Discussion Groups / English Usage / November 2006

Django Cat <vivjunkmail@lineone.net> had it:

Me too.  I suppose we do live to the north of Jersey.

That makes three of us.

Thing is, I'm from Southern California, raised by a parent from Chicago
(TLCIA).  They probably eliminated SoCal since I distinguish "dawn" from
"don" -- but so do other southlanders of my age, I think.

And it correctly pegged me for "The West" (I'm from California).

Who rhymes "bag" with "vague"? And which way?

It said I definitely have a Boston accent.  I spent seven years
(1955-62) there, then 28 years in Chicago, then 16 here in San Diego --
guess those "formative" years, ages 18-24, formed me.

Aloha ~~~ Ozzie Maland ~~~ San Diego

There's a Manchester in Connecticut, too.

Fran

T.H. Entity <gguiri@yahoo.com> had it:

I got 100% in my High School Diploma and I seem to have a mild case
of ADD.  I tried to find out how Strange I am, but I couldn't answer
some of the questions.  "Did you ride the short bus to school?"  Huh?  
I cycled, or walked when I had to carry my bassoon.  Is that strange
enough?

John Dean:

C.D.B.:

I tried it with my real accent and it said Northeast, probably New York.
I then reversed all my answers, and it put me in North Central/Minnesota.

How does anyone know if someone is speaking of "Will" the person, or
they "will" do something, or they wrote up a "will"?

A ten-dollar bill, a duck bill, to bill for services, or Barnacle Bill
the Sailor?

No problem, eh?

Since we speak of little that does not involve frequent
repetitions of all three words in close proximity, we get a lot of
practice in deducing which we mean from context. It keeps us
mentally nimble. I fondly remember the advice I got once: "If you
want to be marry, Mary merry." Or whatever it was.

It's hard to imagine ANYWHERE where Mary, marry and merry sound the same,
iddenit?

Eleanor Roosevelt was from New York City not Boston. She went to school in
England and she never lived in Boston or Massachusetts.
She did not have a Boston Accent

3 same
4 same
5 same
6 same
7 all sound same
8 all different
9 hot
10 different
11different
12 yes
13 yes

Richard Chambers wrote:
   What surprised me was my score of only ~45%
   for the similarity of my accent with that
   of Boston. Having heard recordings of the voice
   of Eleanor Roosevelt (wife of Franklin D),
   and having been told that her Bostonian accent
   was the nearest thing in the USA to
   an English accent, I assumed that I ought
   to have been placed as Bostonian myself.

The inconvenient fact of New York was mentioned
elsethread.  I think you are right about the
Boston accent, but that is the Boston Brahmin
accent, practiced by a few very rich people,
not the vastly greater number of working class
people that inhabit Boston.

Eleanor Roosevelt may sound English, but part of
that is cheating -- the three years in an English
boarding school (Allentown) starting at age 15.
Eleanor was born in 1884, and especially between
age 8 and age 15 spent a lot of time with her
grandmother, who was two generations closer to
the accent schism, about 80 years away.
Not counting all the visits that rich families
made to England.

--                       ---------------------------------------------
Richard Maurer              To reply, remove half
Sunnyvale, California       of a homonym of a synonym for also.
----------------------------------------------------------------------

Wow, maybe you sound like Coop!

That is the result it gave me as well, but my reaction "Nope, not a
chance."

-GAWollman

Same here, and equally correct.

Nobody asks me that--in fact no one ever tries to guess where I'm from
by my (lack of) accent.

When I change my "caught-cot" answers to "similar, but not quite the
same" (which would also describe my accent reasonably well), it
misplaces me in the Midlands.

Yup for me too.  Don't you feel that "soda" is more effete than
sybaritic?

Pat Durkin filted:

Landsman!...

Except that I'm really from southern California, which is the result I got when
I tried claiming that everything sounded the same....r

Ah! Interesting. St. Louis has been described as having heavy influence
from the "Inland North" region, and may be in the process of changing its
dialectological affiliation from the Midlands to the Inland North. ...Did
you live in St. Louis when you were growing up, or only Iowa and Oklahoma?

-Aaron J. Dinkin
Dr. Whom

A simultaneous "yes" answer to both cot/caught difference and
father/bother difference would be a good "not American" giveaway.

-Aaron J. Dinkin
Dr. Whom

I would think that you need only ask about the pronunciation of "New York".
Is this "Nyoo York" or "Noo York"? That question alone would be sufficient
to sort the goodies from the baddies.

Just how far does this go in America? Do you pronounce "few" as "foo" or as
"fyoo"?
Fuel:  fool, fooel or fyooel.
Imbue:  imboo or imbyoo
Impute:  impoot or impyoot
crew:  (even the Brits say "croo").
beautiful: all the Brits, except Bernard Matthews, say byootiful.

Does everybody in America do it the "oo" way, or are there any areas of
America where they would say Nyoo York?

When Nyoo Orleans was sadly in the nyoos a year ago, I was surprised to
discover that its correct name was actually Nwarleens. I had no idea.

Richard Chambers        Leeds   UK.

It is the closest part of the US to Europe, after all.

People talk funny in Rhode Island. Which{for all you Mid-Westerners and
Californicators} is not an Island.

The one little snippet of your speech I heard indicated to me that you
sounded like you were from Chicago (NTTAWWT).

The quiz emphasizes "cot" and "caught", "don" and "dawn", etc.  If you
distinguish those, I don't think it will identify you as Californian.
If I'd been writing the quiz, I'd have asked about another word or two
("door", at least) before telling people they were as Philadelphian as
cheesesteak.

I don't *think* they do (that would be the raised, back, possibly
diphthongal vowel of "Coffee Talk", right?) but I haven't been there in
many years.  But it would be hard to ask about that vowel on a
text-based quiz.