It might be useful for the researchers to add a question after the results that ask if you’ve ever lived in the cities identified as most like you. I grew up in New York (the o as in aw) and moved to Chicago (the a as in at) and it pegged both of them -and, curiously, Yonkers -but I’m from Longisland (one word).
And boy did I try hard to lose my New Yawk accent in Illinois!
this guy Andy has a really good blog about trying to learn to speak Southern and his take on how that dialect is distinct from his own. I particularly liked the bit explaining “modal stacking” or “double modals” (i.e. “might could.”)
I found his blog when I was searching the web to purchase this book:
It was my introduction to the subject, which a classmate lent me on arrival in Nashville, and which Andy references at some length–also highly recommended.
The thing I don’t get about people who call pop “soda” is what they call actual soda – as in unflavored carbonated water used in making cocktails. It’s like the British calling cookies “biscuits” – the problem is that they then have no way to refer to actual biscuits as in things you make for breakfast and serve with butter or gravy.
Q: “What do you call a traffic situation in which several roads meet in a circle and you have to get off at a certain point?”
A: Really f*****g annoying.
You mean ‘scones’, one assumes? I got taught at school that there’s an actual legal definition 'twixt cookie & biscuit; biscuits are uniform in size, shape & weight, whereas cookies can be somewhat more irregular. Unless you’re some ghastly, unlettered colonial hooligan who is clearly referring erroneously to scones. Or possibly dropcakes. I mean, really, who can tell? Why, I stayed in New York once, d’you know, they serve you your boiled eggs mashed up in a glass?
guzzles port, looks down nose at rest of planet
You appear to be confusing trends with absolutes. I spent nearly all my life in FL and out of the 5 persons I sent it to from FL, all but one were located, mapwise, in the state (the other, who grew up closer to Clearwater displayed California patterns.) Many were narrowed down by city. Most of the fiends do not still reside in FL so no IP-based trickery would explain why their “natural” language was so spot-on.
Florida is not a monoculture, but linguistic trends are more important, apparently than the other culture. Some parts of FL are “the south”, South Florida is more North-east, however linguistic trends exist as an entirely different layer whether you accept this or not.
These trends are generally surveyed, and you’re much more liable to hear from the dissenters than someone for whom it’s a natural word choice. The map isn’t based on assumptions on “the South”, it’s based on regional polling of what someone knows the default word to be for a particular item or experience.
It’s like the old statement “how do you know someone’s a X? just wait…”
That doesn’t mean that the loudest persons are the most common, it just means that they’re the most likely to fuss.
oh, man; I just remembered meeting my neighbor Carlos. this was probably the day I arrived in Nashville, or damn near. he asked me what i was interested in and I said that I collected rocks. “Rax? What’re rax?” “Like, you know, rocks and minerals?” “Ha ha, you said ‘rax.’” Which I could not hear at all but that was how I learned I had a regional accent.
as a Yank, I’ve never heard of this, though I’ve only been to that area of the nation twice on short visits. are… are you being serious?
also, biscuits for us are mainly (though not exclusively) for breakfast, with butter and gravy as noted, but I’m told they are what Brits call soda bread? something to do with it being popular with the Scots-Irish that settled in the Appalachian South. Although, there are biscuits in other regions, and though they are slightly different style, I think they’d still be what you know as soda bread. I hope I’m remembering this right…
the way you describe biscuits, that could apply to what we call either crackers (savory) or store-bought cookies (sweet). the lumpy home-made ones are all cookies, because they’re always sweet; nobody makes homemade crackers, that’s not a thing over here.
I am located in the Midwest, very close to the South. It gave me Salt Lake City, Minneapolis and Spokane. I’ve never been to any of those places, and I grew up Southern California.
The answers which might have put me in my current location are the phrases that make my skin crawl (you’ns, particularly.) My mother teases me about the way I say Chicago (because my former boss was from Chicago and I guess I was infected by his pronunciation.)
Well, I can’t speak for everyone, but I’d call that soda water. As in, water that you use to make soda.
… and if I ordered a Kettle soda, it’s obvious that I don’t mean vodka with coke.
Seltzer. Or soda water.
Also called club soda, sparkling water or as we did as kids “fizzy water” to which we could add a small amount of fruit juice to make a sweet sparkling drink that mom would allow us all to have. Actual soda/pop/coke/etc was a very rare treat in our house, and maybe that is why to this day, I prefer plain water with bubbles, whatever it’s called.
I grew up calling carbonated water for making mixed drinks “club soda”. But I’ve also heard it called seltzer water or sparkling water.
I was born and (mostly) raised in southeast New Hampshire. My results were Springfield MA, Boston MA and Worcester MA. That doesn’t seem too surprising, but I haven’t lived in the Northeast for 18 years. I lived in South Carolina for several years, and now live in Oregon.
While I did say y’all a bit when I lived in SC, I dropped it the moment I moved. I think it’s true that the more you consider a region part of your identity, the more the dialect will stick with you. No matter where I live, I always feel that being a Yankee is part of who I am.
I’ve been with my partner for 16 years and she’s from Oregon and California. I was unaware until we took the quiz that she didn’t have a word for sunshower.
One thing I’ve found particularly strange about living in the Northwest is that they call any round layered cake with cream in the middle of the layers a “Boston Cream Cake”. Like they have Cherry Boston Cream Cake with white frosting out here. I’ve tried to explain that it’s like calling a jelly donut a cherry bavarian cream donut, but people just think I’m crazy.
The egg thing’s a gag from PG Wodehouse. I’m even more confused now. Your foods are weird.
Watch out, or you’ll give some hipster ideas, and then we’ll be overrun with artisan crackers.
Also, mmmmm, soda bread. It’s a wonderful thing, when not drowning in creamy gravy.
back at ya, player
Nailed me for North Jersey. Where I spent most of my growing up time. My eldest was born in SC. Moved to IL, CA, VA, ME and NY, in that order, and spent time visiting with relatives in WV, MD, and NJ. Said he was from Tulsa, OK or TX. Two places he hadn’t been growing up, though he’s in TX now. Wonder how other military kids stack up on this test…
When we moved to the Albany NY area, one of my eldest son’s teachers said flat out he could tell where anyone was from by listening to them talk for a few minutes. He got up and started speaking extemporaneously. After a few minutes the teacher, frustrated, exclaimed " Where the hell are you from?" When we moved from there to CNY, my second son had a teacher make the same announcement, with a similar ending.
