do pronounce Mary, merry and marry differently so I guess I do have remnants of an accent but no one guesses or asks where I am from anymore. I hear an accent when I visit and it is hard to believe I used to sound like that.

Edited April 20, 2016 by MistyMountain

[Carrie12345]

Red hot for NJ, as always.  Birth-28.  (And I'm still surrounded by NYers and NJeans.

[Ravin]

Wow, it got me down to the town (not even just the metro area) where I live, though apparently I sound like I could also be from Denver, lol. I find this amusing because while I have lived a good chunk of my adult life here, I'm not from here.

 

I find that I start sounding more Texan when I go back home and am around people with Texas accents. My mother, OTOH, moved to Texas as an adult and AFAIK still sounds like she's from California.

[barnwife]

DH and I have both done this before. It pegs us each quite accurately...even though we didn't grow up that far from each other!

[MooCow]

That's the first one I've taken that is right :)

[Arctic Bunny]

I got Tacoma, Seattle, and Anchorage. Considering that Canada is between this - sort of - that's pretty good. There were many questions where the whole US was blue, though!

[Mabelen]

Two of the cities are just about 100 miles north of where I've lived in California for the last 7 years. The third one was in New England, maybe I still have some British features from my 12 years in the UK? No cities for the Mid Atlantic where I lived for 10 years in between though!

Edited April 19, 2016 by Mabelen

[SparklyUnicorn]

northeast near CT...yep

 

 

[Rachel]

I got MN and WI. I grew up in South Dakota although my dad is Texan so my accent was never as strong as a typical South Dakotan. I've been away for 17 years and I think this probably does represent me pretty well. We recently ran into a tour group from South Dakota and I couldn't believe how strong their accents sounded. I notice it when I go back but not as strongly as when I was around others with other accents at the same time.

[Bluegoat]

I'm on the east coast of Canada, and it gave me Boston, which makes a lot of sense, and Honalulu which seems odd, though I don't really have a sense of how people sound there, or what the historical connections might be.

[HS Mom in NC]

I got Stockton, Modesto and Fresno, CA.  I've lived my whole life in the PHX area.

[La Condessa]

I was surprised by how many of my answers did not match up with So Cal where I was raised. But many of my odd ones did match up with Kansas/Missouri where my mom was raised, or some with Utah where my dad is from. Very interesting, since they both had strong regional accents which they intentionally lost before I was ever born. (Especially my dad, who grew up in a tiny hick town in the mountains. At college, all the other Utahns thought he had come from the Deep South.) I do know from my linguistics studies in college that I have the southern Californian intonation patterns. Pretty much the whole map was warm for me, though.

[freesia]

So interesting!

 

One of my cities was Baltimore- I grew up in DC. Another is 20 minutes from where I live now. The third is in NJ -an hour or some from where I live and near where my Mom grew up.

[Caroline]

My cities were Baltimore and Washington, DC. I grew up halfway between them. The third city was Cleveland. My parents grew up in Ohio.

[Tree Frog]

My cities were Madison, Milwaukee, and Rockford. I've never been to any of them and didn't grow up in that part of the country. I believe my answer of "runners" skewed my results. That's a Canadian term we picked up when we lived there 15 years ago and kept. I've never heard it spoken since we returned to the states and my kids' friends don't know what runners are.

[mohsmom23]

It picked the exact city I used to live it so I guess it must be pretty accurate!  LOL!  I haven't lived there for over 15 years though.  I guess I've held on to a lot of the regional words we used growing up.  

[UCF612]

Pegged me from the south. I grew up in FL in a pretty southern influenced small town.

[plansrme]

It was pretty accurate for me:  Birmingham, Montgomery and Jackson, and I grew up in the middle of nowhere about 45 miles outside of Birmingham.  No one I meet thinks I have a southern accent, but apparently I've held on to the local terminology.  

[Mabelen]

My cities were Madison, Milwaukee, and Rockford. I've never been to any of them and didn't grow up in that part of the country. I believe my answer of "runners" skewed my results. That's a Canadian term we picked up when we lived there 15 years ago and kept. I've never heard it spoken since we returned to the states and my kids' friends don't know what runners are.

About skewing the results, what I did was answer the question in my head before looking at the choices thinking what I would normally say nowadays. There were several questions where I could have picked other terms that I would have naturally used among more international company versus mostly Americans.

Edited April 19, 2016 by Mabelen

[Ewe Mama]

All three of the cities listed for my responses were in Southern California. I've never lived further west than Indiana (for college). I was born in Cleveland, spent a fair amount of my childhood in SW Pennsylvania, back to NE Ohio, and a couple years in England. I don't know why it was so off for me.

[Truscifi]

It was pretty accurate for me:  Birmingham, Montgomery and Jackson, and I grew up in the middle of nowhere about 45 miles outside of Birmingham.  No one I meet thinks I have a southern accent, but apparently I've held on to the local terminology.  

 

Similar for me - my cities were Jackson, Montgomery, and Columbus. I grew up mostly in Atlanta and B'ham, so fairly close. No one I meet now thinks I sound Southern because I have very little accent, but the lingo has stuck I guess.

[wintermom]

Hey, it thinks I come from Hawaii! What a laugh, as I've never been there. All because I say firefly. I'm guessing this "test" is pretty useless for non-US English speakers. It's a give-away when the map is only of the US!  :lol:

Edited April 20, 2016 by wintermom

[theelfqueen]

It says I'm from Kansas City... which I am.

 

[myfunnybunch]

I got the nearest major city in my state, as well as a city in the neighboring state in which I grew up. :)

[solascriptura]

It was spot on!

[Violet Crown]

Access roads, blow off courses, and beer barns put me right where I am and ought to be. Good to see my college years weren't wasted.

[Tree Frog]

About skewing the results, what I did was answer the question in my head before looking at the choices thinking what I would normally say nowadays. There were several questions where I could have picked other terms that I would have naturally used among more international company versus mostly Americans.

 

I went back and did it again. I was not going to use runners as an answer, but there were different questions this time and that one wasn't one of them. This time 2 of the 3 cities (Aurora, Denver, and Rockford) are near where I grew up. I have no idea why I keep getting Rockford, though. Fun quiz!

[SKL]

It was accurate for me.

[StaceyinLA]

Very cool. Perfectly accurate for me.

[Eagle]

I'm from Canada and it couldn't place me on the map, which I guess makes sense!

[Barb_]

I grew up in South Florida, so a lot of my lingo has been picked up from transplanted NJ and NY'ers. We've also moved around quite a bit. I have hot spots in south Florida, New Jersey, Oklahoma (we lived there three years), and a whole strip of reddish orange stretching from southern Cal to south Florida. Pretty much the only cold blue I see is in the upper middle and western states, which are the only parts of the country we've never traveled to or lived in. Pretty cool.

 

Explains why my grown daughters say people laugh at their peculiar way of expressing themselves. My oldest insists we have a F-family dialect picked up from all of our moves.

[Bluegoat]

Hey, it thinks I come from Hawaii! What a laugh, as I've never been there. All because I say firefly. I'm guessing this "test" is pretty useless for non-US English speakers. It's a give-away when the map is only of the US!  :lol:

 

I think even then it might reveal some things.

 

I said above that I got Boston, and Hawaii.  Well, my city in Canada is close to Boston and has a lot of ties to it even today, and was settled by many of the same people.  (And I noticed a poster in central Canada had cities that were relativly close to her in the US.)

 

But the Hawaii thing stumped me, until I remembered that at least some of the early English speaking settlers of Hawaii also came from the New England states, and I think later there were quite a few Anglican settlers, though I don't know where they came from they also probably had British origins ultimately.

[Kathleen.]

How fun was that  :)

Mine was very accurate.  I can't believe there are so many different ways to say things.  I was beginning to think they were making these up.  They should have included "orange" and "water" since there are some variations.

[Sarah CB]

Interesting.  I'm Canadian and did it for fun.  It gave me three of the most northern cities - Rochester, Seattle, and Tacoma.  Seeing as though I lived only a few hours away from Seattle for a number of years, I guess that's pretty accurate.

[Laura Corin]

It was nicely confused about me.  My most similar places were Honolulu, Nashville and Jersey City.

[Shelly in IL]

It got both my current city and where I grew up. Crazy

[Haiku]

I got Akron, OH; Richmond, VA, and St. Louis, MO. I'm closest to Akron.

[Terabith]

I'm impressed. I live in Roanoke, Va and grew up in Jackson, TN. I have lived in South Dakota, Denver, and San Antonio. I got Greensboro, NC as most similar.

[MrsWeasley]

I'm impressed, too. I live in the town I grew up. This quiz places me exactly in the town next door to my town (a bigger city in my state but by no means a big city). Amazing!

[DawnM]

Shows 3 cities in CA.  

[cjzimmer1]

My cities were Madison, Milwaukee, and Rockford. I've never been to any of them and didn't grow up in that part of the country. I believe my answer of "runners" skewed my results. That's a Canadian term we picked up when we lived there 15 years ago and kept. I've never heard it spoken since we returned to the states and my kids' friends don't know what runners are.

 

I got the exact same 3 cities which makes sense since I grew up north of that area.  However, I have no idea what runners are, I didn't pick that for any of the answers and since I had an answer in my head before I read the choices I didn't read through all the choices.  So I'm curious as to what you are referring to as "runners" that makes you think it was distinct to the area.

 

Edit: went back and read the rest of the responses and see you took it again with different questions  That makes so much more sense.  I couldn't figure out which of the questions I had would possibly be called runners.

Edited April 20, 2016 by cjzimmer1

[happypamama]

I got three mid-Atlantic cities.  I've never lived near two of them, but except for two years in Boston, I've lived my entire life in the mid-Atlantic.  So I'd say it was accurate.

 

I'm sure people up here say "youse" or whatever, but I do prefer "y'all."  Sometimes I don't sound like a Pennsylvanian.  

[Rachel]

It was nicely confused about me. My most similar places were Honolulu, Nashville and Jersey City.

Those accents are all very different too.

[gardenmom5]

these are always fun.  not once has one come within 1000 miles of where I was born, grew up, or live. . .

 

the only thing it can get right is I'm  not from the south - but it is dark red everywhere from the west coast to western NY with grand rapids and minneapolis/st. paul highlighted..

 

 

[gardenmom5]

About skewing the results, what I did was answer the question in my head before looking at the choices thinking what I would normally say nowadays. There were several questions where I could have picked other terms that I would have naturally used among more international company versus mostly Americans.

as I was reading the questions, and then the answers - I knew what my grandmother would say (she was from  NW missouri farming community for several generations) e.g.  'supper' is the evening meal - but I don't use those terms.  I had to make a conscious effort to answer what *I* would say.

I was watching the edwardian manner house where people lived as edwardians for three months - the servants would call  the noonish meal dinner because that was their main meal.  they were serving "dinner" to the 'gentry' in the evening so they only had time for a quick evening meal - re: supper.

kind of similiar on a farm - the big meal was the middle of the day to fuel all the farm hands who were working.

[gardenmom5]

I took it again - different questions. still not within 1000miles.   fresno, SLC,  des moines.  still red (but not as red) to western NY.  still not from the south.  the west coast is redder  than it was on the first one.

 

 

[wintermom]

I think even then it might reveal some things.

 

I said above that I got Boston, and Hawaii.  Well, my city in Canada is close to Boston and has a lot of ties to it even today, and was settled by many of the same people.  (And I noticed a poster in central Canada had cities that were relativly close to her in the US.)

 

But the Hawaii thing stumped me, until I remembered that at least some of the early English speaking settlers of Hawaii also came from the New England states, and I think later there were quite a few Anglican settlers, though I don't know where they came from they also probably had British origins ultimately.

 

I think you're overthinking the depth of thought that went into this "test." ;)   

[Bluegoat]

I think you're overthinking the depth of thought that went into this "test." ;)   

 

It's based on pretty extensive studies of regional dialects.  In North America, they tend to be fairly strongly influenced by where the settlers came from.  So long as the dialect maps are accurate, and they seem to be, they didn't have to put much thought into it.  The other connections between regions will be reflected by similarities in dialect.