Which American accent do you have? (2007) | Hacker News Reader

Which American accent do you have? (2007)

youthink.com

43 pointsbookofjoe57 comments

I didn't find this test to be particularly accurate. This one on the other hand blew me away https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/upshot/dialect-quiz...

Some of the choices seem poorly selected. For example, on the question about what term I would use for roads meeting in a circle, both "roundabout" and "rotary" were choices, but I was only allowed to select just one. I use both terms, but it depends on the exact road configuration, and to some degree, the context of who I am speaking to. Other questions had similar issues.

I tend to code-switch when speaking if I can. If I'm talking to a New Yorker I'll say "truck" and "apartment", but to a Londoner I'd be more likely to say "lorry" and "flat".

At least a solid third of the questions I wanted to check multiple boxes and a lot of it is context dependent or some terms are more specific than other terms but both work.

Rotary/roundabout

Yard sale/tag sale/garage sale

semi/semi truck/semi trailer/tractor trailer

sneakers/gym shoes

I suspect they didn't have a large enough sample size to allow multiple selections while still having the desired accuracy so they force you to pick something.

> I use both terms, but it depends on the exact road configuration

What’s the difference for you?

In general...

rotary: tangential entry/exit, large diameter, high-speed, multi-lane

roundabout: deflected entry/exit, small diameter, low-speed, sometimes single-lane

Size and number of lanes, for me. I think roundabouts are the multi-lane ones, rotaries are much smaller and slower usually. At least this is what I realized on moving from Massachusetts where rotaries were common, to New Jersey where there were many "roundabouts" which required lane changes and no reduction of speed.

That quiz is magnificent! I highly recommend it even if (like me) you are not American - the results will be meaningless, but the questions are themselves absolutely fascinating.

It was accurate but a bit overgeneralized for me:

"You have a Northern accent. That could either be the Chicago/Detroit/Cleveland/Buffalo accent (easily recognizable) or the Western New England accent that news networks go for."

Chicago suburban for me. I'm actually southwest of the city, but the NY Times quiz heat map puts me in the Buffalo/Cleveland/Detroit/Chicago zone, quite rightly, but different than the city proper. Before a certain Saturday Night Live sketch, I never said "Da Bears," ever, so I don't have the South Side accent which that parodies.

Of course, even in that range there are differences. Most Chicagoans wouldn't know what a "weck" was if it jumped up and bit them (which would be a neat trick, since it's a roast beef sandwich served in the Buffalo area).

The NYT quiz has some judgement calls for me, though, since I use a variety of different terms sometimes (highways being a good example).

This little bit on the Michigan accent (2002) is spot-on: http://michigannative.com/ma_home.shtml

Same here, I'm from the Chicago burbs and was identified by both quizzes as such.

But the NYT one had some that I wanted to select multiple for. Such as "service road" & "frontage road". I selected "service road" but I know that in Chicago where I'm from the term "frontage road" is used but I don't think I personally would use it in a sentence since it isn't intuitive to me.

There were other examples where I wanted to select multiple.

Also never been to Buffalo and don't know what a "weck" is.

That was scarily accurate. Tells me I've picked up stuff from my parents as well as one of the locations where I've lived.

Not sure, it said I speak like I'm from somewhere further north, but I'm in Florida. I've probably picked up my accent from movies and the internet since it is my second language.

This was sort of accurate for me. I grew up in Denver, moved to the plains as a teenager, then to Seattle after high school. It showed me as Reno/Santa Rosa/Stockton.

There were a few questions were after reading the other answers, I realized that I would have said it differently 20 years ago, but I now say it like the locals.

I recall one similar to this that ended early with a correct assessment of my region after I answered a question about the term "bubbler".

This one was pretty close, got it down to 3 cities, two of which are in the correct region.

It said I had a neutral accent...

I grew up in the deep south and make Andy Griffith sound like a northerner.

Interesting. I also grew up in the Deep South, but people are always surprised to hear it, claim I "don't have an accent", etc. And yet, the quiz positively identified me as having a Southern accent.

I assume it's because this quiz is only asking about how we pronounce words, and doesn't measure any other speech metrics like tempo/cadence. I guess I don't have the drawl, but still pronounce words with a Southern accent. Maybe this is why it confuses me so much when my wife pronounces Don and Dawn the same, which was question #2 on the quiz. ("Wait, which person are you talking about?!")

Maybe you have the drawl but not the Southern pronunciation?

I'm a European (Spaniard) who's never set foot in the states, but I've been in a relationship for a while with a girl from Boston.

I expected my result to be near the Mass area due to her influence, but somehow I ended up near Kentucky/Tenessee. I wonder why?

Because you're a European (Spaniard) who's never set foot in the states?

But yet, he's also from Kentucky?

If you don’t have an American accent, then why do you expect that a test of which American accent you have is going to produce a sensible result?

I don't expect a sensible result, I just imagined that I would get somewhere either close to the origin of the Americans I know personally, or close to the source of the media I consume (since those are my main connections with the English language), so I'm wondering why my pronunciation is closer to that area in particular instead.

Presumably they wanted to see if they had picked up any accent from their American girlfriend.

As a Swedish person, I'm apparently northeastern.

Also, for the first 2/3 or so of the quiz, it's pretty much unfathomable to me how anyone could pronounce any of them the same.

This is essentially testing for various kinds of phonological changes (mostly vowel mergers) that roughly differentiate between American accents. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Phonological_change

If you learned English anywhere in Europe, it's most likely that you were taught an approximation of Received Pronunciation (standard British English), which is most similar to accents in the northeastern US for historical reasons.

English classes in Western Europe vary between two types:

* non-U RP (a less formal variant of British "Received pronounciation")

and

* GA ("General American", a blend of midwest and north eastern American accents).

The former is favored by Latin language family countries and the latter is favored by Germanic language family countries, simply because they better match the native language sounds.

In either case though... both of these are closer to "northeastern" than any other US accent.

At least in Germany, we started with a British pronunciation and then in our I believe 4th year of learning english we had one year where the textbook presented american english and we listened to recordings of american speakers.

Overall I think our teachers spoke a mixture of american and english dialects (and remnants of a German accent) that you could probably not put on a map.

As a Brit, I'm also apparently Northeastern, and agreed on your second point.

I'm British and also got North Eastern. I'm from Yorkshire so half right.

As a person of Swedish descent from Minnesota, I answered “same” to almost all of the questions for which it was an option. The apple falls far from the tree apparently!

Did your parents grow up in Sweden (or I suppose more pertinently, do they have Swedish accents)?

Nope, I’m third? generation so my grandparents would be the ones who originally immigrate/spoke Swedish.

South African here (Mother tongue English) and also Northeastern (same result on the NYT link in the comments).

Although I can see how the Mary, merry, marry could be the same. Some South Africans would pronounce the latter two identically although perhaps dissimilarly to how an American might pronounce all three the same.

Australian here and I got that too.

I don't understand why non-Americans are posting their results for a test for Americans and then some seem to complain about the accuracy.

fwiw, it hit my American accent on the nose.

I'm British and got North Eastern, which would fit as New Englanders supposedly speak English closer to how it sounded historically, than modern Britains do.

Maybe people who speak Spanish get identified with a more southern accent, and French speakers, Canadian.

Would they not be interesting results?

Interesting but it means nothing and has nothing to do with a test for people who live in the USA among other Americans in a region that can influence their accent.

"Interesting"

Well yes, that's all I claimed it to be.

I think because it really is interesting to use such a test outside of its intended scope?

For me it was interesting because I spent half a year in California and half a year in Toronto, so I wondered if time there left a mark on me.

I'm guessing most people expect the test to be slightly more sophisticated than it actually is. I have a slight regional regional accent that leans towards standard American pronunciation with all the words they asked about. This test feels dated and incomplete.

Because taking tests like this one and discussing results is fun?

The quiz also correctly identifies the general Canadian accent.

This ad piqued my interest in the specific articulation (velar pinch?) and it's origin or the region i.e. where the speaker, who is typically American, enunciates words ending in '-ing' as '-een' e.g. talk-een, think-een etc. I have since surmised, that it can be largely attributed to California, Texas, the surrounding South-West and rather surprsingly - Chicago! It is known as 'Chicano' English.

I would be more than happy to be corrected.

https://www.theguardian.com/culture/shortcuts/2018/jan/03/di...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Chicano_English

Got Neutral, but it was missing some utah valley isms that I'll slip into if careless.. for -> fer, creek -> crick, mountain -> mou'n (or other nt+vowel+n suffix, n and t are soft enough to not be there and the vowel is replaced by a pause; clinton -> cli-in/cli'n, mitten -> mih'n...), both -> bolth... The NYT one linked was interesting too, the heatmap included everything aligned and west of Utah minus Arizona, plus a bit of the northeast and great lakes areas. The NYT one was also interesting in that a few examples, like roundabout, had me think for a minute about what I'd say in a conversation vs what I expect to hear (traffic circle) in general from e.g. google maps and might say instead if primed with it.

That's interesting to me -- having grown up in south-central PA, all of those are things that I associate with a more Appalachian accent. I never would have guessed people "out west" in Utah would speak like that.

is for->fer Utah? I'm in Indiana, born on the West Coast, and I dont know where I picked that up. I have also started to morph "car" and similar in the direction of "kerr," and (most embarrassingly) instead of "robot" in conversation ill say "robit." I havent been able to find out from those around me, or hear the same changes.

No idea where it'd originate from, but in central Utah it's common. A few others I've remembered include (similar to fer) your -> yer, our -> are, really -> rilly, prescription -> perscription, sale -> sell.

Robit is pretty funny, like a frog? Haven't heard anything like that.

A random YouTube search shows what I'd consider representative for the area, at least around my age, only a couple of fers though. Overall fairly "neutral". https://youtube.com/watch?v=k3IdMkc-aD4 Your sibling mentioned a similarity with Appalachian people, maybe some of it is a mountain thing, though if they had in mind anything like https://youtube.com/watch?v=Bn8O6Nx3C6w I don't really hear much similarity.

> You`re not Northern, Southern, or Western, you`re just plain -American-. Your national identity is more important than your local identity, because you don`t really have a local identity.

Well, that's comforting. Apparently I'm from anywhere between Pennsylvania and Illinois, which is off the mark -- from the other side of the river in Boston, a Cantabridgiot born and raised. God bless Dachestah, Summaville, and Reveah (although with gentrification these towns are likely losing the local flavor, perhaps the Boston accent is dying?)

When I clicked on the link, I got an alert from my AV about the site having a JS Miner. I was able to reproduce it 3/3 times. Fair warning!

Apparently Northern, but I was confused for some questions. I've lived in Florida since at least 2001, before that I only spoke Spanish. I would've thought for certain I would've gotten a Southern accent, of course I do live in Orlando, everyone speaks a reasonable range of different American accents here.

I lived in Orlando for 20+ years, and got Western (mostly neutral). In my experience, Floridians south of Jacksonville do not speak with a southern accent.

Well, Central Floridians, if you get between Orlando and Miami... Like Okeechobee you hear some fun accents. But I guess that's a fair assessment. It's funny to me cause my wife is from Miami and says I have a "Puerto Rican accent" but most people from Orlando don't say I do, must be when I butcher my English now and then or she's just messing with me and doing a good job at it.

I used to have a wicked Boston accent, but I lost it when I moved to Silicon Valley. It comes out sometimes, especially when I've been drinking. My test result was Western.

I got Neutral, which is what I expected. I grew up right in the area of the US that they love to set up call centers in because people talk with a neutral accent.

I'm British and apparently that makes me Northeastern

Well, "very very Northeastern" would be accurate again, wouldn't it?

Having studied linguistics, I already knew I had a "flat" or "newscaster's" accent.

But the word pairs they chose were interesting.

"You in" this group - you'ins

You all" in this group - y'all

Does anyone here know of a similar test for British English?

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