Can your dialect pinpoint where you are from?
It sure pegged me!
Answer the test questions below to see your personal dialect map. Most of the questions used in the quiz are based on those in the Harvard Dialect Survey, a linguistics project begun in 2002 by Bert Vaux and Scott Golder. The original questions and results for that survey can be found on Dr. Vaux’s current website.
Try it, Click here.
After the first few questions I could tell it was narrowing down already to the pronunciation of “A”. I assume it narrows down differently for everyone. I remember my mom learning French and trying (hysterically) to “cure” herself of that flat Midwestern “A” but even with all her other talents she just had no ear. Remember Henry Higgins from My Fair Lady? Here is Rex Harrison in a clip from the film about dialect…
Inga Duncan Thornell 
Wow. I thought it would not work for me because I have lived outside the region I grew up for most of my life. It was within miles of my hometown.
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When Scott and I are talking together we often have complete strangers walk up and say, “Chicago?” and then get all excited and want to start talking neighborhoods and restaurants.
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It has me being from southern California, but because I work with kids with such varied backgrounds, I pronounce so many of these words differently based on context, so I’m not really sure which is my “native” pronunciation any more. But, when I was 19 and living in Maine, I did have a guy from Arkansas tell me I had a weird accent. Oh, and this test also didn’t ask anything about the word “reckon”, or how you pronounce “creek” and they had the usage of and pronunciation of “caddy-wampus” all wrong, 🙂
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Interesting, I admit that I didn’t choose roundabout for the “circular thing where streets meet” because I specifically remember that I didn’t hear that term until we moved out here to Seattle. Back home it was a circle.
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I got ALL California…which makes sense I suppose since it is the west coast and that is where I have spent most of my time. Least like was Mississippi and Pennsylvania…
Definitely makes sense…since I have never lived in the deep south nor the east coast!
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