The Dialect Survey maps dialect patterns across the US. It’s really interesting to take the surveys, and then to look at the map and see where your speech patterns are found.
Although it’s aimed at speakers of “North American English”, by which I think they really mean US english, they say that speakers of all varieties of English are welcome to take the survey.
This is pretty neat. Thanx Lucretia !
I’ll take the test later… But I say “melk” (With “mel” starting like the name “Melody”).
A few of my friends who arn’t around northern NY get a kick out of it.
Interesting. Although I was born and raised in the South, by a father who was also born in the South, and a mother born and raised in Kansas, but moved to Georgia in her early 20’s - I speak like a Californian. :dubious:
“Whipping shitties”?
What? “Like a Californian”? WHAT?!
: plaintive whine : We Californians don’t have accents, it’s the rest of the world that speaks funny…
Oh, and question 49
…made me laugh, for whatever reason.
And that’s, like, a bad thing?
I had the same reaction.
Band name!
When I came across “whipping shitties” (the last time I went there, I took the survey), I immediately made that one of my ‘away’ messages for AIM: “not here, busy whipping shitties!”
I was amused by “eye shit” as an answer to 82. What do you call the gooey or dry matter that collects in the corners of your eyes, especially while you are sleeping?
(I have always called it crud or eye crud and was shocked when it wasn’t a choice)
Not a bad thing or a good thing, just a perplexing thing, thus the :dubious: . (I tend to raise one eyebrow when perplexed.)
I liked the “pennie wallies” as well. It sounds so, quaint, what?
For the record, the answer to Question 77 should be “cutting donuts,” not “doing donuts.”
I talk Southern, and I know it. Took the test anyway, and found out that some of you people talk weird.
Took it a few hours ago… how long does it take for the answers to be processed?
Scratch that last post. I am sooo stupid.
brianjedi, in my neck of the woods we did donuts, not cut them. That’s why surveys such as this are interesting - each area has it’s own dialect if you will and phraseology.
This was a very interesing survey. Would take bloody ages to look at each answer, but was still fun.
I absolutely LOVED the “whipping shitties” too funny!
I speak Standard American (that’s the official name of “how people talk on tv,” spoken by nearly everybody in this area of New York), with a smattering of oddities picked up in Mississippi. In almost every case, the answer I gave is the most popular one on the map.
In cases where I know I speak differently from the people I know in Mississippi and East Texas, the Mississippi version is usually one of the least popular ones, supported by a single blue dot on the Gulf of Mexico or a tiny splotch across that bit of the country. (“IN-sur-ance,” calling a shopping cart a “buggy,” calling crayfish “mudbugs,” for example - well, actually, on that last one they didn’t even get a dot, but it IS the least popular choice!).
I love this kind of thing.
By the way, it’s called doing donuts and that’s all there is to it. You could only cut a donut if you were in somebody’s yard wrecking their grass, but you can do donuts in the parking lot and freak out your innocent passengers. :evil:
The map breakdowns are great. You can really see the regional differences on some things.
I was surprised, however, by some of the things that were pretty evenly distributed around the country that I thought were going to be regional. (the pronunciation of “aunt” for instance)