25 words/phrases determine your US dialect.

I’m Canadian. Interesting and consistent, I placed along the lower Great Lakes, Buffalo and Detroit, with a dash of Grand Rapids. Makes sense geographically.

Fun post, OP, thx.

Scarily so. I am from a combination of Cleveland, Miami, and New York and it picked up all 3. My sister never lived in NY so she only got Cleveland & Miami.

It placed me in Boston-Worcester-Providence.

I was born in Boston and currently live in Worcester.

Water bubbler...🤣🤣🤣

Who calls it that?

It got my general area right, but not my state. But I moved when i was 20, lived in a different region for nearly 15 years, and married a man from a totally different region than where I'm from or where we lived, then moved back to my home state. So it's not surprising that they couldn't pinpoint it.

WOW, I have completely lost my Cleveland accent from childhood after leaving in 1967 and unfortunately slipped into a Missouri twang, but this still pegged me as from Cleveland.

I got Fresno, Salt Lake City, and Riverside (CA). I was born and raised in the Bay Area, lived in the DC area for 9 years, and now 33 years in the LA area. I've never even been to Salt Lake City.

Once on the tree lawn, R6, always on the tree lawn.

Yes, basically: the corridor from southwestern CT up through Springfield.

R4, "bubbler" for what I'd call "water fountain" (or "drinking fountain") is a RI thing. Pronounced "bubbla."

OP, we’re from the same area (DC Metro area) where I’ve spent most of my adult life even though I lived in 3 different countries growing up.

I’ve taken this quiz twice and both times I get Yonkers, NY. I used to visit NY regularly and have friends from NY, but I don’t know why I would have that dialect.

"Devil's Night" puts one in Michigan, especially the SE corner. Nothing else is needed after that.

This is tough. There’s a difference between what I say now versus growing up. I Answered with the terms are used to growing up and it correctly predicted exactly where I grew up

R7 I got almost the same as you, except Stockton, CA instead of Riverside. It was firefly, potato bug, and frontage road that did it. I've lived my whole life in Sacto, so... who knows.

Reno, Modesto, and Salt Lake City?

I was born and raised in Los Angeles.

It pegged me.

Apparently I am an Easterner, from Boston up to Maine, and Boston is my city. I'm actually a Nova Scotian, but I spent every vacation from the time that I was 8 until my late 20's anywhere from Maine to New York. Oddly enough, many Canadians think that I talk like an American, and Americans thought that I was British. Go figure.

I grew up in San Diego and lived most of my adult life in L.A. It pegged me as Santa Ana/Irvine, Anaheim, or Santa Clarita. Close enough.

"Bubbler" and "Pop" dropped the dime on me.

You can take the person outta Milwaukee, but you can't take the Milwaukee outta the person.

Yup. Sneakers. I got Boston/Yonkers/NYC.Born and raised in NYC.

Analyzed me as a hybrid NYC/Philadelphia - - I'm from New Jersey. A couple of the questions were close enough I was torn between responses: lightning bug/firefly, access/frontage road. Tennis shoes sounds incredibly hick to me.

My mother from Massachusetts says bubbler.

nice try, Boris. Trying to infiltrate the US by using social research to perfect your accents and dialect. I’m not playing along with this and neither should DL.

Had no ideas sneakers was such a specific regional thing. I knew pop/soda was, but not sneakers.

Cleveland is one of three for me. Thank God, it isn’t DC. Native DCerscan be annoying.

Interesting. I was born in Florida, but my parents were NY & NJ transplants. My three top cities were all in NY/NJ, but my next area was South Florida.

Re: R21

The levels of paranoia can be staggeringly tedious here at times.

OP here. As I said, I got Arlington, VA and Washington, D.C.

My sister just took the quiz and got Durham, N.C., Newport News, Virginia (near the N.C. border) and Irving, Texas!

Which makes total sense to me at least generally. I am a city mouse and she is a country mouse. She lives in Fairfax, Virginia now but she works in western Loudoun County near the West Virginia border with a lot of people from that area who speak with WV accents. Her speech dips in and out of twang.

R10- I took this quiz years ago and just now and I too ended up in Yonkers, NY , however I grew up close to Yonkers so for me it makes sense.

It pinpointed the city I grew up in with a secondary suggestion of a city about 100 miles away from where I live today.

Took this when it was first published in 2014 and it wasn't as accurate then, I wonder what answers I changed? Some of them weren't easy to answer because they had close but not quite options, like "catty-corner" when I say "caddy-corner," but there was no option for that, and I didn't know if choosing "other" was more accurate or not.

LOL R25, I have R21 blocked, apparently for good reason. I certainly am not a Boris. I’m one of few people I know who has lived within the same 30-mile radius around D.C. throughout my entire life.

"Mischief night" pegged me for Newark/Paterson NJ (grew up in South Orange NJ). Also got Yonkers and Jersey City ("sneakers"); lived in NYC for 20 years, then CT, now Sarasota.

I say both tennis shoes and sneakers. That was a tough call.

R30

I was a kid in Chatham so mischief night jumped out at me, too!

“Tomorrow is Halloween” is the only term for the day before Halloween in the D.C. region as far as I know!

Grew up in Bartlesville and Tulsa Oklahoma. And I got Wichita as my dialect. Pretty accurate. Coke and pop were a tough call for me.

Placed me in the city of my birth, lived there for first 21 years of life. since then lived in southernmost part of state. Evidently you can take the boy out of....

That's odd. I didn't get a question about sneakers.

The city J grew up in and the city I now live in came up. Pretty accurate.

When I taught high-school English, I did a lesson on dialect with my seniors. The majority of the white kids got the same city, Fort Wayne, Indiana, which is about an hour away and the closest city of note to our western Ohio location. Black kids and kids whose parents were from other areas got different influences, mostly southern.

We are also close to Dayton, but that probably picks up some southern influences we don’t use. Also, it seems that the Northern Cities Vowel Shift kicks in just north of us, which would preclude Toledo.

It got me exactly right. It said Dallas, and I live in Dallas.

OP why are you intentionally saying "you guys" in that way? Have a point you're hoping to prove?

r34=Ree Drummond

I took this quiz several years ago and it creeped me out. It pinpointed the exact region I was born and raised based off my dialect.

R40 Because it’s in the article’s headline and it’s the term used in my region.

But if you want to believe it’s some sort of subversive plot to get you, by all means!

It got the city I was born in and the city I live in now plus a city 100 miles away I’ve never been to. I left my birth city at age 7 and I’ve lived all over the place since then.

I was born and grew up in Miami but have lived in Tallahassee for almost 40 years. It got both!!!!

LOL! I did the test as an English-speaking foreigner and it placed me in Miami, Florida! 😃

Mine was accurate, but what I find weird is that somehow (according to this map) the western PA dialect is the same as Spokane, WA.

Yo, mine nailed me as Newark/Paterson, Jersey City & Philly.

Pegged me as Seattle or Portland with a possibility of Salt Lake City. Grew up in Seattle.

[quote]It pegged me.

Pics, please!

Mine is consistent. My cities are: Jackson. Richmond, and Baltimore. I've lived in South Carolina and Pennsylvania extensively; a few years in Georgia, and a year in Mississippi.

Despite answering "other" to some questions, and deliberately choosing modern usage vs things I might have heard growing up, it correctly IDed my region,.

I had no idea "sneakers" was a giveaway. I always thought "tennis shoes" was just old-fashioned.

Not 100% on the nose but generally accurate: born in New Orleans and raised/still live in Birmingham. My three cities are Winston-Salem, Mobile, and Montgomery.

Lived in Chicago all my life and it was the first option given to me. There's no name for the little area between streets. And why wasn't front lawn given as an option for the grass area in front of the house?

Milwaukee (where I was born but never lived) Honolulu (because of firefly) and Philly because of hoagie

Wooooow it nailed what city I live in by a couple of distinctive words. It also caught the area of a different state that I grew up in. That test is crazy.

It got me:

1. Newark

2. Yonkers

3. New York

"Mischief night" and "sneakers" were my tells, plus "Mary, marry, and merry have three different pronunciations."

Mine was Lincoln, Nebraska and Oxnard, CA. I’ve never lived in Nebraska. I grew up in LA county though.

Some of my relatives are from the Midwest and I grew up with them nearby, but not from Nebraska.

R57 I also say sneakers, and I’m from NoVA/DC.

I think “marry/merry/Mary” is the giveaway for your region. The only people I can think of who say “marry” differently than “Mary” are New Yorkers (and people from Connecticut and maybe NJ) who say “maher-ree.”

Frisco, Irving and Arlington.....I was born in Galveston and spent my childhood in Houston and then moved to Fairfax VA then back to Houston. Never been near those three Texas towns.

Was not even close for me. It put me for two cities in Kansas and one in Wisconsin. I’ve never been to either state. Born and raised in California, as were my parents and grandparents.

There was a thread about 'yinz' awhile back. Its unique to Erie or Pittsburgh.

Santa Clarita, Corona, Irvine. I grew up in the San Fernando Valley, so I'm within the LA-Orange-Riverside Counties range.

I’m noticing the giveaways for some of the replies here are questions I wasn’t even asked. The questions must change based on an algorithm — so it’s not the same 25 questions everyone is being asked, it could be 100 questions or more.

R61 I am not a linguist, but I think I have a moderately good ear for accents generally—with California being a major exception. People from various areas of California sometimes sound to me like they’re from the DC area, sometimes like they are from Wyoming or another western state, sometimes (people from LA) there’s a strong New York influence and some idioms even sound very southeastern US. California is an enigma to this east coaster.

I took it again and some of the questions are different R64. I pretty much got the same results, which suggests that the test has good reliability.

[quote]The only people I can think of who say “marry” differently than “Mary” are New Yorkers (and people from Connecticut and maybe NJ) who say “maher-ree.”

I don't pronounce "marry" anything like "maher-ree."

r57

I took it again. Four or five of the questions were different. Same results: Washington, D.C., Arlington, Virginia and Baltimore.

R67 How do you pronounce it phonetically?

Very accurate. I grew up in the middle of Illinois and this pegged me between Indianapolis and St. Louis.

r69 "Maaaaaaahry," such that the A sounds like the A in "hat" or "cat."

That test is spooky. The first city is the city next to the city where I grew up on the West Coast. The second city is very near where my mother grew up in the South. I've never been to the third city, Wichita, and I don't know anyone who comes from there.

This is a BIG giveaway. How do you pronounce ORANGE? Do you say OR-nge or ARE-nge. I say ARE-nge.

R53, that’s interesting because I grew up in centra North Carolina and it places me in Mobile, Birmingham, and Montgomery.

What a fun quiz, OP! I pegged as Santa Rosa, which is north of LA where I grew up. But I lived in Wisconsin as a teen so maybe I got the “soda pop” question wrong. Then spent the next 45+ years in Colorado/Oregon.

There should’ve been a casserole/hot dish question. As well as “Sunday clothes/shoes.” Great thread.

AHRindge, r73 (which I suspect is the same as your ARE-nge). And it's two syllables, which the ORnge sayers never give the word.

R73 ORE-inge here

Springfield, Providence, Yonkers. CT native so that makes sense, I guess.

FLAHR-i-da v. FLOOR-i-da

I got Rochester/Buffalo,

Yes it identified my origins.

R80. I got Rochester / Buffalo as well. I live pretty close, just a couple hundreds clicks away, across the border.

I got Yonkers, Buffalo, Philadelphia. Southwest CT born and raised.

Regarding orange. I say ARE-inge, but for forest I say FORE-ist. My dad who was from Boston would say ARE-inge, but would say FAR-ist.

Here's another one, APE-ricot or APP-ricot? I say APP-ricot. My mom who was from the South would say APE-ricot.

What about radiator? RA-diator or RAY-diator?

R82, I lived in NYC from age 14 to 16; I next lived in Jersey from age 16 to 27. I now live in Florida and was born in the Caribbean. Not even close.

Pinpoint accuracy, DC metro area. OK, I actually live in Maryland, but I was conceived in Arlington, VA.

[quote]FLAHR-i-da v. FLOOR-i-da

FLAHR-i-da. Also, most who say FLOOR compress it into two syllables: FLOOR-duh rather than FLOOR-i-da.

[quote]RA-diator or RAY-diator?

RAY-diator.

Newark-area native.

Orlando, Miami, and Pembroke Pines (????)

Born and raised in Los Angeles

R83: I say APEricot raised in NJ with no southern influence at all.

Richmond/Baltimore/Newport News. I have lived all of my almost 58 years in Richmond.

It was eerily accurate for me -- Baton Rouge/Austin/Corpus (I am from Houston).

Damn quiz pinpointed me to a neighboring city (Glendale, CA) from where I live!

Richmond and New Orleans, so accurate. Love that neutral ground!

This again?

You guys! I got NYC and Philly, which is accurate as I live in PA about equidistant from each.

I could go for a hoagie and a soda right about now!

I grew up in Washington, DC; spent a few years in New England; and now live in the SF Bay Area.

And the “heat map” it showed me is reddest in New England and the Bay Area - specifically Oakland. Very interesting!

R87, Same here!

Got a neighboring town to where I grew up, so nailed within a mile.

Can someone please use the word 'vernacular' and how it relates to this quiz?

Grinder and pronouncing aunt as "ahnt" is a dead New England giveaway. They should have a question about "down cellar."

Also, doing a packie run. If you're from New England, you know what that is.

Canadian, but from the west, so unlike R1, I placed closest to Seattle.

I placed as Philadelphia and NYC. I grew up in Washington state, but my family is from the Philadelphia area. As an adult I lived in NYC for 15 years, I suppose I lapsed back into a familiar vocabulary, and accent.

In the commercial, the owner of a company that sells Harry's razors, pronounces it Hairy's.

Yes, some people are getting different questions. But I wonder about the accuracy. They asked me if I pronounce "been" as "bin" or "bean". I chose "bin" and the result map showed almost all blue (i.e., disimilar) - meaning 99% of the nation pronounces it as "bean!" The only people I've ever heard pronounce it that way are Canadians.

Grew up in Cali and got Newark, Miami, and Pembroke Pines. Strange.

I say sneakers, chose "boy" for lawyer and "bin" for "been" and "you guys". I just assumed everyone says it that way.

[quote]What about radiator? RA-diator or RAY-diator?

It's GLADiator!

[quote]pronouncing aunt as "ahnt" is a dead New England giveaway.

Or black, at least in the DC area, as in "mah ahnt."

[quote]I say sneakers, chose "boy" for lawyer and "bin" for "been" and "you guys". I just assumed everyone says it that way.

Did it say you're from Newark, r107?

Are you Latino, R106? Those cities all have large to majority Spanish-speaking populations.

[quote]pronouncing aunt as "ahnt" is a dead New England giveaway.

Ooh, you're right. I suppressed tonic and bubbler but I forgot that one.

Never heard of "yinz" but I love it. Maybe even more than "all y'all."

"Liz," r108, or Liv?

I've been in California my whole life, and weirdly, the colorations for SF area and NJ/NY were very similar and I more closely matched NJ.

I say "ant" and "aunt" interchangeably.

R110 No, Jewish.

“Aunt” is one word that has tripped me up all my life. If it comes up in conversation, I always debate in my mind whether to say “ant” or “awnt,” and either one falls out with pretty even frequency. I have always found that odd.

When my pretentious aunt moved from Montclair to Darien, my pretentious cousins started calling my mother AHNT Elaine.

Awnt sounds very "posh" to me.

Canadian "bean" for been is a British legacy (along with the letter zed).

R115 I've had mostly Latin boyfriends though.

Anyone else given away by choosing “ neutral ground” and “service road”?

R38: Dayton has an odd accent—more hi kiss than the soft drawl of Cincinnati and definitely more pronounced than the general blandness of Toledo and Columbus. Despite the short distance Detroit is very different from Toledo—a sort of illiterate variation on Cleveland and Chicago.

Fresno and BOISE? Funny, but I understand why--has more to do with my parents thank me. Great quiz, thanks, OP!

I am German and completed the quiz and my cities are Rochester, Jersey City and New York!!

The quiz correctly guessed my area of origin but 100% that was due to "hoagie."

Apparently, I'd find my kin in Fresno or Salt Lake City, two places I wouldn't dare to venture.

I took this years ago and it got me completely.

L.A. and Atlanta/Birmingham.

Do you say:

—I’m gonna nut!

—I’m gonna cum!

—I’m coming!

—UNNNNGGGGGGUUUHHHHHHH!

—Something else

One big indicator is the word you use for a sweetened carbonated drink. In Texas, it's a "coke". Doesn't matter if it's a Pepsi, or RC. It's a "coke". When I was in St. Louis it was "pop" only sounded like "paaawp".

Y'all of course is to be expected.

[quote]In the commercial, the owner of a company that sells Harry's razors, pronounces it Hairy's.

How else would you pronounce "Harry?"

In Connecticut we all pronounce "aunt" as "ahnt." "Ahnt" is the British pronunciation, and CT still has vestiges of British English with certain words.

I’m from upstate NY and it pretty much nailed me

What interesting about American accents is that there is very little difference between them. Amazing for a country so enormous. A Southern accent sounds different from a New England accent, but not hugely different. Brits and Europeans always remark in this. They'll be in New York, fly all the way to California and people sound pretty much the same. In the UK and European countries accents vary widely, and it's such a smaller region than the US.

[quote] . A Southern accent sounds different from a New England accent, but not hugely different.

Is this a joke? Winding us up?

Fellow Canadians -- how many of you chose "running shoes"? Do Americans even SAY "running shoes"? I always hear Americans in movies/tv shows say "sneakers" or "tennis shoes."? What region in the USA says "running shoes"?

R132 We haven't had centuries to develop regional dialects, and we're much more mobile than you Old Worlders.

What I meant was that a Southerner and a New Englander are still intelligible to one another. It's not a huge difference, comparatively.

r135 I'm not an Old Worlder, I'm a native Nutmegger.

If you're from southern California, I do believe use of the words soda, roly poly, and freeway tipped off the quiz that you're from the region. Also -- having no term for when it's sunny and raining.

I always say “ont” except when I refer to a friend’s aunt, whose name is Ann. “Ont Ann” would just sound weird.

R138 We uses to call those "Devil's rainshowers" but that wasn't an option. Some of the choices were real hootenanny.

Not bad. It picked up on me being born and raised in Atlanta. But oddly, my secondary cities were DC and Norfolk and I don’t think I even knew anyone from those places until I was in college. My parents were raised in Chicago and Milwaukee (by TN and MO parents), but apparently very little northern (dialect slipped in.

r134 The British say "trainers," right?

The quiz doesn't show up for me. I tried it in Firefox and Chrome and it just says "the questions below" but all I have is a large blank white space. Could it be because of an ad-blocker or something?

R136, you would be wrong. There are certain accents that I can't understand from fellow Americans. Thick, rural Mississippi went over my head and don't get me started on back bayou Cajun. No one understands that shit. I'm from East Texas btw.

I took the quiz again and answered one of the first few questions differently (but still accurately) and ended up with getting some different questions from the first time, and a VERY different answer.

Originally I was Fresno-Riverside-Salt Lake City.

Now I'm Rochester-Madison-Aurora (IL)

It not only got Springfield,Mo where I grew up but also Kentucky where my grandparents were from. I've only been to Kentucky once.

It correctly identified where I lived until I was 8 years old - basically when I learned to speak . Grew up on the coast of central California and then moved to the Washington, DC area.

I guess you can’t run away from your roots!

It shows me a band from Columbus, OH to Dayton, OH to Cincinnati, Indianapolis, Springfield, IL, St. Louis, Columbia, MO to Kansas City. I grew up in the Dayton area and went to school at the University of Missouri. It fits like a glove.

Nailed my hometown exactly, interesting quiz.

I took it twice, because there were some questions that I could have answered in more than one way. The first time, I got Jackson, Mobile, and Montgomery. The second time, I got Dallas, Shreveport and Jackson. I grew up in the Dallas suburbs and still live in the DFW area. But my parents grew up in rural northeast Texas, which I'm sure tracks closely to Mississippi and Alabama. So I'm sure there's some residual from that found in my accent.

R145 They should have us answer all the questions. I only answered 25 where 5 of them I had to select either other or I don't have a word. This is Buzzfeed quality.

I spoke to a French server in Paris and she stated couldn’t understand southern accents

I got Aurora, Colorado which is a suburb of Denver ... which is where I was born and grew up.

Kind of creepy in a way.

I got Stockton, Wichita, and Oklahoma City. Three places I have never been. However, my mother was from Kansas and my father from Bakersfield (aka Oklahoma West). I guess the apple doesn't fall very far...

It got my area. I was surprised I had so much in common with California. Never would have thought that.

I was linked with Louisville, Lexington and Pittsburgh, which make sense for Cincinnati (I guess).

The differences between places have narrowed a lot over the past generation or two. The influence of truly national pop culture. There used to be much more local tv and radio programming and of course, no YouTube.

I placed New York/Baltilmore/St. Louis. I'm from Montgomery County, Md., about 30 miles form Baltimore.

Californians don't have an accent, but it's funny how other parts of the country do have one like the South or the Northeast.

Rockford, IL, Grand Rapids, MI, Detroit.

Grew up in Grand Rapids, went to school in Ann Arbor, worked in Skokie for two years. (Been in VA for 10...haven't picked up much more than an occasional you all down here.)

Interesting.

Wasn’t sure what the test would reveal since I have lived in 44 different places and people always have a difficult time placing the accent. Irish? Ozzie! South African?

Although I am American, this test was scarily off base. It placed me in Texas which I have absolutely no connection to whatsoever. Apparently since I attended the “Coke University” (Emory Med), that placed me in places like Lubbock. (I am guessing since I refer to fizzy drinks as “cokes” to some older members of family.)

To the test’s credit, it had the whole of the US red for me. I suppose splitting the US right down the middle, one ends up by dividing Texas in half.

[quote] Do Americans even SAY "running shoes"?

Yes... but generally only if we are referring to shoes bought specifically for running (versus, for example shoes specifically for tennis

NYer and got "NY/Yonkers/Newark"

My other half is from northern NJ and I am aware of "Mischief Night" because of him.

Curious what the difference between a Yonkers accent and a New York accent might be.

It's an interesting quiz because some is based on how you pronounce words and some on which words you use.

I had no idea there was a word for that strip of grass between the sidewalk and the road, let alone multiple words.

[quote] I was skeptical because I am from an area in which a lot of people insist there’s “no accent,”

I love when people say this.

There IS no such thing as "unaccented" English--all English speakers speak with an accent.

[quote] Californians don't have an accent,

I'm a Nova Scotian and I got Boston, Arlington, VA and Pembroke Pines, FL.

[quote]Californians don't have an accent, but it's funny how other parts of the country do have one like the South or the Northeast.

People from Connecticut speak with a neutral accent. People from New York State and New Jersey also have a neutral accent.

Well, New Jersey that's not NY Metro area.

LOL R167

There are a range of accents in NY State-- Buffalonians have an accent similar to Cleveland and the Midwest, Albany has its own accent and of course there is NYC and, it seems, Yonkers.

I've never encountered many different accents in NY State. Rochester, Westchester, Syracuse, Albany all sound neutral to me.

Thoughts on why Pembroke Pines, FL, which Google informs me is a generic suburb about halfway between Miami and Fort Lauderdale, has its own accent?

Florida is a major retiring place for east coasters, so you will find some similarities to Boston and metro DC.

When "rotary" came up as a choice for the traffic situation question, I knew that my fate was sealed. The term is almost exclusive to ME, NH, and RI.

[quote]This is a BIG giveaway. How do you pronounce ORANGE? Do you say OR-nge or ARE-nge. I say ARE-nge.

I did not get this question or apricot or Florida.

The algorithm steered the survey for the giveaway question:

[quote]What do you call the small road parallel to the highway?

I'm from Houston. It's called a feeder road, which seems to be very local. It was even a clue on [italic]Criminal Minds[/italic].

It also gave me Baton Rouge. Most of my extended family is from southern Louisiana, including Baton Rouge, so not a big surprise. And I got Jackson, MS, because

[quote]What do you call a large motor vehicle used to carry freight?

18-wheeler

Wow. It got to within five miles of where I grew up in LA.

I usually say "traffic circle," but I learned recently that there's a difference between a traffic circle and a roundabout (which is a British term but seems to have become popular here.)

Wear your sneakers, eat a hero, drink soda, hey ,you guys!

Nailed me. New York.

I placed new York, jersey City and Yonkers. Fair enough but can't say I've spent much time in Yonkers.

[quote]Wear your sneakers, eat a hero, drink soda, hey ,you guys! Nailed me. New York.

Is "sub" exclusive to North Jersey?

I got Irvine, Corona, and Anaheim but am from LA. Pretty close.

The "Boris" troll is boring and contributes nothing worth reading.

[quote]There was a thread about 'yinz' awhile back. Its unique to Erie or Pittsburgh.

I’m from Pittsburgh, and I intentionally didn’t answer “yinz” because I thought it was too obvious. I picked “you all” because I say that a lot too. But it still identified me correctly as Pittsburgh.

They disabled the map and I didn't even get a location due to "high traffic".

Everyone has an accent. Period. That's because we all speak a dialect of our language. We tend to call OTHER people's dialects "accents" but it's all relative.

I lived in upstate NY for a year and was able to identify multiple variations in the English around me. I used to play Henry Higgins and guess what part of the state people were from, and I was damn good at it. Basic linguistics, not rocket science...

Soda, sub, sneakers: Boston, Worcester, Providence.

Born in one, college in another, lived briefly in the third.

And “bubbler” pronounced “bubb-lah”

I am from Fullerton, CA but I got Rochester NY, Boston, and Springfield, MA.

This survey brought to my family’s attention that me and my brother say LOY-yer and our mom says LAW-yer. We didn’t realize that we pronounced it differently...

R186 I say LOY-er and it bugs me that I do because it’s spelled law, after all! But ya know, faking an accent makes you...Madonna.

Interesting fact about accents: not only can they reveal your past, they can also indicate your preferences for the future. You will sometimes find people who don't have the same pronunciation as their neighbors, even though they all came from the same area. Unconsciously, people sometimes acquire the pronunciation of a more-preferred place.

Famous example: there is (or at least was) an identifiable twist to certain words on the island of Martha's Vineyard. Linguists noted that nearly all young people born on the island shared it. Upon studying the situation, they found those that didn't were unhappy on the island, and had already made plans to leave it when there were able, either for school or careers. The had adopted the pronunciation from the mainland in anticipation.

Yeah r187. My mom acted like we were insane or faking it. She apparently never noticed. We were born in California and she was born in Alabama. I can’t MAKE myself say LAWyer - it sounds fake.

Scarily accurate - got my city and state right.

R159 Not only do Californians have an accent, they have accents. There is a Modesto accent, a Sacramento accent, an SF/Bay Area accent, etc.

Based on this article, it sounds like San Francisco used to have a Chicagolike accent

Goin' down the oh-cean hun.

Listen to San Fran

People on YouTube make “accent tag” videos in which they pronounce a set of words and answer questions that may differ regionally. Here is one from Northern Virginia.

There's a barrier island off of Georgia where the people still sound like English people from the 17th/18th centuries.

I got Boston - Honolulu, with a touch of Albuquerque.

Though I was born and raised in the Pittsburgh area, I went to boarding school and college in the Boston area. And I lived in Hawai’i for three years.

But I’ve only been to Albuquerque once, for a misspent weekend.

(I also lived in NYC for fifteen years, but I guess that didn’t rub off at all...)

I suspect most of it is less about how you pronounce words than what you call day to day items.

So a Staten Islander may say "snee-kuhs" and a Manhattanite "sneakers" but the quiz is not looking at any class or education-based pronunciation differences.

What a strange test.

I can't remember the three places it guessed for me because the only one that was every close was Lexington where I went to college.

Some of the things the quiz asked about could have multiple answers based on context and some of this shit I've never even considered words FOR.

Like that strip of grass between the road and the sidewalk. Never had sidewalks (outside of college) so I have no word for it. Or when it rains when the sun is out. Never needed a word for that.

My grandma said “the devil is beating his wife” when it was both rainy and sunny. She’s from a county near Richmond, Va.

I've always called it a cloudburst. I had no idea that was a regional thing.

Didn't get me right at all.

I got California, which is I live now.

I got Philadelphia. I live about 15 miles from there. It had to be because I answered "Hoagie"

They should’ve had:

Do you stand

On line

Or

In line

[quote]I had no idea there was a word for that strip of grass between the sidewalk and the road, let alone multiple words.

Here in SoCal it's called a parkway.

It’s called a gateway, R174, I’m from west Tx.

Strangely, it gave me 3 cities about 400 miles west of where I actually live. Considering there’s not much out there between far west TX and the 3 smallish suburbs of Phoenix, it’s strange how they came up with that.

Interesting.

R206, what do you call drinks like Coke, Pepsi, etc.? I grew up saying "soda water," but so many people thought I meant club soda I trained myself to say "soft drink." The only other people I've known to say "soda water" were from Texas, but they're still few and far between.

Canadian but apparently I sound like someone from Nebraska.

Just soda, R207, in Spanish and in English.

Thanks.

That was fun. It definitely got me, even without having to ask about pop, tennis shoes, or semis.

I had no idea people had a word for the area between the sidewalk and the street. It isn't really called anything here, but I do know that the only thing I've ever heard it called is the "public right-of-way" or maybe just "right-of-way." I believe it is called that because the government can put signs there, etc., and it gives them the right to cut down trees there if needed, etc.

[quote] This survey brought to my family’s attention that me and my brother say LOY-yer and our mom says LAW-yer. We didn’t realize that we pronounced it differently...

I live in Cali and never heard anyone pronounce it Law-yer. I can't even say it myself. It sounds like Liar.

law - lawyer

saw - Sawyer

I'm convinced that your IP address factors into the results.

Then mine would have been different than the very correct representation it is, r214.

[quote] I had no idea there was a word for that strip of grass between the sidewalk and the road, let alone multiple words. Here in SoCal it's called a parkway.

I've lived in SoCal for 33 years and I've never heard it called that. Or anything else for that matter. The only time I've heard "parkway" is in the name of the Pasadena Freeway ("the Arroyo Parkway.")

Wrong!

I've heard that strip between the sidewalk and road called a hell strip, but I can't remember where. Possibly a gardening magazine?

Californians definitely have an accent. Listen to the Dirty John podcast and you will hear at its worst

The Upstate NY accent is not neutral it is very Great Lakes/Upper Mid West with the exception of Albany which is more East Coast. In fact they should just call the Great Lakes accent

Mine nails me to a t, and always has. But that's pretty easy.

Since I moved, though, I've changed a few of my words. I find myself saying "soda" more often because it sounds more formal, and I say "roundabout" instead of "traffic circle."

Gym shoes forever.

Born and raised in the midwest, but have the vast majority of my adult life in the mid-Atlantic region, and it shows.

I.e. a long sandwich with deli meats: hoagie.

Some Californians, at least the women, have very nasal accents. Three of my cousins lived in San Francisco as children, and they have the ugliest accents. They definitely say aunt like “ant” with very hard A. All their vowels are harsh. I do know other Californians that have melodious voices, so maybe it’s genetic. However, as mentioned above...those Dirty John women have the harshness. California men have more laid back dude bro speech patterns.

They also asked me how do I pronounce caramel.

There's also a difference in accents of Southern and Northern Caifornians. Two words stand out in particular: orange and police. SoCal folk slur over both, pronouncing them as one syllable—"ornj" and "pleece." Northern Californians pronounce both correctly, as the words are spelled.

This story is long and convoluted. So skip it if you care to.

Back in the 80s, I was a tech rep for a software firm. Our software came on 8-inch tape reels that were loaded into IBM 370 computers, which occupied entire rooms. In those days, lots of data was transmitted as decks of cards with holes punched into them. And, a common hardware device, about the size of two refrigerators lying side-by-side was one that would sort those cards.

So I'm presenting a class in Providence, Rhode Island. We're taking a break and I ask the woman who is tasked with keeping me if they had a soda machine. She asks, "Why? Do you have cards you need to sort.?" (Except the letter "r" did not appear in her speech.)

On what planet is there no such thing as a SoCal accent?

I'm not sure about the question about 2nd person plural pronouns. I'd address more than one person as either "you" or "you guys," but the second would be more specific: to get their attention, or for emphasis (them versus some other people), and only in an informal situation (not at a work meeting)—so I wasn't sure what to put. I went with "you" because it's the more versatile and common for me.

[quote] I went with "you" because it's the more versatile and common for me.

I gather those adjectives apply to you as well.

I got Houston, where was born. I haven’t lived there in 30+ years but “feeder road” is always a tell.

It placed me within 100 miles of my hometown though I haven't lived there is decades.

It got 2 of the 3 cities in which I've lived. Really neat.

A friend I grew up with near DC got DC/Baltimore/Arlington, Va. She lives in L.A. I doubt they're using IP addresses.

I’m amused that a conspiracy theory arose immediately that the quiz is ‘cheating’ and using IP addresses or other surreptitious means of determining where people are. There’s no incentive to do that; the New York Times is not profiting off this quiz from a single article from 2013. It’s based on a large body of accumulated data. Some of you seem to think that precision has to be a con or witchcraft.

Seriously, search the term “accent tag” plus the name of your location and then a few others to see how consistent geographic variation is. You’re not being tricked by nefarious quiz writers. It’s just the science of casting a broad net to collect a lot of data and then disaggregating it.

DLers love a good conspiracy theory R234

This was a very insightful test. It placed me within about a hundred miles.

My city and two other neighboring cities were my top 3. This quiz was spot on.

That was fun, and accurate enough. However, I struggled with a few of the questions. For instance, I grew up in the Northeast (which the test figured out) but have lived in California almost 20 years, so I now say freeway instead of highway (I went with highway for the quiz). “Rotary” was my biggest identifier word, but I almost said roundabout because I’ve picked that up from trips to Europe. I might take it again, to see where it puts the “evolved” moi.

Yeah my “evolved” answers put me right where I now live in Los Angeles - the town next to me, to be exact.

I enjoyed that actually. I got South, where I'm from and live, and the Northeast which is probably because I listen to a lot of East Coast hip-hop.

For a number of questions, there were two possible answers as to how I'd respond, especially ones with "I don't have a word for it" as an option. Ditto on "you" or "you guys" or "you all" -- would depend who I was talking to and how formal the situation.

[quote]I'm convinced that your IP address factors into the results.

I had my VPN on when I took the quiz and it still got me.

A lot of interesting comments on accents. Being born and raised in Eastern Massachusetts, I perceive everything spoken outside of my region (including Western MA) as sounding like:

a) neutral b) southern or c) rural

For example, people from California or Illinois sound neutral to me. Although I can distinguish the difference between the many different southern accents, I never know which state is the source of the accent.

Of course, that's a greatly simplified perception of things, but growing up with parents and relatives who spoke with thick Boston accents and speaking a slightly muted one myself, most American accents contrast very sharply the Boston one. Of all American accents, I think it's the most distinct.

Funny, I thought it got me wrong because it has Brooklyn, Queens & Nassau as part of the correct area, but not Suffolk county. But then I enlarged it and there it is - a red spot on the south fork of L.I. The Hamptons. Wow. That’s specific.

Georgia is as red as the spilled blood of my kin during every war before the Revolution till now.

Hope that changes, r245.

Top three:

Madison-lived there for 40 years.

Milwaukee-close enough.

Salt Lake City-wtf?

Have never been there, don't know any Mormons.

Maybe one of them is my soulmate?

This is great.

It was pretty accurate. My three cities were Washington DC, Baltimore and Newark, NJ.

The first two are spot on about my background. I’m from the Maryland suburbs of DC and I’m old, so when I grew up there, a Murriland accent was still pretty common among the locals. The DC local accent, if you can find it nowadays, is like the Baltimore accent but a little more Southern and a lot less eccentric. (Sorry, Baltimore, but I might as well admit that I never really liked you.)

Anyway, I left DC when I was 30 to live in the NY area (including NJ for a while) and then 20 years in the Philadelphia area. The quiz didn’t pick up the latter, perhaps because I answered “sub” instead of “hoagie”. I call the sandwich a hoagie when I’m in Philly but a sub when I’m home or anywhere else. I have had mixed success in keeping Philadelphia out of my accent, but “sub” is so ingrained, lying like a substrate below the “hoagie” usage, that I can code switch fairly easily.

I suspect the Newark result is actually a blend of Philly and New York influences. Otherwise, I have no explanation for it since I only lived in NJ for 4 years, and that was in central Jersey.

Oh goodness. It pegged me and I grew up in two areas 1200 miles apart.

Sneakers is specific to only a small area of the US? Sneakers?

R248 -- that is great. Lots to gather there.

I think that in the time since, things have shifted. Mass media has exposed everyone to dialects from all over, so our dialects are going to be influenced by people from distant places. I have a feeling that, in the future, it's not going to be so easy to suss out where someone is from based upon their vocabulary, word-usage and dialect.

But that video is really interesting.

R251 Yeah, even though it’s outdated, the guy in the video answers questions people in this thread have asked about mixing pronunciations and regional vocabulary differences in determining where a person is from, and about where pronunciation dividing lines lie.

Also, at the beginning, he shows that there’s a clear line along the Allegheny mountain range that cleanly divides how people say certain vowels—however, an old man from an NYC suburb says it the way people west of the mountain range do, showing that time is another determiner along with geography.

I got Modesto, CA and Reno, CA and grew up in S. CA. Fun quiz!

[quote]It pegged me

Pics please.

r253 Reno is in NV, not CA.

Don't recall if the video mentioned whether people pronounced the "t" in "often."

It got the city I grew up in, Indianapolis, but it also said Aurora, Illinois and Jackson, Mississippi, both of which I've never lived in.

If you're interested in American accents, this dialect coach, Erik Singer, recently started a series for WIRED.

Here's Part 1 from January. It leads into Part 2 that was put up last week. Part 3 will be forthcoming.

Easy to listen to; plus, it helps that he's hot .. lol.

Apparently I speak like someone from around Orlando which is hilarious because I’m Canadian.

I'm from Portland and it placed me in central California or Salt Lake City.

It was interesting to see the stats on certain terms/pronunciations. Things I know from myself or my family from eastern Oregon were shown as being most similar to the Midwest; I wonder if my ancestors brought those things (like calling coke/pepsi "pop" or pronouncing "crayon" like "cran") with them when they went west.