Language/Dialects Test

[Southern Kross]

American dialects are really interesting. I'm from New Zealand but took it to see what I came out as.

Most Similar Cities
1 New York NY 38.8
2 Elizabeth NJ 38.1
3 Hartford CT 37.6
4 Waterbury CT 36.8
5 Newark NJ 36.5

Least Similar Cities
1 Lansing MI 25.4
2 Warren MI 25.9
3 Ann Arbor MI 25.9
4 Livonia MI 25.9
5 Flint MI 26.1

I was surprised to see NY at the top. Most Americans say I sound like I'm from New England. This is mostly because we don't pronounce the letter 'r' if we can avoid it - like "cah" and "bah" instead of car and bar. I suppose the words we use for things might throw it off.

And apparently Michigan is clearly the antithesis of NZ. Who knew?

The better question is what the hell is "the little gray creature (that looks like an insect but is actually a crustacean) that rolls up into a ball when you touch it?"

We call that a "slater" here. This wasn't even an option on the list, though. It's weird to find out which words are dialect/regionally specific only when you say a word and people have no idea what you're talking about. I never would have know it was different otherwise.

And what the hell is an "easy course" meant to be? I've never even heard of the options they used, either.

 

[Andy]

Apparently, Utah is the cloest to my accent. I come the westmidlands, England, if you're interest. To be homest, I answered half the questions with " I have no word or term for this".

Most Similar Cities
1 Provo UT 39.1
2 Sandy UT 38.9
3 West Jordan UT 38.8
4 Salt Lake City UT 38.7
5 West Valley City UT 38.6

Least Similar Cities
1 Roanoke VA 24.0
2 Winston-Salem NC 25.3
3 Birmingham AL 25.4
4 Tuscaloosa AL 25.4
5 Greensboro NC

 

[skylights]

Most Similar Cities
1 Hamilton NJ 49.2
2 Brick NJ 48.9
3 Newark NJ 48.8
4 Toms River NJ 48.5
5 Trenton NJ 47.6

Least Similar Cities
1 Fargo ND 29.3
2 Duluth MN 31.0
3 Billings MT 31.2
4 Pueblo CO 31.2
5 Colorado Springs CO 31.4

My parents are from Long Island, NY, so that explains that. The area of the South I'm from was yellowy-orange, so I've obviously picked up some from here, too.

 

[five sounds]

American dialects are really interesting. I'm from New Zealand but took it to see what I came out as.

Most Similar Cities
1 New York NY 38.8
2 Elizabeth NJ 38.1
3 Hartford CT 37.6
4 Waterbury CT 36.8
5 Newark NJ 36.5

Least Similar Cities
1 Lansing MI 25.4
2 Warren MI 25.9
3 Ann Arbor MI 25.9
4 Livonia MI 25.9
5 Flint MI 26.1

I was surprised to see NY at the top. Most Americans say I sound like I'm from New England. This is mostly because we don't pronounce the letter 'r' if we can avoid it - like "cah" and "bah" instead of car and bar. I suppose the words we use for things might throw it off.

And apparently Michigan is clearly the antithesis of NZ. Who knew?


We call that a "slater" here. This wasn't even an option on the list, though. It's weird to find out which words are dialect/regionally specific only when you say a word and people have no idea what you're talking about. I never would have know it was different otherwise.

And what the hell is an "easy course" meant to be? I've never even heard of the options they used, either.

Super interesting! I bet they chose it based on your pronunciations of words more than specific vocabulary. New England accents are the closest American accents to British English since that area was pretty much exclusively British colonists for a long time. That's why they drop their /r/ sound a lot (pahk the cah is the American descendent of the British "pawk the caw"). NZ's accent is obviously heavily influenced by the British too. I wouldn't be surprised if the more nuanced pronunciation differences (like vowel sound differences and emphasized syllables) followed the same patterns to some extent.

Who knew we had such a distinct accent in Michigan!? I knew we spoke Midwest-y, but how specifically they're callin out southeast Michigan is pretty funny to me. Are we really that distinct?

 

[93JC]

We call that a "slater" here. This wasn't even an option on the list, though.

They don't even exist here, so feel free to call 'em whatever you want.

It's weird to find out which words are dialect/regionally specific only when you say a word and people have no idea what you're talking about. I never would have know it was different otherwise.

What's weirder for me is the gamut of terms for things that we don't have at all, like the 'slater' or 'rolly poley'. We don't have little grey crustaceans skittering around. The only crustaceans here are cooked and served for dinner!

I know there are a handful of words that could quite easily narrow my accent/dialect down to western Canadian. For example, 'parkade'. Out east it's "parking garage". In the UK it's "multi-storey carpark". Here it's parkade; anything else sounds weird.

And what the hell is an "easy course" meant to be? I've never even heard of the options they used, either.

I think it means a school course, as in a particular subject not the entire program in itself (both of which I might use the word 'course' to describe depending on the context). An 'easy' one would be... easy? I certainly wouldn't use any of the terms in the survey.

 

[Ene]

Most Similar Cities
1 Huntsville AL 42.9
2 Macon GA 42.7
3 Louisville KY 42.4
4 Tulsa OK 42.2
5 Chattanooga TN 42.2

Least Similar Cities

1 New Haven CT 25.9
2 Waterbury CT 26.4
3 Bridgeport CT 27.3
4 Livonia MI 27.3
5 Grand Rapids MI 27.5

 

[Honor]

Grey crustacean is a rolly poley
Road parallel to the freeway is a service drive

Haha I didn't get the rolly poley question though! Did you take the long form?

No, it just happened to be in the 25 that I got.

You can see the full list of questions here: http://dialect.redlog.net/

My favorite question was 'What do you say when someone sneezes?' Amongst an array of options like, "Bless you" and "Gesundheit" was "I don't say anything." lmao

 

[five sounds]

Lol [MENTION=16139]Honor[/MENTION]! That makes me imagine a small mountain region where they completely ignore sneezes. "Oh no, we don't say anything."

 

[Honor]

It thinks I'm a Texan, but I'm a Hoosier. Guess it's not that different?

View attachment 10094

Most Similar Cities
1 Denton TX 55.6
2 Frisco TX 55.5
3 MacKinney TX 55.1
4 Irving TX 55.1
5 Corpus Christi TX 54.8

Least Similar Cities
1 Waterbury CT 33.3
2 Buffalo NY 34.3
3 Providence RI 34.4
4 Cheektowaga NY 34.8
5 New Haven CT 35.2

Interesting! I would've thought that Texas and the Midwest would have been quite distinct.

THIS ROCKS!!!!! <3333

My results:

Most Similar Cities
1 Lowell MA 46.4
2 Nashua NH 46.0
3 Falmouth MA 45.8
4 Springfield MA 45.4
5 Hartford CT 45.4

Makes sense - I grew up in Groton, CT and Leominster, MA before moving to West Warwick, RI and then Germany.

Glad you liked the test! There seem to be lots of people interested in language on this forum. It's awesome.

 

[Honor]

Lol [MENTION=16139]Honor[/MENTION]! That makes me imagine a small mountain region where they completely ignore sneezes. "Oh no, we don't say anything."

haha exactly!

 

[cafe]

Interesting! I would've thought that Texas and the Midwest would have been quite distinct.

Me too. Maybe I have no idea what I sound like.

 

[Honor]

Me too. Maybe I have no idea what I sound like.

lol! I think the same for me too because I do not at all sound like I'm from the Boston area, and I've never even been there. But all of my top 5 results were in Massachusetts.

 

[Rail Tracer]

Most Similar Cities
1: Olathe KS 48.8
2: Wichita KS 48.3
3: Tulsa OK 48.0
4: Lawrence KS 47.9
5: Norman OK 47.6

Least Similar Cities
1: Waterbury CT 29.9
2: Reading PA 29.9
3: New Haven CT 30.3
4: Philadelphia PA 30.7
5: Providence RI 31.2

Kansas and Oklahoma, places I have never been to before. What it has gotten right is all that red/orange in Northern California.

Third time.... Close enough

1: Livonia MI 44.3
2: Warren MI 44.2
3: Fremont CA 43.9
4: Roseville CA 43.8
5: Arden-Arcade CA 43.7

I give up.

 

[Rail Tracer]

Actually, now that I think about it, it is reasonable that I would have more of a Midland-like accent precisely because of where I live. Many of the people in Kansas and Oklahoma moved to California (especially Central California) during the Dust Bowl. Because of that, their way of speaking ended up melding with the lesser populated Central California speech(and where most of the farming and smaller cities are at,) at least phonetically. Grammatically, however, that is a different story. The whole thing about "anymore" is foreign to me. But I could probably live in Kansas, Oklahoma, or Missouri and sound almost like a native until my grammatical ways of speaking gives it away.

 

[Southern Kross]

Super interesting! I bet they chose it based on your pronunciations of words more than specific vocabulary. New England accents are the closest American accents to British English since that area was pretty much exclusively British colonists for a long time. That's why they drop their /r/ sound a lot (pahk the cah is the American descendent of the British "pawk the caw"). NZ's accent is obviously heavily influenced by the British too. I wouldn't be surprised if the more nuanced pronunciation differences (like vowel sound differences and emphasized syllables) followed the same patterns to some extent.

The English 'r' is even more prominent than the NZ version (although it's equally silly to generalise about British or English accents because they're so varied). *The English pronounce it, just more softly than most Americans (ie. it sounds like a 'w' to you but this at least resembles the letter 'r' in sound). *Here, we don't say it at all except if it's combined with a consonant (even then we try to avoid it). *Actually, you'd think we were trying to destroy consonants altogether.

Who knew we had such a distinct accent in Michigan!? I knew we spoke Midwest-y, but how specifically they're callin out southeast Michigan is pretty funny to me. Are we really that distinct?

I imagined it would be Midwest-y with a Canadian-esque twist. But then what would I know?

They don't even exist here, so feel free to call 'em whatever you want.

What's weirder for me is the gamut of terms for things that we don't have at all, like the 'slater' or 'rolly poley'. We don't have little grey crustaceans skittering around. The only crustaceans here are cooked and served for dinner!

They look like creepy little insects, about a centimetre long and live in your wood pile. I occasionally see them in the garden too. Maybe you do have them, but if you didn't have a fireplace or don't work with wood, you wouldn't see them much.

EDIT: After some research, it seems that Wikipedia calls it a "woodlouse", and it practically has a different name in every country (and even within some countries, it seems)

My favorite question was 'What do you say when someone sneezes?' Amongst an array of options like, "Bless you" and "Gesundheit" was "I don't say anything." lmao

Some friends of mine came back from several months travelling in the US and they joked about how much Americans say these things after you sneeze. They thought it was hilarious that if you sneeze in a public place, 5 people will desperately leap out at you and say "bless you!", like their lives depended on it.

 

[93JC]

They look like creepy little insects, about a centimetre long and live in your wood pile. I occasionally see them in the garden too. Maybe you do have them, but if you didn't have a fireplace or don't work with wood, you wouldn't see them much.

EDIT: After some research, it seems that Wikipedia calls it a "woodlouse", and it practically has a different name in every country (and even within some countries, it seems)

Thanks for the link. We do have "woodlice" after all, but not the kind that roll up into a ball to protect themselves.

 

[Honor]

Some friends of mine came back from several months travelling in the US and they joked about how much Americans say these things after you sneeze. They thought it was hilarious that if you sneeze in a public place, 5 people will desperately leap out at you and say "bless you!", like their lives depended on it.

lol! i love this story!!! you said you were from new zealand? now, that must be a wicked cool place to live.

 

[gromit]

I took it but my post on results got wiped. Unsurprisingly my top 5 were all in MA. I think falmouth, fall river, etc, south shore towns, but maybe lowell too.

On the map the northeast was red and a weird swath just inland of the pacific northwest.

 

[Such Irony]

Most Similar Cities
1 Fargo ND 44.5
2 Minneapolis MN 43.7
3 Bloomington MN 43.4
4 Rochester MN 41.5
5 Rockford IL 40.5

Least Similar Cities
1 Toms River NJ 28.2
2 Newark NJ 28.8
3 Philadelphia PA 28.9
4 Hamilton NJ 28.9
5 Camden NJ 29.3

My city was ranked number 2.

Funny how Fargo ranks number 1, I've only been there a couple of times and NO, I DO NOT TALK LIKE THE PEOPLE IN THE FARGO MOVIE.

 

[Halla74]

This one's for Professor @nicolita! Find out where in the United States your dialect is from by taking this short 25 question quiz: http://spark.rstudio.com/jkatz/dialectquiz/.

Most Similar:
1 New Bedford MA 48.2
2 Falmouth MA 48.0
3 Fall River MA 47.5
4 Plymouth MA 47.0
5 Brockton MA 46.4

Least Similar:
1 Duluth MN 30.9
2 Green Bay WI 31.4
3 Madison WI 31.8
4 Rockford IL 31.8
5 Minneapolis MN 31.9

Funny. I've never been to Massachusetts, but I guess I should go and meet some people who speak like me. (The place I am from did show up on the map as very red, though, so this test was accurate for me outside of naming the top 5 cities.)

Can't access the server ATM, so I took the quiz at the link posted by 93JC for the time being...

How about http://www.youthink.com/quiz.cfm?obj_id=9827 ?

I don't agree with the results from the quiz I took at the link above.

It claims my accent/dialect is:

"Mid-Atlantic"

My wife's aunt and uncle are from Atlantic City, and I lived in Pennsylvania for one year when I was 9 years old - so I know what the "Mid-Atlantic" accent sounds like, and that is not how my voice sounds.
Looking forward to taking the other quiz to compare the results.