An American English dialect quiz correctly guessed where I originally grew up in the US
Take this interesting American English dialect quiz yourself.
I took the quiz and wondered what it would analyze mine to be, given that I’ve lived in various places in the US in my life. I had a strong suspicion.
Where I have lived in the US
In particular, I spent my first years in the US in Johnson City, New York, while my father was a graduate student at SUNY Binghamton, and therefore my initial English vocabulary and accent derived from that region, but then lived in New York City during ages 5-7, then moved to Parsippany, New Jersey for 7-9.
Then, from age 9-27, I lived in Michigan (not including the time away in universities). I remember how traumatic this move was for me. It was not only because I missed my school friends, hills, the Atlantic Ocean, and eating Chinese food, but also because all my new schoolmates thought I talked funny and used entire sets of words that I did not use! The quiz reminded me of this big transition of mine from the East Coast to the Midwest.
Possibly, if we had moved when I was younger than 9, I would have chosen to adapt my speech to the new dialects around me. But I was stubborn. For the most part, I deliberately chose to continue pronouncing vowels the “New York” way (because that seemed more “logical”), and I chose to use certain words despite of course coming to understand the regional synonyms in Michigan. I’m not sure why I had to be so stubborn, but I did. Maybe I felt that my use of English was part of my identity somehow, or maybe it’s more that I did not expect my parents to change, so it was easiest to continue communicating with them saying things like “soda” rather than “pop”, for example.
And so it was not a big surprise to me that after I took the quiz (my results are here), the analysis was that my English is most similar to that in the regions of New York, Yonkers, and Newark/Paterson.
Note that since 27, I have lived in Pittsburgh for 17 years now. No, I still do not say “yinz”, and again, although it was kind of a language shock for me moving from Michigan, I have adapted to understanding the local preferred pronunciation, grammar, and vocabulary of Pittsburghese, but I do not always use it myself. I have been known to sometimes slip and say “needs washed”, but I think I’m mostly set in my ways in my use of the English language.
Your turn
If you haved lived in the US, what is your quiz result? Does it surprise you? If you have moved around, either as an immigrant or within the US, have you been jolted by dialect differences? Have you ever deliberately changed the way to speak and write English? Why or why not?
Mine said Pittsburgh, Detroit, or Oklahoma City. Although I have adapted many local speech patterns in Barrow (for example, when making a statement inviting response add "uh" with upward inflection to the end like "pretty windy out today, uh" [similar to the Candian "eh"], "I'm going PO" means "I'm going to the post office," "I jokes" means "I'm kidding," I didn't realize that some of the words in the survey were regional until I saw the other options. "Pop" by the way, is the word of choice in rural Alaska for fizzy drinks.
I've wondered whether there are situations in which I would consciously try to change my accent. For example, if I moved to Australia and expected to stay there for decades as an immigrant, would I adopt an Australian accent? I might. It depends on my deliberate choice of identity. I've met no shortage of immigrants from the UK and Australia here in the US who surprised me because their accent is almost American now, after coming here in their 20s or 30s and staying here for decades.
Interesting! It says I've succeeded in having a northeastern dialect, despite living most of my childhood in Oklahoma--but I made a conscious effort NOT to pick up the local accent there (because it sounds so stupid) and emulated the speech patterns of my New York and Ohio relatives. The big thing I worked on when I first moved to Pittsburgh was saying "I'll" with a long I, instead of "ah'll"; I had to exaggerate it for a while to get it to stick. But I never was prone to ending words with "-in" instead of "-ing", slurring syllables, or turning all vowels into "uh". A friend who's very good at accents once told me I pronounce more distinct vowels than anyone else he knows. :-)
It's unfortunate that Southern accents are thought "stupid". My randomly assigned freshman dorm suite mate George had a very thick accent I could barely follow at first. I haven't seen him in 28 years. I just looked him up and by chance, there is a video of him and he talks nothing like he did when he moved up for college from the deep South! http://www.oracle.com/us/pr...
After several years away from Oklahoma, I realized that what sounds "stupid" to me is mostly not the accent itself but the slowness of speech--as if their thoughts are moving only that fast. The full second of "Waayulll..." that precedes many people's response to a question particularly gets to me.
But it does seem that there's a general bias in which most strong regional accents are "stupid" and perhaps Southern accents moreso than, say, Brooklyn or Minnesota or Boston accents. Years ago I saw some dubbed anime in which the characters get lost in rural Japan and meet some country bumpkins, and they were dubbed in Appalachian accents!