How Y’all, Youse and You Guys Talk

MichaelB

MichaelB

Give me a museum and I'll fill it. (Picasso) Give me a forum ...
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I did the questionnaire twice, but got no results. The first time I had to authorize pop-ups so I did that. Then I redid it again, but still got no results.
 
MichaelB said:
From the NY Times this morning http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/12/20/sunday-review/dialect-quiz-map.html?ref=opinion&_r=0

They sure got mine right. Highlighted all the regions I spent as a child.
Click to expand...

That is amazing. My mother is from the midwest for generations, my father's family is from New England for generations, but my answers put me right in the DC area where I spent much of my childhood (I really thought it would skew to the midwest based on mother's vocabulary which I presumedt I had picked up). I will be forwarding this to family and friends.
 
Katsmeow said:
I did the questionnaire twice, but got no results. The first time I had to authorize pop-ups so I did that. Then I redid it again, but still got no results.
Click to expand...

It took a few minutes for the map to appear for me.
 
The first two times I tried it (using MSIE 11), it hung before displaying the map.

Then I tried it using the Chrome browser. It temporarily hung and finally gave me three cities. I lived in one of them, as a child. Never lived in the other two.
 
DH just took the test and it pinpointed his small town location based on the map's darkest red. Really interesting.
 
Kind of feel like I have just been to a horoscope reader......mine covered about 3/4 of the country towards the West. Kind of right.....kind of iffy. Now......do you say crick.....or creek? SW Washington.....I say crick.
 
I am foreign born, but the test put me right in the Southwest where I have lived for nearly 40 years.

PS. I like to use "y'all" occasionally in my posts because I think it is cute. And I often sprinkled in some "eh's".
 
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I remember as a child there was someone on a TV show who could guess where you were from within a hundred miles or so. Back in those days people traveled much less than they do today, and probably stayed longer when they did move. Still this study predicted all three cities correctly to my state, and two of them within an hour or two drive from where I live. Pretty impressive for this day and age of constant travel.
 
The map showed up okay on my iPad.

Although I tried to answer as if I was still in the place I grew up in England, the test pretty well nailed me as from the Baton Rouge area, which is where I lived for 17 years in my 30's and 40's
 
The map showed likelyhood for Newark, Cincinatti, Jersey City. I have passed through Newark on New Jersey Turnpike, but never stopped. THe others I never even passed through.

Heh, good to be a Feringi. Actually no one ever guessed my nationality correctly, though most guesses put me somewhere in Eourope.

Learned most of the original American versiopn od English in the Army. Starting at Fort Jackson. At one time while in a military hospital, got curious questions as to why a I was fluent in Army and Navy lingo.
 
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).

I've always been fascinated by these little differences among us - kitty-corner versus catty-corner, etc. My son was surprised that some of his college buddies called any soft drink 'coke' (or was it 'cola'?), even if it was 7-Up or ginger ale. And he refers to a little mishap as - he did that 'on accident', whereas I would say it happened 'by accident'.

I was a little surprised at some areas that were similar and different from me. Somewhere in the New England area was similar, but somewhere around southern Ohio was very different.


I'd be interested to see a map for each answer combo. I've known of a sandwich with cold cuts as a 'Hero', and I always seemed to be aware of that as a Chicago thing, I know they call them hoagies or submarines elsewhere. I don't think you can get an 'Italian Beef' sandwich outside of the Chicago area. We recently served some for out of town guests, they had never heard of 'giardiniera', which is a key component (pickled veggies, with plenty of hot peppers to give it 'kick'), hmmmmmmmm.

-ERD50
 
This thing was right on. Very interesting.

Used Chrome and had no problems.
 
Very accurate for both me and my wife, even though I haven't lived where I grew up for over 20 years.
 
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I have to add - the 'water fountain - drinking fountain' question made me laugh. We used to say that only people from Cudahy ( a suburb of Milwaukee) called it a 'bubbler'. I wonder how focused that question is? And IIRC, people from that area say the houses are 'side by each', instead of next to each other.

I never heard of a 'garage sale' being called anything other than that or a 'rummage sale' until DW watched Martha Stewart calling them 'tag sales'. That sounds odd to my ears.

-ERD50
 
It pegged me as being a primarily a west coast person, (I lived in southern Indiana for a few years) but I am not an Arizona, or Utah guy.
 
I am not a native English speaker though I have lived in LA, California for 25 years after my adulthood. I took this quiz just to see if it can identify where I picked up my English, and it does.

It put me right around Santa Ana and Oceanside, California. I think the most unique word from the list that I use is 'freeway'. According to the graph, this word is only used in southern California, and part of Arizona. Quite amazing!
 
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