Do you speak with an accent? How well do you understand the accents of others? Do you think you can identify where someone came from just based on his or her accent? Now's your chance to put that knowledge to the test.
We had so much fun with the little accent quiz we did earlier this week that we thought we'd expand it into a full-blown Casual Fridays study. You'll listen to ten different people reading the same excerpt, and you'll guess where they came from. Then come back next Friday to see how you did!
The study is brief, with just 13 quick questions, but it's a little more extensive than the usual Casual Friday -- it might take up to five minutes of your time. You have until 11:59 p.m. Eastern time on Wednesday, March 14 to participate -- or until we have 333 responses, whichever comes first. Don't forget to come back next Friday for our analysis of the results!
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Growing up, I was often the student the teacher asked the new student from Vietnam or Mexico to sit with while they were working on catching up in school. I worked in a call center for a short period of time, always trying to guess where the person was calling from. I think I'm pretty good with American accents.
But the accents from other countries was tough! First of all, there's a lot that different speakers of languages from the same language group will have in common in terms of their sound approximations and cadence in English. Next, there's the question of the proficiency of the individual speaker. Some people have stronger accents than others. Several Asian languages have the tendency to meld the "L" and the "R" phonemes, but an especially proficient English speaking Japanese person is likely to differentiate them better. I'd really like to know if I got it right!
Wow, what an ego killer. I've got a BA in linguistics and am almost done with my masters in the same (I even know where you got those files, unless there's more than one site out there that has people read about Stella's shopping trip), but out of the 10 items on this quiz, there are only maybe 3 or 4 that I am confident about having gotten right. Rather depressing, in an "I ought to be doing better at this" kind of way. Then again, that describes most of my grad school career, so perhaps I should be used to it ...
Karen and Allison:
Yes, I deliberately picked accents that were quite difficult. I wanted this to be a challenge! Hopefully I didn't go too overboard, though. Now I sort of wish I could participate. I doubt I'd do very well, though!
Too bad that correct answers are not immediately available :) But I understand the reason behind it. Living in US (NYC and now California) for bigger part of the last 10 years helps a lot in guessing, without this experience I would be completely lost.
That was tough! I have lived in Asia, attended an international school and have traveled to Europe and Russia. I thought I would be able to easily identify the accents but this was quite difficult.
That was really hard, especially since all of these speakers were quite proficient in English. The markers I usually listen for weren't really there (plus, the giveaway grammar/syntax issues were eliminated by the stock phrase--and yes, I recognize the story too!).
I'm dying to see the answers, because I don't think I did that well despite working as a tutor with students from all over the world. For me, to really learn to identify an accent consistently, I need to hear it frequently, be able to contrast it with similar accents, and also read a description of some of the features.
That was pretty hard for me - especially the American ones. I was expecting more of a difference between Alabama and Wisconsin!
Growing up I moved around through international schools, so I'd like to feel that I can distinguish between the accents I did hear - French, Russian, Chinese and so on. Actually, the hardest with Chinese is the fact that people who speak different dialects of Chinese have very different accents when speaking English (especially those with Beijing accents - their r's are very distinct!). The one I identified as definately Asian was pretty difficult to put my finger on thought!
I can't wait to see the answers, as I'd like to see if the one I thought was Russian really was! It helps being able to speak the language I think, then you can see how the pronounciation works in their language.
It would be interesting to see this scored by "partialy" correct as well as exact - I mean if someone is from China and the person picks Italy, then nul points. But if they pick Japan then it's a half for being in the right general direction.
I'm more that a little concerned by the first line of this post: "Do you speak with an accent?"
Doesn't everybody speak with an accent?