What’s this about people from southern Illinois not having an accent? Pulease! You get past Bloomington/Normal and they start to sound like Kentucky.
They got me pegged, with North Midland. I’ve lived all but about three years within forty miles of Chicago. But I’ve had people ask me if I’ve lived in the south. It’s a little weird, I tell ya.
Northeast, Inland North, Philly, South, Midland.
Last place where I worked was Philly, my close coworkers in that group were from Philly and Chicago; I spent a lot of time with them peoples who say all y’all (Charlotte and Houston).
I know I don’t sound “Philly” to a philladelphian. Been told I sound “like you’re from somewhere around here only I can’t peg exactly where” by friends from Southern Illinois, although that was before I lived in Philly (at the time I’d been living in Miami for 4 years, but of course the Miami accent is more cuban than southern, nowadays).
In some cases, my answers would have been “none of the above”. The test is based on vowels and I know that vowels and being unable to pronounce the American J is where my aksent shows most.
Boston. OK, I was born there (well, Western MA.) OK, I actually lived three whole years of my life there (ages 0, 7 and 17). OK, my mother really is a transplanted Bostonian. But damn, I haven’t lived there in 25 years! Spooky.
So:
Change that to “and a father from NYC” and you’ve got my response. :eek:
Mom’s from southern Jersey, and I grew up (and still live in) the “main line;” a large track of middle class-upper middle class sub-urbs roughly following the old train route heading west out of Philly.
[Alec Guiness Voice]Main line suburbs. You will never find a more snobbish hive of yuppies and old money. We must be cautious.[/Alec Guiness Voice] 
According to another test in the same site, I’m 86% american. You guys think I could use that to simplify my credit checks if I ever have to move Over There again?
Probably not… pity.
It was dead-on accurate - Boston
I remember someone on “To Tell The Truth” about 30 years ago who had a test similar to this. One thing I do remember is that he had the “Mary, Marry, Merry” question in there. By gosh those are 3 separate and distinct sounds to me.
Apparently I should get a career as a DJ. “The Midland” here.
Can someone who hears this difference possibly express it in text? Because I Just Don’t Get It. I’m trying to figure out different ways to say them and it ain’t working.
I mean, I can hear (and even speak, heh) the difference betweey Mary/Marry and Merry. The latter is discernible, though slight. But between Mary and Marry? I’m confused.
Depending on whether the speaker is Hispanic or not, the difference is “soft vs harder-although-not-as-much-as-in-spanish R” or “short vs long r”. If you speakrealrealfastthentheresnonoticeabledifferenceofcourse.
Hmm. Says I sound like I’m from the Northeast. Well, I am from New Brunswick, Canada, which is the northeast neighbour of Maine, so I suppose that’s fair enough. 
To me, “Mary” has a slightly “longer” (closer to the “a” in “make,” although not all the way there) sound than “marry” (which has an “a” like “cat.”) Probably a bit more nasal, as well. And yes, these can be hard to distinguish in rapid speech. “Merry” is a completely different word, with a short “e” like in “pet.”
Of course this is coming from someone who was last immersed in an English-speaking environment over 20 years ago… still, the quiz definitely said I still maintained a Boston accent.
YMMV, FWIW, etc…
If an opinion from the other side of the world counts, to me those rhyme with hairy, carry, and very, respectively.
My result was “North East”. Is that good or bad? I only ask 'cos I’m very English, actually very southern English, probably very BBC in fact.
It’s looking like most Commonwealth English speakahs are getting North East results.
Snap - and I thought my accent was Home Counties…
The only way I can descibe it is:
Mary = Mair-ee or Mair-ree (long first syllable, r might be in both syllables)
ar as in air
Marry = Mah-ree (short first syllable, r definitely in the second syllable)
a as in cat
Merry = Meh -ree (As marry, above.)
e as in egg
Inland North answer here.
Never been outside of Michigan in my life for more than a week.
I was taught “Her Majesty’s English”, my first english immersion was in Ireland (watching BBC and channel 4 a lot) and the only major adjustment I had to make in my speech when I went to New Hampshire for the second immersion was to lose some "t"s - I was used to saying twenty as tuenti but in New England it’s tuini*, which gave the teens in the camp the running giggles. I understand people from Southern England quite well in general (for some reason Northern England tends to give me more trouble than Scotland).
It’s generally not molasses thick, but yeah, from what people tell me, I’d say that’s accurate.
Believe it or not, though, I was raised mostly in Philadelphia, PA.* The thing is, my family’s from rural South Carolina, and, throughout my life, I’ve spent a great deal of time there (and lived there for awhile as a toddler).
And, anyway, I tend to identify as a Southerner in some very fundamental respects, and am often identified as such by people who are close to me.
And nope, I don’t hate the accent.
What’s also interesting is that, many years ago, whenever I spoke what little self-taught German that I knew (and, pitifully, mangled), my now ex-husband, who is Swiss (and with whom I conversed in English), would tease me: “Aww, babe, you speak German like a Swiss.” Guess I was picking up more than I realized.
Oh, and a few years ago, my French teacher told me that I spoke French as if I were from the South of France. Go figure.
*By the way, koeeoaddi, even after all of these years of exposure, some in my family still occasionally share a collective, though good-natured, “huh?” over the way native Philadelphians pronounce some words.
Oddly, my friend in Ireland always gives me a hard time because he says I sound like Frank Zappa (or a surfer).
Another who’s been told his accent is “The Midlands.”
Which makes sense, really - I learned to talk near Toronto, then moved to outside of Bawstohn when I was five. And was always mocked for talking strangely. (If that’s not the pot calling the kettle black…)
Now I get told I have anything from no accent to English, to once being accused of being a shudder Virginia Tidewater native.
Inland North, apparently. Philadelphia just edges out The Northeast after it.