Where y'all from?
This is a dialect quiz from a year or so ago. It places me somewhere between Jackson, Mississippi, and my actual hometown, Houston. I tried to choose the answers that seemed most natural from my childhood, though sometimes two answers seemed equally valid, perhaps from listening to other people's conversation over the years. For instance, I'm pretty sure we said "pillbug" at home, but "doodlebug" seems right, too. I might call an 18-wheeler a semi or a tractor-trailer, interchangeably. I was taught to say "feeder road," but I also say "frontage road." I say "crawfish" and "crawdad" without much preference. I say "cray-ahn" and can't remember ever hearing anyone say anything different. I say "cair-ah-mel" not "car-mel." For "aunt," I say "ant," not "awwwnt." Do people really say "loy-yer" instead of "law-yer"? Yankees, please advise.
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Mine shows I am clearly a Southerner, and offers three cities as strong points: Chattanooga, Birmingham, and Montgomery. I've never been to two of those cities, but Chattanooga isn't far from where I really grew up in the North Georgia mountains.
I'm also aware of a certain amount of what they call 'code switching' in my speech. If I'm talking to local boys, or family, I might pronounce "been" more like "seen," but when talking with professionals I'll pronounce it to rhyme with "in." I use "ya'll" all the time (spelling it with Faulkner, not the way the quiz spells it) except in professional environments. So my actual speech is heavily inflected by company.
It gives me Durham, NC. Born in Pittsburgh, lived most of my childhood South of Richmond, raised by parents from New England. Spent most of my life in SC/GA. I do say loy-er. The funniest thing is my mother who sounds like the stereotypical Rhode Islander uses "y'all" almost exclusively now. Which is really funny when she says "Y'all wanna pahk the cah in the yahd?"
MikeD
The funniest thing is my mother who sounds like the stereotypical Rhode Islander uses "y'all" almost exclusively now. Which is really funny when she says "Y'all wanna pahk the cah in the yahd?"
Having split my life mostly between New England and TX, I do much the same, though my part of NE didn't drop the R's to the degree that RI does. Last year at a local Wal-Mart I got into a conversation with a couple visiting from Ohio. They said I sounded as if I were from New Hampshire.
I took the test last year, more than once. It was dead accurate on my NE origins, as the borders of my hometown were a couple of miles outside the small triangle formed by the 3 cities the test predicted as my area of origin.
My adding certain TX phrases to my vocabulary, such as "y'all" and "frontage road" didn't affect much my origin score. The reason here is that the test is fine tuned enough that it can pick out certain words or phrases used mainly in very specific areas. For example, use of "grinders" instead of "subs" is fairly specific to my home area of NE.
My brother spent about half his life in the DC area, and while the test slated him as NE, it also gave him a strong DC component.
Like Grim, I have been known to adjust my accent according to my audience. For example, if I am in the local Mexican grocery, my Spanish accent will become more Mexican- more nasal.
Regarding changing one's accent in adulthood, I am reminded of my Okie mother's story. She left Oklahoma in her early 20s to go to grad school in the North. She lost her Okie accent. By contrast, a cousin of hers who married a northern flyboy in WW2, and spent much of her life in the North, never completely lost her Okie accent. I asked my mother why she lost her Okie accent. She replied that she got tired of total strangers coming up to her, putting their arms around her shoulder, and asking her, "What part of Texas are you from, honey?"
My Dad and his whole side of the family is from New Hampshire. He doesn't normally sound it, unless he's around his brothers. My cousin (Dad's side) the former Marine sounded so funny to me the first time I talked to him after he went to Boot. I didn't recognize his voice because his accent was completely gone. When I asked him what happened, he said "The Marine Corps has a way of getting rid of your accent." :)
I, too, tried to answer from my distant boyhood-ness. It seems my memory is pretty good. Here I am in north Texas, where the map of my results is nice and blue, and the reddest parts surround Kankakee, IL, and central IA, where I grew up.
The city triangle offered, though, has me too far east: eastern IN and OH.
"loy-yer" Yew betcha.
Eric Hines
Upper midwest, where I grew up, and where I went to college. Curious.
Texan, I did not think asking advice from a yankee was gonna cut it here...!
I'll go take the test and report back.
I am either from upstate NY or the Puget sound.
Not bad, really- I was trying to remember what we called things when I was a resident of the northeast, rather than the northwest.
Coming from a wasp background, marrying into an Italian family was quite the delight- language not the least of it.
To some, a window, to a New Englander a win-der, an Italian a win-da.
Do people really say "loy-yer" instead of "law-yer"?
It's pronounced "lowlife" in the Midwest.
Never get tired of the lawyer jokes.
My husband got almost exactly the same results as I did--must be why we found each other. We spent some time this morning sorting out the difference between supper and dinner. I grew up saying them interchangeably, but then supper (an evening meal) was always the big meal of the day. The exception is something like Thanksgiving (or maybe a big Sunday spread), when it's "dinner" even if it's at 1pm. On the other hand, I wouldn't go out to "supper." It's "lunch" or "dinner" in a restaurant, while the evening meal at home is "supper." Even so, you'd ask, "What's for dinner?"
In East Tennessee, where most of my family is from, it's 'dinner' at around noon (which follows the French usage, interestingly: there was a strong connection between France and Scotland throughout the Middle Ages that didn't really end until after the 1745). Supper is in the evening.
Our usage in North Georgia is closer to yours.
I ran into the dinner/supper problem once. I was in Oklahoma for a funeral, about to go for a drive out in the country, when my cousin told me to be back for dinner. I had been raised in NE on breakfast/lunch/dinner, so concluded that if I showed up by 6 p.m., I would be OK. [Supper in NE was a light evening meal, such as the popcorn and cocoa we often had on Sunday nights.]
When I showed up at 3 p.m., I came back to a annoyed aunt, who was expecting me to have been there for the noon dinner.
You could have Sunday lunch or Sunday dinner, but there's no such thing as Thanksgiving lunch or Thanksgiving supper, right? Youse guys from parts of the country where folks talk funny, feel free to weigh in.
The quiz suggested one usage of "dinner" as something more formal, and it's true that "to dine" sounds like something you'd do at home only if you had a butler. But "dinner" is not so much formal as more festive, or served to a bigger crowd than usual, even if it's BBQ outside on picnic tables. Or in a restaurant, that's true.
I meant "Sunday supper," not "Sunday dinner." But actually I wouldn't say either of those. It would be "lunch" or "supper," even if it happened to be on Sunday, but if the meal is identified with "Sunday" at all, it would be "Sunday dinner."
The supper/dinner thing always seemed problematic to me. Lunch is the midday meal, dinner is the evening meal. If someone says "supper" that means whatever they seem to want it to mean (though I've never heard it used for breakfast).
If someone invites me to any meal (always a welcome thing), then regardless of what they call it, my very first question is "at what time?" That tends to avoid any problems.
Mine was funny, but made sense really- The cities were Madison, Milwaukee, and Newark/Patterson, but the light red spread all over the Western U.S. My Dad is from New Jersey, and Mom, being an immigrant learned most idioms from him, so the Newark mark is pretty accurate in a way. OF course, the Army, travel, and living in California so long had an effect on him- he' doesn't have that really obvious accent- it's quite subtle. Also, so many people in Southern California are from somewhere else that you're destined to get a confusing mixture of idioms.
InThe Food of a Younger Land: A portrait of American food- before the national highway system, before, and before frozen food…, which basically takes from WPA regional guides from the 1930s, here is some further information on the dinner/supper issue.
In Vermont farmhouses and village homes there are three meals a day, breakfast, dinner and supper, and dinner comes at 12 o’clock noon, which is as it should be for men who rise early and work hard. It is characteristic that Vermonters care not at all that this custom may be derided as old-fashioned, out-moded and lacking in sophistication. Many country hotels in the state also uphold the order of dinner at noon and supper at six, both full and heavy meals. A working man with a long active forenoon behind him needs more than a sandwich and a glass of milk to sustain him through the afternoon.
In the larger towns and hotels and restaurants, however, the noon-time meal is lunch, and dinner comes in the evening, which is quite proper for office workers and professional people, who do not toil with their hands and their muscles…..
The custom once was, and still is in some Yankee households, to serve them for both Saturday night supper and Sunday morning breakfast, …l.
Sunday breakfast was warmed over baked beans, brown bread, and perhaps Indian pudding. Sunday dinner was more of yesterday’s roast or corned beef, cold, with the remaining vegetables heated up. Supper was cold meat, bread and butter, cake, cookies, and preserves.
It would appear from this 1930s writeup on Vermont that even in New England there was originally the breakfast/dinner/supper distinction. As the noonday meal became more and more a light repast eaten outside the home, "dinner" was less and less the description of the noonday meal.
It isn't so much regional differences, as cultural changes.
Nailed it. The two most similar cities were Boston and Providence. I was born 9 miles north of the latter and 20 miles southwest of the former.
Lawyer jokes?
Well, there IS this one:
http://althouse.blogspot.com/2014/10/tony-perkins-of-family-research-council.html#more
I don't know how y'all think in Texas, but in the Midwest, the Constitution does NOT trump Nature.
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