Accent meme
Nov. 5th, 2006 10:26 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
schemingreaderHmm. They didn't even ask me to try get someone to pass the maple syrup.
| What American accent do you have? Your Result: The Inland North You may think you speak "Standard English straight out of the dictionary" but when you step away from the Great Lakes you get asked annoying questions like "Are you from Wisconsin?" or "Are you from Chicago?" Chances are you call carbonated drinks "pop." | |
| Philadelphia | |
| The Northeast | |
| The Midland | |
| The South | |
| Boston | |
| The West | |
| North Central | |
| What American accent do you have? Take More Quizzes | |
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no subject
Date: 2006-11-06 11:26 am (UTC)I was almost 100% Northeast, with Inland North right behind it. There was a quiz - Yankee Magazine, I think - years ago (as in before pcs) that said it could place a person by their accent. It put me smack in the very town I lived in. Actually, it placed me at the mouth of the Connecticut River in about a four town area and there I was! There was one simple yes or no question that pinpointed me there after narrowing me down to that part of the state. There were dozens of questions and I sure wish I could find the quiz again. It also gave me a hint of the Chicago area - a bit of a surprise as at that point I'd never been out of New England, but my grandfather had grown up in Chicago and while I had only met him once - when I was in diapers - my Mom was told by her choir director that she had shade of Chicago in her voice, so perhaps I got it there.
There was an interesting show on a while ago called Do You Speak American? that touched on the regional accents of the country and how they are changing. There is a real - and weird - vowel shift thing going on in the Northern Midwest - the place that is considered the "standard" of accent-less speech.
no subject
Date: 2006-11-06 11:31 am (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-11-06 12:31 pm (UTC)What the Yankee quiz had was a bunch of things like:
"Do you say bucket or pail?"
"Do you say soda, pop or (something else)?"
"Do you say, bag or sack?"
"Milkshake, frappe, or...?"
"Creek, stream, or crick?"
"Gully, gulch, ditch or wash?"
And (I told you this was a long time ago), "What do you call that little building in the back yard where you go to the bathroom? Backhouse, necessary, outhouse, or - I think there were a couple more names.
It was pretty interesting, and I discovered some things about the way I speak and got to thinking about why. For example: If it has water in it, it's a bucket. If it has sand or milk in it, it's a pail. Pail, I think is more Midwest - from my Mom. Bucket is more Northeast and at age ten I started spending a great deal of time on a horse farm, cleaning stalls and filling water buckets.
The question that pinned me down was: "Do you know what a salt creek is?" I did.
Sorry for rambling - I think this sort of thing is fascinating.
no subject
Date: 2006-11-06 02:28 pm (UTC)Argh. Must work. Back to soon to read more about your inland north accent. M.
no subject
Date: 2006-11-06 03:31 pm (UTC)no subject
Date: 2006-11-07 01:47 am (UTC)