There is a new interactive quiz at The New York Times that lets you see how your speech choices match up with various geographic regions in the nation. It’s fairly quick and can provide some interesting results. Here’s a look at mine.
I’m most verbally at home in Missouri, Tennessee, and Kentucky, though, interestingly, I have a so-called General American Accent, which is the most neutral in the United States, probably because I grew up very close to the southern side of that shaded area near Iowa (not to mention my dad coming from California).
Were I given a choice of birth accents, I think I’d go with North or South Carolina, but I think a big part of it is I remember hearing it a lot during childhood in grocery stores, service stations, banks – that twang; seriously, hearing these two talk transports me back to the 1980’s – and it makes me feel nostalgic. You don’t hear it very much these days, but I still remember being a little boy and the Wal-Mart checkout ladies pronouncing Missouri as “Mizz-ur-ah”. It’s not just the language that has changed since then. In those days, Wal-Marts were the size of a small office supply store, didn’t sell any groceries, and called themselves “Discount City”. They were also brown and white with almost no presence outside of the Missouri, Arkansas, Oklahoma, Tennessee, etc. area. And they had these popcorn machines up front with snow cone makers so you could have a snack while you wandered the rust-orange-ish carpeted aisles with your grandparents.
So … how do you’all speak?
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Reader Comments (7)
Comments are presented chronologically, with replies indented beneath the comments to which they respond.
Gilvus
December 29, 2013
I'm offended that Chinglish speakers couldn't even complete the quiz >:(
Nicholas Archer
December 29, 2013
I've lived in 9 states all over the country and DC.
SO excited to take this!!!!!
peterpatch79
December 30, 2013
I am from Canada but did the quiz out of curiosity. The quiz shows my dialect being closest to Buffalo, Takoma and Spokane (Michigan and Northern Minnesota as well). This makes sense because they are close to the Canadian border.
Ashly
December 30, 2013
Sacramento and modesto. No surprise there:)
Harley
December 31, 2013
Interestingly enough, I line up more with the east coast. Though most of my map is red to begin with: http://gyazo.com/4b2454d5caaba91d4959cba4567468af
(on a side note, I looked at those games on Steam you told me about; I'm probably going to end up buying the one where you play as the queen)
pHuzz
January 8, 2014
I found this fascinating.
I tend to lean on the side of a 'southern drawl'. It becomes VERY thick if i'm tired or very relaxed(drinking, etc). Most of the time I do fairly well in hiding it, not for any other reason but to communicate effectively.
What is interesting about this study/test is that while I elongate my vowels in such a way. I do not necessarily have the same word associations that it would indicate. I was born in California, lived all over the country, and none of my family is from the south. I do consider the south my home however which probably has a lot to do with why i'm influenced by it.
Another thing that is misleading is that they ask you how you pronounce one word based on how you pronounce another word which could its self be pronounced different ways, to include sounding like one of the other contrasting choices.
All that said... it pretty much hit the nail on the head for me in that I consider my self "Southern". So despite my observations against it, it seems to be quite good for a test of only 25 questions.
As a side note, I wonder how many people associate this way without having any real ties to the south. I often hear southern accents in singers that are not even native speakers of English let alone from the south. I believe this is because the characteristic sound of a southern accent is the drawn out vowels, which when singing is the primary body of the sound (try talking without using vowels).
Thank you for this post.
FratMan
January 17, 2014
Here's one of my big questions in life that I can't figure out. To what extent should the presence of disproportionate bargaining power between two parties undermine, modify, or generally affect agreements presumably created by consenting adults? I'm interested in the moral, not legal side of the issue.