How Y’all, Youse and You Guys Talk

donheff said:
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." ...
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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
 
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.
 
scrabbler1 said:
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).
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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.
 
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.
 
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.
 
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.
 
ERD50 said:
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
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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.
 
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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.
 
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.
 
I've been exposed! Remarkably accurate for me. ChicagoLAND, but not the city itself, with a possibility out to Madison, WI.
I grew up in the suburbs and moved out to exurbia about halfway between the two.
My question to Wisconsinites now... Is a "typical" Madison resident less likely to have the cheesehead dialect as found further north (or even in Milwaukee, in my experience)?
 
Not every one gets all the questions, right? There are some I didn't get. So there must be some true "trigger" words or phrases that narrow things down quickly.

I grew up in ChicagoLAND and got a little hung up at the question about the centipede (I also knew "roly poly" but am not sure if we said that growing up), and the question about the parkway/berm area (I don't recall having any word for it). I didn't get the question about highway vs expressway, and wasn't sure about "rubbernecking" except perhaps in terms of craning one's neck to look at an accident.
I distinctly remember learning what "Devil's Night" was when I moved to Michigan for college, and it wasn't until moving to MN that I found that people don't pronounce "aunt" as "ant."

I enjoy the fact that I pronounce "Mary," "merry," and "marry" exactly the same.
 
Marita40 said:
Not every one gets all the questions, right? There are some I didn't get. So there must be some true "trigger" words or phrases that narrow things down quickly.

I grew up in ChicagoLAND and got a little hung up at the question about the centipede (I also knew "roly poly" but am not sure if we said that growing up), and the question about the parkway/berm area (I don't recall having any word for it). I didn't get the question about highway vs expressway, and wasn't sure about "rubbernecking" except perhaps in terms of craning one's neck to look at an accident.
I distinctly remember learning what "Devil's Night" was when I moved to Michigan for college, and it wasn't until moving to MN that I found that people don't pronounce "aunt" as "ant."

I enjoy the fact that I pronounce "Mary," "merry," and "marry" exactly the same.
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It is OK to "not have a word for that". Like you, I didn't have one for the "roly poly". We called them by their real name, "Isopod". But in the spirit of this quiz, I said "no name for it", which is probably typical in Chicago. I also couldn't come up with a name for the grass thing.

However, "gaper's block" is a true Chicago thing. (Google it and you'll see what I mean.) The traffic reporters use it all the time. Down here in NC, they call it "Onlooker delays". How quaint. Bless their hearts. :)
 
Marita40 said:
Not every one gets all the questions, right? There are some I didn't get. So there must be some true "trigger" words or phrases that narrow things down quickly....
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When DH took it, his very first question was different than my first question. Maybe each time a random set of questions is generated?

It was fun seeing the different terms. My relatives in New England used to tell us to get a drink from the bubbler when we were little.
 
Funny, I never heard "gaper's block." But I left the area in the mid-70s and have not lived there since. And yes, Joe, we in Chicago must have just called the parkway the "grass thing!" Evidently it was not important enough to have a distinct designation.

I just took the quiz again (got a couple of new questions this time) and this time it pinpointed me in the western suburbs of Chicago (Aurora) which is right! That's really fine-tuning. ChicagoLAND can have very different accents from one end to another.
 
This got me thinking about some other trigger phrases that are fun to look at.

Kid's games have real regional names. In Chicago, we call something "Running Bases" that Northeasters call "Hotbox". In Chicago, if you grab onto a car (illegally, mind you) during a snow storm and hang on the bumper and catch a ride, it is called "skitching". Some other areas call it "skeetching" or "bumper hitching". I understand that it is now done with skateboards, so perhaps the name has changed.

Other fun phrases:
- Do you "mash" your accelerator pedal? In NC, they do. In IL, they do too, but the meanings are different. "mashing" in NC just means "pressing". In the midwest, if you "mash" something, you are pressing the daylights out of it.

- Do you "turn on" or "cut on" your lights?

Oh heck, in NC we "burn" our headlights. Check the sign as you enter the state. Other states ask you to "turn on" your headlights.

All fun stuff, and I hope we never become so similar this goes away.
 
I am familiar with both running bases and skitching. I also grew up saying "davenport" for couch or sofa (never hear that one anymore!), and "adult" with the emphasis on the first syllable and the "a" sound rhyming with that in "bad."

Another interesting comparison are the many jump rope chants we knew. Many are regional, and lyrics to some more widespread ones vary quite a bit across the U.S. I once found a website that tracked these chants according to region. Here's one I remember well:
Minnie Minnie Ha Ha
Went to see her Papa
Papa died, Minnie cried
Minnie had a baby, named him Tiny Tim
Put him in the bathtub to see if he could swim
First he drank the water then he ate the soap
Minnie called the doctor
Minnie called the nurse
Minnie called the lady with the alligator purse
Measles said the doctor
Mumps said the nurse
Nothing said the lady with the alligator purse
etc, etc.
 
Bestwifeever said:
When DH took it, his very first question was different than my first question. Maybe each time a random set of questions is generated?
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Yes, it appears there are different questions for each sample. Perhaps influenced by electronic address? that would better explain my results.
 
bjorn2bwild said:
Yes, it appears there are different questions for each sample. Perhaps influenced by electronic address? that would better explain my results.
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Maybe, but probably not, in that DH took the test using the same computer I did and had some different questions.

From the link at the test site, you can access some interesting archived information about the original study Here: http://dialect.redlog.net/

According to one of the pages at the dialect site, the survey had 30,934 participants from all 50 states plus DC, who input their use and pronunciation of terms, apparently, to come up with the base results that our answers are being defined by.

(apparently there is another active survey going on that is about how English is used around the world: The Cambridge Online Survey of World Englishes)

This is a fun thread and very diverting from the cooking I am supposed to be doing this afternoon :)
 
Marita40 said:
I am familiar with both running bases and skitching. I also grew up saying "davenport" for couch or sofa (never hear that one anymore!), and "adult" with the emphasis on the first syllable and the "a" sound rhyming with that in "bad."

Another interesting comparison are the many jump rope chants we knew. Many are regional, and lyrics to some more widespread ones vary quite a bit across the U.S. I once found a website that tracked these chants according to region. Here's one I remember well:
Minnie Minnie Ha Ha
Went to see her Papa
Papa died, Minnie cried
Minnie had a baby, named him Tiny Tim
Put him in the bathtub to see if he could swim
First he drank the water then he ate the soap
Minnie called the doctor
Minnie called the nurse
Minnie called the lady with the alligator purse
Measles said the doctor
Mumps said the nurse
Nothing said the lady with the alligator purse
etc, etc.
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This brings back memories of my two sisters jumping rope with friends. They had all kinds of verses, but I can't remember any of them.
 
This was fun! I took the test 3 times last night on my Ipad and the map never showed up so I did it again on my desktop. Some questions were new on every attempt.

When I finally got the map to show up it said I was most similar to Cleveland, OH, Aurora, IL and Rockford, IL. Yep, I grew up in a Cleveland suburb.

It seems that Cleveland is the only place that calls the grassy area between the sidewalk and the road a "tree lawn". We live outside of Cleveland now in an area outside of Akron, OH and here that is known as a "devil strip."

DH was originally from Detroit and I notice some terms that he uses that must be from there.
 
Fascinating. I did it twice and got an error code both times. I could tell by the maps that they will be zeroing me in to Pittsburgh, with a little southern thrown in when I can make it work. I wonder if it can tell if you are from California?
 
Marita40 said:
Not every one gets all the questions, right? There are some I didn't get. So there must be some true "trigger" words or phrases that narrow things down quickly.
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I didn't get the same questions the second time as I did the first—maybe four or so out of the 25 were different.

(snip) I didn't get the question about highway vs expressway, and wasn't sure about "rubbernecking" except perhaps in terms of craning one's neck to look at an accident.
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It would be interesting if it was possible to give more than one answer to a question, which I wanted to do on a few of them. One of the answers for the rubbernecking question was "rubbernecking is the activity, but I have no specific word for the traffic blockage that results".
 
Second time through it was scary. Lived in 2 different areas in my life, long distance apart. It nailed the two, within 150 miles. The third in the report, well there had to a third.
MRG
 
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