How Y’all, Youse and You Guys Talk

[scrabbler1]

The map finally loaded and it nailed me perfectly - New York City metro area. The "sneakers" answer was the big giveaway, indicating NYC, Yonkers (just north of NYC), and Jersey City NJ (just west of NYC). Everything west of the Appalachians had various shades of blue, while everything ease of those mountains but outside of the NYC metro area had various shades of yellow. Least similar cities were Spokane, Detroit, and Grand Rapids.

[Lucantes]

It nailed me as Philadelphia; pretty sure it was the "hoagie" answer that pushed it over the top!

[aja8888]

Placed me between Springfield, Mass. and Newark, NJ. How good? I was raised in Connecticut and lived there for over 30 years. Wow!

[haha]

Mine were Detroit, Spokane, and Salt Lake. I lived in Spokane a couple years, visited Salt Lake, and have never even been to Detroit. I don't think it worked very well for me. I've spent the huge majority of my life in Puget Sound, and I call Freeways freeways, and I think most other locals here do also. I came to California from New England and at that time in the Northeast we had only expressways and turnpikes and toll roads. I came north on the freeway-I 5 to be exact, and I have pretty much been here ever since.

Ha

[Marita40]

Fun to do. They nailed it for me, too. "Kitty-corner" especially gave me away, and the three cities they highlighted--Chicago, Madison WI, St. Paul/Mpls.--are spot on.

[Walt34]

Apparently results are um, all over the map. I grew up just outside Washington, DC, close enough that when I was 15 some friends and I could ride our bikes to the Washington Monument, walk up and down the stairs, and ride back home.

But it showed me coming from the south. I've driven through there but didn't stop on the way to FL once.

[donheff]

Pretty good. Chicago was among the results but I also got strong hits on Detroit and Buffalo probably because I picked up words I recognize from those places like "Devil's Night." I noticed "Access Road" was associated with lower Louisiana - that I never would have guessed.

[harley]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Walt34 Apparently results are um, all over the map. I grew up just outside Washington, DC, close enough that when I was 15 some friends and I could ride our bikes to the Washington Monument, walk up and down the stairs, and ride back home. But it showed me coming from the south. I've driven through there but didn't stop on the way to FL once.

Interesting. DW is an Arlington VA native, grew up probably within 10 miles of you. She got placed in Mobile, Birmingham, and Winston-Salem. I think the DC area has a microcosm accent that fools the test into the deeper south. I've told her a number of times that DC natives have a more redneck southern accent than they had in Richmond and Norfolk where I grew up.

No insult there, by the way. Some of my best friends/relatives are rednecks.

[ziggy29]

It put me on Sacramento, Stockton and Santa Rosa. I grew up near San Jose, so they weren't too far off.

[NYEXPAT]

Quote:

Originally Posted by Bestwifeever DH just took the test and it pinpointed his small town location based on the map's darkest red. Really interesting.

+1

[ERD50]

Quote:

Originally Posted by donheff Pretty good. Chicago was among the results but I also got strong hits on Detroit and Buffalo probably because I picked up words I recognize from those places like "Devil's Night." ...

I think we called it 'Beggar's Night', or maybe "Thief's Night'? So I had to pass on that one I think.

I imagine it works better for some than others just due to the number of unique questions that can apply to an area. 25 Q's to cover all the regions may not be enough for some places with only a few strong local colors.

There are a few specific areas (Indiana being one of them) that call 'Bell peppers' 'Mangos'. Not sure what they call the semi-tropical fruit?

-ERD50

[martyb]

Mine was pretty much right on. Southern US in general & more heavily concentrated in the southeast, especially North Carolina, where I was born & raised. Since I've lived in Texas & Louisiana most of my adult life, I've of course picked up some of those influences, but the map showed all of that. I guess the one year I spent in Wisconsin didn't make much of a difference in my vocabulary.

[ziggy29]

Quote:

Originally Posted by scrabbler1 The map finally loaded and it nailed me perfectly - New York City metro area. The "sneakers" answer was the big giveaway, indicating NYC, Yonkers (just north of NYC), and Jersey City NJ (just west of NYC).

There were a few of them in there for specific cities as well. If you said the side road parallel to a highway was a "feeder" you are from Houston. If you say "yinz", you're from Pittsburgh.

[Donzo]

Interesting! I grew up in upstate NY...it got very close to my actual city. The 3 cities it considered were Buffalo, NY, Elmira, NY and Albany, NY.

I've been out west for 32 years! Dialect sticks, my accent is long gone.

[kyounge1956]

I tried yesterday using Firefox on a Mac and got no map. Today I did the quiz again using Safari, and although I got a warning that my browser is outdated (true), I got results, and they were spot on: the two darkest areas were Long Island (I was born in Queens and lived there until first grade) and the SF Bay area (moved from Queens to the Oakland CA area and from there to San Jose).

One thing I thought was interesting was the map for "firefly" vs "lightning bug", which was one of my most distinctive answers. A large area of the western US uses "firefly", even though the insect itself is rarely seen there. They are also called fireflies in NYC, and I wonder if the use of this word in the West is a result of movement from NY to California in the sixties. I think my family was only one of many that went from the east coast to the west at that time.

[cantlogin]

Bulls-eye!

[Midpack]

Though I've lived in 4 distinctly different areas of the US, my 3 cities were all near Chicago, where we've lived for the past 20 years. So it's probably right...and we've lost the vernacular from our previous locations.

[JoeWras]

Quote:

Originally Posted by ERD50 Very interesting, thanks for posting. Pretty much nailed it for me, the three towns it said 'most similar' are about 30-100 miles away from my 'NW of Chicago' location. I think the key is they ask enough questions to narrow it down. This might get even more accurate if they asked for your location, and fed those responses into a database ('crowd-sourcing' it). -ERD50

Like me, you probably said that there was a "gaper's block on the expressway." That nails us down to the Chicago area pretty well.

It is fun to try to speak like you grew up somewhere else.

Every now and then I joke around and say stuff like "I think I'll go to a thickly settled area and get myself a tonic." I never pull it off, since I don't know how to pronounce "Worchester" correctly. But I can almost fake Southern-speak now.

[scrabbler1]

I was curious to see how my ladyfriend would do on this. She lives near me on Long Island for the last 9 years but is from Kentucky and her parents were raised in the deeper South. While she answered many questions the same as I did, some of which only because she picked up those terms in the last 9 years, she had some dark red areas in both Kentucky and the NYC area. But, the 3 cities noted as the most indicative were Jacksonville, Columbus (GA), and Montgomery (AL), the general area her parents were raised. Interesting combinations, indeed.

[bjorn2bwild]

I got Modesto, Fresno, and Salt Lake City.
I grew up in small town California - Mohave desert and coastal south, not the Sacramento valley. The trigger words were drive-thru liquor store? and drinking fountain. My parents/extended family are/were midwestern. I would think that should have some influence.