Monday, November 20, 2006

Accents, Anyone?

What American accent do you have?
Your Result: The Midland

"You have a Midland accent" is just another way of saying "you don't have an accent." You probably are from the Midland (Pennsylvania, southern Ohio, southern Indiana, southern Illinois, and Missouri) but then for all we know you could be from Florida or Charleston or one of those big southern cities like Atlanta or Dallas. You have a good voice for TV and radio.

The South

Philadelphia

The Inland North

The Northeast

The West

Boston

North Central

What American accent do you have?
Take More Quizzes

This isn't showing the bar graphs part of my result. They come out as about 95% South, 60-70% Philadelphia and Inland North, 40% Northeast and West, and nearly nothing for Boston and North Central.

This is really odd, IMO. I grew up in Southeast Missouri, lived in Wyoming and Denver, CO for 20+ years, and have lived in LA since the late 80s. It was a HUGE effort to get rid of the Missouri accent when I moved to Cheyenne at the beginning of high school, and oddly the hardest part was changing the terms people use for things like Pepsi and Coke or those things you fry in. Other than short trips to Florida and Minnesota, I've never been east of Illinois. So how did my speech become so Northeastern??

So, readers, you're tagged here for an MeMe Accent

8 comments:

mehitabel said...

I did the accent thing a while back and it said I was MidWest. Funny thing, born and raised in Mass. (Western Mass, where we talk normal, not Bostonese) and have lived in SoCal since I was 20. I think they've got a couple of things mis-wired on that quiz!!

Anonymous said...

Yay! I see your blog again in my RSS aggregator. You fixed it! The blue scarf is gorgeous :).

Anonymous said...

I did this and I'm Canadian, Toronto. Interestingly, it said mine is like a U.S. Westerner, with the least amount of discernable accent there is. My beau is from Calgary. When he's tired, I can hear an accent affecting his speech, almost like a twang.

Grace said...

i tried to post this to my blog but it won't recognize the html but I came out inland North, not true I am from NJ I talk NJ

Anonymous said...

Hi! Finding out about accents is really hard in a written quiz. I came out 100% Midland which is where I placed in 1960 when a did an oral test with some similar pairings. Don't give it much value, IMHO. Jamie

smariek said...

What does it mean to be tagged for a MeMe accent?

I gave the quiz a try and posted the results on my blog. It thinks I have a Minnesota accent, which I find strange since I've lived in California all my life.

Another question .. what do I need to do to get notified of updates on your blog? Can you help me with that?

jayne said...

Finally catching up! Most Americans peg me for a Canadian pretty quickly once I open my mouth. That's all I can say about my accent.

In Canada, I usually notice regional diffs in accent -- I can tell if a person is a Newfie, or maritimer, or Trawna (Toronto) or prairies. In the Vancouver area we have a lot of transplants from the rest of Canada, and we know if they're not from here as soon as they say the word "Vancouver."

You've been busy, girl, shopping and making things. I'm envious but very glad for you! Love all the eye candy and the story about your mama's lipstick. I like her!

smariek said...

Hey, I just discovered something about that graph. It wasn't showing before, but now I see it. I'm using IE right now (reimaging my laptop HD) because I haven't reinstalled Mozilla Firefox yet. I suspect the graph shows up on IE but not Firefox. Firefox is my usual browser.