Can We Guess Where In The United States You’re From Based On Your Dialect?

I'm from the Midwest but have been living in LA for about nine months (by way of New England).

And the test guessed I'm in California.

Weird.

Sometimes.

But based on your syntax, OP, we'd say you're from Dogpatch.

Learned to speak in California and then moved to Virginia. This "thing" has me from the Northeast. NOPE.

[quote] And the test guessed I'm in California.

This “thing” also has me from California though I’m not. I do love California though but only visit there once or twice a year.

It always puts me in Birmingham, Alabama which is rather a long way away, but I think it’s because I call the grocery cart a “buggy.”

I did it twice, with a few different answers in each (like how I pronounce mayonnaise and if I say roundabout or rotary). Got the Northeast both times, which is correct.

My result was California.

I’m a born and raised New Yorker who has never lived anywhere else.

Im from the south and that’s what it said.

Northeast here, and accurate.

I'm from PA Dutch country and it says I'm from California.

Whatever.

Another Californian, although these tests usually place me in Ohio (I’ve never lived in either state).

It’s says south. I’m from Texas so yeah. But we talk western too. Not the same as Georgia or Alabama. What are the quiz’s options?

Lived in New York my entire life and it nailed me as Northeast. I thought it might be confused by the fact that I starting saying soda instead of pop when I reached adulthood and that I love "y'all" despite it not being a thing I was raised saying (it's just so useful) but nope

What does "where you're from" really mean?

I was born in Hawaii, at 3 moved to NY for less than a year (living with Grandparents) then out to Southern CA for a year, than up to NorCal for a year, then back to SoCal where I lived until 18.

It said I was from the "Northeast."

I did live in Buffalo from 18 through late 20s.

Mine said the South - funny because my mother was from Montreal, my dad from Texas, and I grew up in Connecticut. Maybe some words my dad said that I used, I suppose.

I’ve lived across the south and in Massachusetts … and it said northeast. Bleh.

Mine said Northeast - no surprise as I've always lived in NJ.

Roundabout? Rotary? What the hell part of the country says this crap?

Yeah, I’m from NY, it said Northeast. Kind of insulting. The Northeast. Like 1/4 of the country is ‘the Northeast’. It’s other life must be as a psychic. ‘You’re going to meet a woman. A blonde, or a brunette. Maybe a redhead’.

Please take all this with a grain of salt. I’m not in a great mood.

R18, one could’ve surmised you’re from the Northeast based on your post alone.

Mine said I was from California. I'm not.

There's another version of this test, put forth by the New York Times in 2013. This one always gets me right.

I've lived in California my entire life, except for 18-months when I went to grad school.

The test things I'm from the Pacific Northwest.

FAIL.

This is for all you pretend Californians

They nailed me. From the PNW.

About as wrong as you can get.

It said "northeast" but I'm from southern California.

I thought most gays were immune to regional accents.

It’s ridiculous! I live 70 miles west of Philadelphia; the test result was midwest. An accent must be heard to determine a geographical region.

I have a generic gay accent.

It guessed California.

It guessed very incorrectly.

[quote]Im from the south and that’s what it said.

Do you sound like this, r8?

They were correct when the said the Northeast.

The test doesn't take sociolinguistics into account. Part of the way you speak/pronounce is based on your background (parents, where you lived as a child, etc.) but part is also based on your aspirations and self-determined class. Think Nicolas Fairford... Another important factor is how much (and what kind) of television you watch. Just as Hollywood used to have its Mid-Atlantic Accent days, TV used to hire newsreaders and announcers based on their specific accents. Kansas was preferred over Indiana. Strong regional accents were avoided at all costs. The result was that the more TV you watched, the more midwestern your speech tended to be. So no quiz is going to be all that accurate without taking a lot of information beyond word choices and pronunciation. No surprise, though, that it tends to default to California -as that is our cultural center these days.

Good points, R32. Linguist friends have said my accent is tricky to place with any precision and it seems fair.

I grew up in the.Mid-Atlantic in a state with one foot firmly in the Mid-Atlantic and another in the Upper South, ain't think syrupy smooth Southern but rather Mama's Family hick Southern. It was a way that boys in particular leaned from pre-puberty: one set sticking with Mid-Atlantic clarity and the other shifting to a hard boy rapid-fire staccato hick accent. One set were on math to college and some social and geographic movement, the others were on a path to their high school jinx being the highpoint if their lives in Hicksville.

I moved around in college and professionally and smoothed.out a few telling points to something less geographically specific. This was accentuated with a.lot of time spent in Europe where I found myself in a rare bit of sympathy for Madonna, not for her ridiculous store-bought accents but for involuntary changes in vocabulary and some sentence structure based on the people your are around most. It's something mostly slipped in and out off when you cross a border but over time there's a bit of smoothing of ones speech, a conscious choice to use more pronunciation over another because it sounds clearer, sound correct, sounds better. The boys (at and some girls, too) that I grew up who went the harsh hick accent route are much less flexible: for them the wash is always said as WERSH; anything different and you're pegged as "an uppity cunt who thinks he's better than us."

There can be an element of fluidity in how your word use and sentence structure and accent evolve over time according to geography, more so when you start to speak a second language more often than your first. There's more to speech than just a choice between soda/pop/coke/other, though those are telling too.

The "y'all" question was the giveaway for the South.

People say pop instead of soda in NY? I thought that was a Pittsburgh thing. Detroit and Chicago and other Midwestern places call it pop too, I think.

[quote]Think Nicolas Fairford

I'll pass.

It has me as the opposite coast.

I grew up in Indianapolis and have lived in San Francisco for 20 years. It guessed me as PNW.

[quote] The "y'all" question was the giveaway for the South.

Not necessarily. I was born in NYC but have lived most of my life in the urban/suburban south. I say "y'all" but it labeled me as Northeast. As someone upthread said, "Meh."

I couldn’t even answer the first question. For me, neither choice worked.

******************************************** How do you pronounce the word "caramel"?

CARE-uh-mel

CAR-muhl

[quote]An accent must be heard to determine a geographical region.

It's not about "accent" but dialect - which is different.

This quiz sucks! I grew up in the Midwest but it placed me as Californian

Western PA says “pop”; it’s soda in eastern PA.

I'm Deep Southern born and reared, and have always spoken the way I do, but quiz gave me Northeast.

But to be fair, 90% of the time I meet a new person and say a couple of words, they look quizzical and ask "Where are you from?" When I tell them "Southern born and reared, but I did graduate work in Colorado," they say, "Ahhh, that's how you learned to speak that way."

At this point in my life I just reply "Yeah, that's it."

I'm from the Midwest and it claimed I'm from California.

I wonder if so many here got California because we've been heavily influenced by TV and movies?

I grew up with a dad from nj and a mom from georgia and I got scored as northeast. I once heard a person from England say a guy from nyc had a southern drawl.. that was confusing

Has anyone noticed the annoying midwestern accent of news announcers from the 30s to 50s, like in the old war reels? It changed more to northeastern later

I’m on dl so I have to mention the “transatlantic accent “ that old film stars had

Not fair because these "tests" always get me with "bubbler". It's close to a cheat.

I'm a Midwest boy, it pegged me as a Californian. But I remember taking the quiz at R20 a few years ago and it didn't just get my region, it identified my city.

[quote]This quiz sucks! I grew up in the Midwest but it placed me as Californian

Why are you blaming the quiz? The quiz didn't automatically choose your answers for you.

I think the test is more about the vocabulary than a dialect. Or are they the same thing? Rotary is a big giveaway like some others. I got me right.

The NY Times quiz always gets me right because Mary, marry, and merry all sound different from each other, and the night before Halloween is called Mischief night. So what pop up are Newark, Paterson, and Yonkers, which could not be more right.

It guessed CA for me and it is correct.

Northeast. Correct

Red Dragon. Correct.

It predicted NE but I’m from CA

I wait on line.

I've lived in the PNW for my entire life and the test said I'm from New England.

China, and it was correct

Midwest born, now in Europe. I got Northeast, which to be fair is in between.

Pacific Northwest. I’m from the Midwest. I’ve never gone west of the Mississippi.

I haven't taken the quiz linked at the OP yet, but I did take the one published by the NYT linked at r20. That one located me to my birth city, Sacramento, and gave Modesto and Stockton as other possibilities (college roommate from Modesto, best friend from Stockton). I think knowing about Frontage Roads whittled it down correctly.

I also took the test as a Midwesterner (lived in Indiana for 5 yrs, 15 in Chicago) Once again, it correctly placed me in the MW, Chicagoland specifically. I think it was the "gapers delay" that was a deciding factor.

I do not like the term “Chicagoland”.

Shit happens, r61.