https://archive.nytimes.com/www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/12/20/sunday-review/dialect-quiz-map.html

  • mar_k [he/him]
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    2 years ago

    I still can't believe some of you freaks call soda "coke" or "pop"

  • doublepepperoni [none/use name]
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    2 years ago

    I've never been to America

    Guess you can look at it in terms of what a lifetime of consuming American media does to the European brainpan

    spoiler

    To be completely honest, I have heard of drive-through liquor stores. There was no :what-the-hell: option though

  • ShimmeringKoi [comrade/them]
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    2 years ago

    Apparently my dialect is so obvious that this quiz correctly guessed where my mom's side of the family lives

    • MemesAreTheory [he/him, any]
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      2 years ago

      Lmao same. It got it down to the exact geographic area and city that my maternal grandparents are from and she grew up. It's like, not a large city either.

    • Weedian [he/him]
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      2 years ago

      It guessed my exact city based on what I call a bug

  • Frank [he/him, he/him]
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    2 years ago

    I learned mid-atlantic specifically so my origins could not be discerned by voice pattern analysis

  • Frank [he/him, he/him]
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    2 years ago

    I gave up

    These are all different kinds of sandwich. Like yeah a sub and a hoagie are vaguely the same thing, but if you get a hoagie in Philly it's not going to look like a sub anywhere else. A lot of these questions are a weird. If I'm on the turnpike I call it the turnpike. If I'm not on the turnpike it's not a turnpike, is it? There are like fifteen different names for mountain lions and I use most of them. I don't know how to answer a lot of these questions because I use a bunch of different terms interchangeably.

    On reflection, though, i guess that makes some kind of sense, because I've been everywhere and lived in pretty much every region of the US except the Deep South and the scary part between Seattle and Minnesota.

    • ClimateChangeAnxiety [he/him, they/them]
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      2 years ago

      The mountain lion one pissed me off, like I figured they were talking about mountain lions, but there were several real North American wildcats on that list. We have panthers!

      • gobble_ghoul [he/him]
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        2 years ago

        The problem with "panther" is it refers to a bunch of different cat species.

    • Grownbravy [they/them]
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      2 years ago

      I thought the bread question was weird cause we call the bread a hero. It’s called a sub when the sandwich shop isnt around here, and a hoagie when some one brings it from Philly. No one calls it a grinder

    • SerLava [he/him]
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      edit-2
      2 years ago

      I grew up in Hawai'i, quite a while ago now, before TikTok or whatever got everyone under 30 to steal "y'all" from black people.

      One time I was hanging out with like 15 people at school and one of the new girls said, in her essentially normal sounding General American/Ohio/Generic accent, "hey do y'all have any lip balm?"

      Literally every person froze, fell silent, and turned and looked directly at her. After about 5 solid seconds a girl said "WHERE... ARE YOU FROM." She was so fucking weirded out, darting her head every which way, "uh.. uh...S-S-South Carolina, I-"

      • axont [she/her, comrade/them]
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        2 years ago

        Yeah it's just a normal word to me. The term that does make my ears perk up is "your guys's." Like "hey I'll need your guys's help later"

        • SerLava [he/him]
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          2 years ago

          Ha yeah "guys's" isn't super normal for me but it's also not that abnormal- due to the lack of "y'all" some people say it. Many people prefer to say " guys' " or "I need all you guys to" etc.

  • Ho_Chi_Chungus [she/her]
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    2 years ago

    "What do you call a drive-through liquor store?"

    A terrible idea. Those are real? Also this dumbass test thinks I'm from fucking Fresno. California delanda est

  • SoyViking [he/him]
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    2 years ago

    New York, Jersey City, Yonkers.

    Non-native English speaker who has never been to the US. In school they kind of tried to teach us British English but most of my pronunciation probably comes from watching American film and television.

    • sooper_dooper_roofer [none/use name]
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      2 years ago

      New York, Jersey City, Yonkers.

      this is basically standard US english that you'd get from the internet, or watching 90s + 2000s television

      • gobble_ghoul [he/him]
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        2 years ago

        It's not really standard . That area tends to maintain the marry-merry-Mary distinction, which the overwhelming majority of Americans don't do. It maintains the cot-caught distinction, which was previously the standard but is the minority in young people these days and on its way out in a lot of the country. You also have the short-a split so that words like "had" and "ran" aren't rhymes with "bad" and "man", which is generally not even marked in dictionaries.

        • sooper_dooper_roofer [none/use name]
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          edit-2
          2 years ago

          You also have the short-a split so that words like “had” and “ran” aren’t rhymes with “bad” and “man”,

          this is wrong

          • gobble_ghoul [he/him]
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            2 years ago

            Feel free to elaborate, but having two phonemes in words with historic short A is a common feature in the area. Doesn’t mean every speaker has it.

    • ElHexo
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      4 months ago

      deleted by creator

  • Sickos [they/them, it/its]
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    2 years ago

    I am apparently from Michigan's upper peninsula. I am not from Michigan's upper peninsula.