| What American accent do you have? Your Result: The Midland "You have a Midland accent" is just another way of saying "you don't have an accent." You probably are from the Midland (Pennsylvania, southern Ohio, southern Indiana, southern Illinois, and Missouri) but then for all we know you could be from Florida or Charleston or one of those big southern cities like Atlanta or Dallas. You have a good voice for TV and radio. | |
| The Inland North | |
| Philadelphia | |
| The South | |
| North Central | |
| The Northeast | |
| The West | |
| Boston | |
| What American accent do you have? Take More Quizzes | |
Tuesday, November 14, 2006
Just for Fun
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16 comments:
I have a Midland accent too. And here I always thought my voice sounded horrible (i.e., not ready for radio or TV). Hmph.
I wasn't "supposed" to take the test, since I'm Canadian, but I did it anyway to see what it would say.
It said I have a North Central accent, which I guess makes sense. Second choice for me was "The West", whereas the last three were "The South", "Philadelphia", and "The Northeast". I grew up on the West Coast of Canada, so again, this all seems reasonable.
However, I object to the insinuation that I probably thought the characters in "Fargo" sounded ordinary. :-)
It pegged me as a Philadelphian, no ifs, ands or buts. Completely correct & embarrassing.
I must confess, I have no idea what a Philadelphia accent might sound like. (Pennsylvania Coal Region, yes, but ...)
"Yo, Adrian"?
Bill is not alone. The second paragraph from the Wikipedia article on Philadelphia accent says:
Actual Philadelphia accents are seldom heard nationally (Philadelphia natives who attain national prominence usually make an effort to tone down or eliminate distinctive pronunciations that would sound dissonant to non-natives). Movies and television shows set in the Philadelphia region generally make the mistake of imbuing the characters with a gruff, generic Brooklyn/Queens accent (specifically heard in Philly-set movies such as the Rocky series and A History of Violence), or any other New York-sounding dialect that is almost always inapplicable to the way Philadelphians actually speak. A contrary example is the character of Lynn Sear (played by Toni Collette) in The Sixth Sense, who speaks with an accurate Philadelphia accent.
I got the Philadelphia accent result as well. Interesting, as I was born and raised in upstate New York and have never set foot in Philadelphia, south Jersey, Baltimore or Wilmington, the places suggested as the possible origin for this accent. Well, I always knew I sounded strangely.
Many thanks for the link, kind sir.
Judging by how you talk you are probably from north Jersey, New York City, Connecticut or Rhode Island.
Well, no.
I grew up in the Philly 'burbs & never thought I had the dreaded (according to my Bostonian mother) accent. If I could reproduce it phonetically for the rest of you, I would. I moved to San Francisco about 7 & a half years ago, dated a native who has Philly relatives, and HE said I had traces of the accent. And I do catch myself every once in a while. Whaddaya gonna do?
It said I as from the north east too, maybe New Jersey but probably New York City. I am an Australian, born and bred in Melbourne. But I have visited New York.
It pegged me exactly right: from the Northeast.
I remember in college some Philadelphians bonding over their pronunciation of H20: "wooder."
A slightly longer version of the quiz can be found here.
I think it's still meant primarily for North Americans, but this longer version correctly pegged me as Canadian, as opposed to thinking I was from the "North Central" region (e.g. Minnesota).
The longer quiz intrigued me, until I read the results. It gave me two: Southern first and then Midland. Southern couldn't be further from the truth.
The Southern markers would seem to be saying "feel" like "fill" and saying "time" with an "ah" sound, so I don't know how it pegged me as one of them people when I most definitely didn't answer those questions that way.
Vindication here (another rather flawed test, as evidenced by its lack of "none of the above" choices on some very "none of the above" questions):
34% Dixie. You are definitely a Yankee.
Another test, another lack of "none of the above" choices on some bizarre questions. But at least I'm not Southern at all!
***Your Linguistic Profile:***
60% General American English
20% Upper Midwestern
10% Yankee
5% Midwestern
0% Dixie
What Kind of American English Do You Speak?
http://www.blogthings.com/whatkindofamericanenglishdoyouspeakquiz/
I know I've seen a good one of these quizzes, but as I recall it was designed to give data to a scholar, not to give a result to the taker.
I mean, potato bugs? I'm not even sure I could identify one if it were crawling up my leg. Drive-through liquor stores? And who doesn't say both "water fountain" and "drinking fountain"? Crawfish, crayfish -- whatever. I don't TP or toilet-paper (on Devil's Night!), but if I did I might say either. I say cruller when it's a cruller! I say Coke when it's Coke and tonic when it's tonic, and I take a certain amount of pride in my "pop" heritage, but I say "soft drink" formal writing and "soda" so that the masses will understand.
It pegged me as Northeast, but interestingly enough, with a large dose of Philly. Which must mean I absorbed some of my mother's accent--she grew up in PA--and explains why when I was growing up I was always told by Rhode Islanders of long RI ancestry that I didn't have a "real" RI accent. Though strangely enough, Boston came out toward the bottom even though I lived there for 10 years.
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