In a stress test of such quizzes, I took the test and found out I'm actually from the Great Lakes region...
| What American accent do you have? Your Result: The Inland North You may think you speak "Standard English straight out of the dictionary" but when you step away from the Great Lakes you get asked annoying questions like "Are you from Wisconsin?" or "Are you from Chicago?" Chances are you call carbonated drinks "pop." | |
| The Northeast | |
| Philadelphia | |
| The Midland | |
| The South | |
| Boston | |
| The West | |
| North Central | |
| What American accent do you have? Take More Quizzes | |
Oh, and we call "soda" and "pop" "soft drinks" here in Gods Own Country.
Stumble It!
Comments
As a "true" Inland North speaker (having grown up in northern Pennsylvania) I congratulate you. Obviously it's a sign of your erudition that you, an Aussie, tests out this way. Perhaps you can help me with this conundrum:
When I ordered a lemonade in the UK I got a clear beverage that tasted sort of like what I expect in a lemonade. An Aussie coworker told me that would happen in Australia as well -- although he had had at that point quite a few pints of a hop-derived beverage and may have been pulling my leg. In the US and Canada, a lemonade is at least somewhat yellow. In fact, every lemon I've seen is yellow. When I squeeze the juice of lemon it's yellowish. So, calling on your erudition, knowledge of biology, and nationality, can you help me out? Maybe the UK with a climate inimical to growing citrus fruits imports a clear or translucent lemon from Australia.
Seem like just the sort of mystery a ScienceBlog blog should solve.
Posted by: AndyS | November 12, 2006 8:36 PM
Looks like 2 for 2 on the quiz. I grew up in the central valley of California, and came out "Inland North", too. But the quiz site says that if your result is wildly wrong, it probably because something is wrong with the quiz, but they just haven't figured it out. But they got their cookie planted, which is what they were after, I suppose.
Posted by: ChipS | November 13, 2006 1:27 AM
I actually am a Canadian, so the test was right on (though the characters in Fargo clearly have accents). Of course, I have no idea which part of Canada their "Canadians" come from...
Posted by: Tlonista | November 13, 2006 7:51 AM
According to this test, my accent is the same as yours. I had no idea you could switch between Estuary English and Received Pronunciation. I imagined something more along the lines of Rolf Harris.
And now that I actually live in Fargo I can tell you that very few people here speak like the characters in the movie (although I have heard the occasional "Ya, you betcha!")
And it's 'soft drinks' or 'fizzy drinks' not 'pop' in the UK. 'Pop' was current in the era of the Just William and Jennings stories - roughly the 1930s to the 1950s - but it seems to have largely dropped out of use now.
Sadly, for most Brits lemonade and cream soda are fizzy, colourless confections made by R White's and sold in 2-litre plastic bottles.
Posted by: Ian H Spedding FCD | November 13, 2006 8:55 PM
Absolutely correct, that. In spite of the fact that I've lived far away from there for the past 25 years.
The whole quiz seemed centered around identifying people whose speech distinguishes between "aw" and "ah" sounds.
They didn't even get into the "bedgeroom" for "bedroom" thing I like to tease my Philly relatives about.
Posted by: pistil | November 15, 2006 4:03 PM