Describe your idiolect

In My Humble Opinion
21

For fun, take The New York Times dialect quiz.

Everyone I have ever had try this was pegged to within 50 miles (give or take a bit) of where they grew up in the US (this quiz only works for the US).

It is paywalled so sorry about that:

ETA: To the OP I grew-up in the Midwest (Chicago). I think I have no accent whatsoever. I get most would say that I do and just do not recognize it but my GF is from New York City (born and raised) and says she can spot Midwestern accents all the time living here and that I definitely do not have one. She agrees I have basically no accent of note. Just “English”…take that as you will. Occasionally I might use a word that would peg me as midwestern such as “davenport” for a couch. I honestly cannot remember the last time I used that word though. Soda or pop might help narrow it down some.

22

Pretty solid basic Southern California/Orange County beach bum, with a serious Texas overlay thanks to my mother’s side of the family, leavened with random Britishism I think are amusing (I read a lot of British fiction.) That means I pronounce Spanish words with a lazy American Mexican accent and don’t get confused by signs that say “LA Canada.” :laughing:

23

I definitely pronounce the l.

24

So how did that NY Times quiz peg you? Did it figure out close where you’re from. Just curious.

I definitely have a Chicago accent of some sort. I didn’t think I had much of an accent until I went to college and someone came up to me and just said “Chicago or Cleveland?” I was like “what?” “Are you from Chicago or Cleveland?” “Chicago. How did you know?” “You have an obvious accent.”

Now, it doesn’t sound like you have a strong accent. I don’t talk like a union laborer or Chicago cop or anything, but clearly I have Chicago in my voice. Just curious if it placed you somewhere in Iowa or something, or whether it caught some Great Lakes/Inland North features.

ETA: Ah, I can’t access the NYTimes article, but it looks like it’s based on dialect and not pronunciation, so I guess my questions are moot. Two simple ones that help locate you a bit is if you say cot and caught differently, and whether you make a distinction between merry/marry/Mary.

25

It pegged me NW of Chicago, about 40 miles from where I grew up. I think it is more about words we use rather than how we pronounce things (which I think is what the OP is asking) but there will be some overlap there I would guess.

Still interesting though so I thought it worth sharing. It’s a fun quiz to take if you can access it (used to be available but seems they have locked things down more to get us to pay).

26

I know we all know this, but to reiterate: Everybody has an accent, regardless of the language they speak. My accent may sound the most “neutrally” General American, like the newscasters or TV characters speak, but it is an accent. It’s the General American accent. If you speak in perfect King’s English, your accent is Received Pronunciation. Etc.

27

I basically speak Mid-western US English, in that I have lived most of my life in Indiana. However, the two cities I have lived in have been dominated by transplants, especially the one I lived in from age 14 to about 40 (with a few forays outside for a year or two here and there).

However, before 14, I lived in New York City, and that’s where I learned to speak. However again, though, I was mostly in Manhattan, until I was eight, and in neighborhoods with again, lots of transplants, so while I had a distinctive NYC accent, it was light compared to someone who was born in Brooklyn.

People in Indiana think I sound like I’m from New York, but people in New York think I have a very generic “TV” accent.

Then, I spent a year (aged 10) in Moscow going to an international school, where many of the kids were from the UK, and so was my classroom teacher. I have a few words I learned that year that are not very common, and I still say with a sort of “British” accent. “Dour” is one, and “desultory” is another. And for some reason, the word “ordinary” sometimes comes out with 3 syllables instead of four, even though the vowels are American.

I used to work on cars as a hobby, long ago, before I had a baby, and sold my 61 Falcon, and well before I went electric with my personal car. Whenever I was hanging out with car hobbyists, I’d say things like “ain’t,” and “in’” for “ing,” and sometimes even leave the “ed” of past tense vowels.

When I’m at synagogue, I use lots of Hebrew and Yiddish words, and not just for things there isn’t an English word for. When you are with other Jews, you say “goyim.” Maybe you say “lo-yehudim” (literally “non-Jews” in Hebrew)-- but never “gentile.”

But what’s funniest is when I’m with other hearing people who know ASL well. We use ASL faces, and vocalize them, we punctuate English with ASL words, and sometimes “Speak me ASL” in English words.

28

I was born in a suburb of Boston Massachusetts. My family moved to Tallahassee Florida when I was 2. Then they moved to Los Alamos New Mexico when I was 5. And to Valdosta Georgia when I was 7. Finally back to Los Alamos when I was 15.

I speak a slightly yankee influenced soft southern with midwestern influences, modified, no doubt, by television voices.

a) I pronounce the “h” in all my “wh” words such as “why”, “where” “whatever”.

b) For me, words and expressions such as aw, bought, thaw, awful, etc, the vowel is a southern diphthong, starting with the a in father and sloping to the o in moment. That’s not at all how people here in New York speak those vowels; they have a pure vowel that nobody in the South ever speaks on its own: New Yorkers say “bought” as bɔt. I say bɑɔt

c) I tend to pronounce “x” sounds as “ks” in all contexts, probably because that’s how I learned it and assumed it should apply everywhere else. Hence, xerography is “ks𝐈rogrǝfi”

29

Well, nobody in my family used the unvoiced wh-. But after I learned it from dictionaries, I came to prefer it. I honestly don’t reduce the voicing by much there, even when I think I am. Or, from another point of view, my family always said it without the h, and I don’t produce much of an h even when I intend to.

30

Lately I’ve been deliberately pronouncing the “t”'s in words sometimes as “t” where it would normally be a flap or “d”. I started to do this with online meetings, because there is occasionally a hiccup where you only hear part of a word and so I’ve found that it is easier to comprehend if I do that. I’ve found that it crosses over into the way I speak on the phone as well, and that’s okay with me since cell phone service has also been subject to blips for as long as I can remember as well, albeit not as much so as with conference calls/cam meetings.

I occasionally creeps into my regular speech as well, but this is rarer.

31

I describe my speech as halting.

I have a difficult impediment.

Now, in my head I sound like the southerner I am.

With all the y’all’s, younguns and fellers and drawn out words. Yep I’m a hick.

I cannot get ostrich said. Ever. I want the Os to sound like Oys. Good thing I don’t keep a pet oys-trick. :grinning_face: