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45% (Yankee). Barely into the Yankee category.
I think it may have been confused by the fact I've live around people from all over(military). And have lived a few distinct places myself.
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Unsurprisingly, five of my answers are "centered heavily on the Great Lakes region" -- which is, as we all know, the only REAL region.
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I suppose that makes sense for a person hailing from Northern Virginia, and who is 1/2 Southerner geneticly.
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Not surprising, since I've spent 5 years of my life in the SE, 5 in the NW, 3 in the MW, 7 in the SE, and 5 in the NE.
But I've never lived in the Great Lakes region, which seemed to be where most of my choices were described as being from. *shrug*
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45% I don't like the last question, because I've never heard of any of them. And on most of them there are several answers I could pick. For number 7 I need one of the choices to be "Hey! You! Yeah, all of You!" Hmmm... I just took it again, got more responses as Northeast, and am now 52%
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I'm pretty sure I used "crayfish", "crawfish", and "crawdads" in the same conversation at one point in my life, much to the confusion of the silly Californians who had no idea what any of them were.
And I rotate between "roly-poly" and "pillbug" depending on how unsophisticated I feel like sounding.
And I disagree that tennis shoes, running shoes, and sneakers are one in the same. Sneakers are lounging shoes, tennis shoes are for athletics (minus running), and running shoes are super-light low-tops.
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I think it's a testament to the greatness of tennis as a sport that one of the generic terms for athletic shoes is tennis shoes.
Posts: 4625 | Registered: Jul 2002
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60% (Dixie). Barely into the Dixie category.
All the answers that were not Dixie belonged to the Great Lakes region. I think... spending a year and a half doing nothing but talking to Michiganders affected my speech more than I thought.
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45% Though I don't know why so many of mine said Great Lakes. My mom is from Utah. My dad learned English as an adult, but never lived in the great lakes area. Though my husband's father was from Iowa.
If this test were for my dad, it would include these questions: What do you put a hot pan on? a Travix
What is a kid that complains about a sibling? A tittle tat
But I think but of these usages were in moments of stress.
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Born and bred New Englander... And I got slightly _Dixie_. Part of this is because my speech is largely vanilla, though I identified (and used to use) many of the northeastern terms, and partially because I'd never seen the bug in the last question, and it didn't have an opt out answer.
It seemed a few of my SE US answers were weighted more strongly than my NE US answers...
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Oh, and I think they have their "pajamas" answer messed up. I've never heard anyone around here say it as paJAMas, as opposed to the other option.
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I do admit that I look good in a skirt, but I don't think it's fair to say that's what makes tennis great.
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Apparently a lot of the stuff I say is midwestern. I kinda thought more stuff would be northern, since that's where my family and a lot of people I know are from. But I'm a real southerner! Honest!
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I think the answers are heavily midwestern. There's a possible "you are from the midwest/Great Lakes" answer to almost every question.
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posted
44%. "Barely into the Yankee category." Not too surprising, considering I'm from a town on the PA border with Maryland.
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*stretches in satisfaction* I'm still a Chicago girl at heart. Three of my answers specifically said "Chicago" while a bunch of others said "Great Lakes etc." That makes me happy.
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I took it again, answering the other way on one that was so borderline I couldn't decide the first time (caramel). I finally decided that I'm saying three syllables, you just can't hear them. Anyway, when I did that it came out 92% (Dixie). (Is General Lee your father?) So that's a lot better.
The one I didn't feel was true was the route thing. I say paper route (rhymes with out) and my friend from the northeast says paper "root". Yet it said my way was most common to the Northeast US. Is that true? How do you pronounce route, and where are you from?
I had no idea that people from other parts of the country didn't call it rolling a yard. <laughs> Would you understand what was meant when that term was used, at least? Most of them were like that for me. That I would have chosen a different word (sack for bag, for instance) but understand and recognize that people in the rest of the country don't say it that way.
A paper sack is the ordinary thing to call it around here, though some people do say bag. (To me, a bag implies something softer and less square.) But I know that if I'm traveling and I ask for a sack for my purchases in a convenience store, they will not understand what I have asked. <laughs> I know this but I have a hard time remembering which it is I'm supposed to not say.
I love stuff like this. I love learning about regional variations in language. Posts: 2843 | Registered: A Long Time Ago!
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61% dixie. Sounds about right...I was raised there but have lived all over...tons of different influences.
Posts: 6367 | Registered: Aug 2003
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Seriously... Isn't midwestern American English about as close as we come in this country to having a standard, television announcer type, of spoken language?
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58% Dixie. Well, Missiouri is a border state, meaning we agreed with the southerners during the civil war, but didn't have the desire to fight with them.
(Actually, in Missouri, the tension was so great during the Civil War that 1/3 of the population left or died as pro union forces and pro-rebel forces shot at anyone they disagreed with)
Posts: 11895 | Registered: Apr 2002
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48% yankee. Which to me says that I'm neither. I'm a Westerner. We get neglected, because we have lower population (except California, which is no more Western than Florida is Southern). But our speech patterns tend to be more "standard" and "normal," unless you actually grew up on a ranch. Or in Cache Valley, Utah.
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Interesting thread. I emailed the link to the faculty and they should have some fun with it. Rural Kansans, you know. Wonder what they will be?
Posts: 440 | Registered: Oct 2001
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100% Dixie. Now my parents won't try to kill me for not waving a Texas flag everywhere I go eh? Feeder roads is local to Houston, which I didn't realize. Has nobody ever known what I was talking about when I say that all these years? Guess thats what happens when you grow up in Houston.
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63% Dixie![[Wink]](wink.gif)
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I kinda thought more stuff would be northern, since that's where my family and a lot of people I know are from. But I'm a real southerner! Honest!
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The majority of my life has been lived in upstate New York. Another 5 years in Denver. Been living in the Chicago area since September 1997.![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif)
