What Kind of American English Do You Speak?

[saavedra77]

A quiz lifted from greyaenigma:

http://www.blogthings.com/amenglishdialecttest/

The test purports to tell you which regional styles of American English influence the way you speak. Apparently, I'm a mixture of ...

45% General U.S. English
40% Yankee/New England
10% Dixie/Southeast
5% Upper Midwestern
0% Midwestern

Well, sorta: I'm from the Middle Atlantic states, but grew up trying to sound more like the people on TV--"general American English" (in other words, I made a conscious effort not to pronounce "water" as "wooder", "creek" as "crick", "radiator" as if the 1st syllable were "rat"). But then about a dozen winters in New England led me to pick up lots of Yankeetalk (e.g., using "wicked" to mean "intense"). And, no doubt, my upbringing was just Hee Haw enough for some Dixie to have worked its way into my vocabulary. But the "Upper Midwest"? I've driven through it once (& seen Fargo & heard Garrison Keillor more times than were really necessary), but somehow I have to think that ought to read "Pacific Northwest" ...? I've already lived here for half as long as I lived in New England.

Comments

[greyaenigma.livejournal.com]

Wooder? Wooder???

I saw Hee Haw lots when I were a kid, didn't make me to funny, no how.

And "ratiator" is "radiator"? Hmm.

[saavedra77.livejournal.com]

Yeah, like I said, listening to the people around me made me want to sound more like folks on TV ...

[delerium69.livejournal.com]

I ended up with something like 50% Yankee, and I was surprised it wasn't higher. I think I figured out which answer matched which part of the world, but maybe I'm more "normal" than I think? I guess living in the Mid-Atlantic for a while contributed a bit.

[saavedra77.livejournal.com]

Do I deduce that you're a native New Englander, then?

[delerium69.livejournal.com]

Yup. Massachusetts.

[saavedra77.livejournal.com]

Great state: I would have stayed, but I'm a wimp about winter ... ;)

[delerium69.livejournal.com]

Yeah, definitely not a place to live if you're not a fan of winter weather. If there wasn't at least some down actual winter here in DC I'd go bonkers. I really do like snow (although not so much of the really biting cold). It's make me think I would get bored of the West Coast after a while.

[saavedra77.livejournal.com]

Heh. Well, in Seattle, I get to see the snow sitting up there on top of the Olympics & Cascades (at least, if they're not hidden behind low clouds), every day--without having to shovel any of it ... ;)

[schmallturm.livejournal.com]

I am more southern than y'all.



I messed around with it some and apparently icing, catty corner, and ca-ra-mel are my southernisms.

BTW, to me your accent always sounded like an upper-class new york accent.

[saavedra77.livejournal.com]

Are we talking West Side of Manhattan, Westchester, or ... Hyde Park ...? :D

Probably not what I was going for, growing up: I think the goal was just to emulate my idea of "normal", at the time--'70s TV news anchors, more or less. On the other hand, the way that my neighbors spoke ... sort of mixture of Sly Stallone & the Dukes of Hazzard (Northeastern, yet hickish) ... well, it just wasn't me ...

[uniquecrash5.livejournal.com]

I am entertained by the (quite valid) observation that "General American English" = "like the people on TV".

[saavedra77.livejournal.com]

Yeah, the broadcast media have been dissolving our regional accents for decades--although their ideal of "standard" U.S. English seems to have changed over time. If you listen to radio programs from the '30s, pretty much everyone sounds like they're from the greater New York area--fast-talking, very nasal (think Walter Winchell). Even in early Hollywood, you used to hear a lot more of that sharp, Northeastern accent. Since the '60s, though, the standard seems to have gotten more Southern or Western--slowing down, losing the nasality. Still, public figures with strong regional accents--Southern or Northeastern or Minnesotan or whatever--seem to be getting rarer: they can do comedy, sports, politics, sure--but drama or the network news? Not so much. ;)

[schmallturm.livejournal.com]

Keep in mind that NY used to be much bigger in the broadcast industry, before it all became based in LA. That's probably the cause of the accent shift.

This book is a really neat discussion of the origin of American subcultures:

http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/tg/detail/-/0195069056/qid=1113778469/sr=8-1/ref=pd_csp_1/002-6523656-3611211?v=glance&s=books&n=507846

[saavedra77.livejournal.com]

Oh, yeah--I've read Albion's Seed. Fischer's treatment of the early Middle Atlantic states actually chimed with things I grew up hearing about my mom's family: they included Quakers who settled in Delaware Valley in the late 1600s. I think that Fischer somewhere remarks on how the Quakers' inclusive social policy led directly to the culture's disappearance--inundated in waves of later German, Irish, etc. migrants among whom they persisted as a tiny, marginal minority. So, whereas New England congregationalism and the Tidewater branch of the anglican church survived as social forces into the eighteenth and even nineteenth centuries, the Friends rather rapidly declined from stalwarts of local government & culture to virtual political & cultural invisibility. Believe me, that's the way they remember it ...