Hey, Boy, Where Y’all From…
Since first seeing this little ditty over at JohnB’s Blog Meridian, I have unearthed it multiple times in my journeys around the blogosphere. Never take any of these kinds of things too seriously, but merely as a form of occasional mild, free entertainment.
| What American accent do you have?
Your Result: The South
That’s a Southern accent you’ve got there. You may love it, you may hate it, you may swear you don’t have it, but whatever the case, we can hear it. |
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| Philadelphia |
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| The Midland |
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| The Northeast |
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| The Inland North |
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| The West |
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| Boston |
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| North Central |
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| What American accent do you have? Take More Quizzes |
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Appropriately enough, the test pegs me as Suthun. What the graphic somehow fails to properly quantify is the other contributing components. In my case, there are heavy components left over from my 20 years in Pittsburgh, Indiana, and Iowa.
I have had two dawnings that consciously brought change in some of my pronunciations. The first was in highschool where I had a role in the Senior play. Several times during the course of the play my script included the word “Italian”. As many years as it has been, I can still hear the drama teacher, Mrs. Lassiter, dramatically waving her arms to stop rehearsal, screaming “IT-alian”, NOT “EYE-talian”. That served me well, since the second baptism occurred with my move to Pittsburgh by the Bigassed International Saltmine Corp that recruited me out of college. Pittsburgh is heavily populated with “EYE-talians”, and I quickly fell in love with good Italian cooking. Pittsburghers not only have a unique accent, they almost have their own language. They use words unknown to the rest of the country, and have differing usages for some words than you find elsewhere. To get along, to survive, to eat, you have to learn the language.
In the past, my accent baffled so-called experts. But being back in my native Tennessee for 20 years has washed away much of what was superimposed by my 20 years in the North woods. Live with it long enough, some of it rubs off…
9 Comments so far
Winston,
Thanks for the plug. And I’m with you as to what these tests imply about our individual dialects: Most of us are blends of the places where we’ve lived–not just pronunciations but words, the ways we phrase things–and fitting all those square pegs of our speech patterns into eight round-hole categories requires some shaving of edges and corners. But at least they start the conversation, rather than end it.
Good Mornin’!…
How about some quickies, whilst I punish the first cuppa? Congrats to the Hornes! I shore do like the way you tawk Looking for the real book deal Until my voice returns, this will be my primary mode of communication……
Wow! That quiz works! At least it pegged my Boston accent straight off, and I have lived almost three thousand miles away from Beantown, for thirty years! Thanks Winston, and enjoyed Blog Meridian to boot.
My accent came out Inland North…with results from most to least…
The Midland
Northeast
Philadelphia
South
Boston
No. Central
Hmm…this Chicago-area born and raised girl found this very interesting.
Were I am American (I’m a Scot who has loved in Germany for 37 years), it reports my accent would be from the Northeast.
In descending order of similarity:-
Philly, Inland North, Midland , South, boston, West, North Central.
Is it then valid to conclude that someone from the NE of the use speaks English like an exiled teutophile Scot?
I did a quiz like this recently and got Mid-West accent. Hows that for an Irish woman with no particular accent, unless of course I’m riled.
No particular accent
So I parked way out on the kokomo Chuck Berry?
Funny the things that float through my head when I am writing comments.
What a riot! I took the quiz and they say my accent is heavily from Philadelphia and the North East. They say: “Judging by how you talk you are probably from North Jersey, New York City, Connecticut or Rhode Island. Chances are if you are from New York City (and not those other places)people would probably be able to tell if they actually heard you speak.”
And, in fact, I have a British accent from Zimbabwe! Wow! I fooled them all … or did I?
[...] So Winston points to this accent identifier quiz. My results: [...]
This is a fun test and I put my results onto my blog. Basically it said I have no accent which, in the part of the Northwest where I grew up, is said to be true.