Lois & Clark Forums Forums General Discussion Off Topic What American accent do you have? (quiz)

I found this fun.

I've read that linguists can actually listen to a person talk and pinpoint them down to within a 10-mile radius of their hometown. Of course, to do that requires evaluating many more words than on this simple quiz.

Take the quiz here .

Oh, I forgot to give my results: Midland, "which is just another way of saying, 'you don't have an accent'." How boring. Supposedly, this means I have a good voice for television or radio.

Well, it's good to know I have an accent, and a northeastern one at that.

Apparently, I have a Boston accent.

Although, I've only lived in the US for 6 years and that too in Texas and Washington, hmmm. But I've been to Boston.

Mine would be Northeastern too if it were from the US - Philadelphia predominantly. I wonder if that might apply to the majority of us who aren't from north America?
On a more bizarre note, someone I met a year or so ago said she actually thought I had a bit of an American accent... I was slightly flabbergasted!

Apparently, my accent is Philidelphia.

I rather suspect it isn't, but you never know. I'm not quite sure what a Philidelphia accent sounds like, so it could sound like broad Scottish for all I know.

LabRat

Apparently, my accent is strongly 'Inland North'.

The area I sound least like is 'North Central' which leaves me totally confused.

Would someone like to enlighten me how Inland North is different to North Central ... and why their accents are so different?


Thanks.

Female Hawk, this wikipedia article might shed some light.

I have a "Midland" accent.I guess that comes from my background, which isn't near anything they suggest. My father was from Illinois, my mother from California. Coming from a military family, I learned to talk originally in North Carolina, which accounts, I guess, for the graph showing the South heavily present in my speech, but I completed learning to talk in Trinidad where they speak English at warp speed. I've lived in Indiana, Brooklyn, NY, North Carolina, California, and the Panama Canal Zone, among speakers from every part of the country. I guess that explains a lot.

Nan

I came out as "Midland", too. Like Nan, I grew up all over the place (although my graph shows heavily on "the West" and "Inland North", which seems about right). Accents fascinate me and, given the chance to do it all over again, I might have gone into linguistics. Then again, I just love words, so maybe that's an outflow of how many different ways there are to say a word.

In another thread, Jenn (EditorJax) had mentioned that there are those who pronounce "Washington" with an "r" in it (Warshington). My paternal grandmother would have been one of them, she frequently had hard "r's" in her words. She grew up in rural southeast Idaho and she did her "warshing", ate (et) "carn" on the cob and was always careful not to step in cow "manar". Curiously, while two of my uncles did have that accent, my father never has (at least, not while I've known him).

I'm also Midland. Like Nan, I was raised in a military family. I started talking in Kansas, went to elementary school (1st thru 8th grade) in central Ohio, and went to high school and college in Louisiana. I have worked on the air for radio stations and I was often asked to either double as the narrator in church choir programs or just narrate.

When I left Louisiana to move to Texas (dadgummit, there's another influence, y'all), I left that radio station, and when I went back over a year later, the station had changed management and format, but they were still using some of my station IDs. I thought about calling them and asking for some money, but I never did. I doubt they had any. It was a 1000-watt AM station in Shreveport, so they were broke all the time.

Interesting!
When I was living in San Diego, people kept asking me where from the East Coast I was from. In New England most people could tellI had a European (German) accent.
Now they tell me:

What American accent do you have?
Your Result: The Inland North

You may think you speak "Standard English straight out of the dictionary" but when you step away from the Great Lakes you get asked annoying questions like "Are you from Wisconsin?" or "Are you from Chicago?" Chances are you call carbonated drinks "pop."

Weird! But then again it's been a year since I was in the US last. Maybe the Irish, Scottish, and English people corrupted me in the meantime.

Natascha

I got midland as well... Which is weird cause I get told all of the time that I do have a Jersey accent. However, since I have lived in New Jersey my whole life, the only people that tell me that are those that don't live there.

<sigh> I have no accent. Oh well, I kind of already knew that.

Your Result: The West


Your accent is the lowest common denominator of American speech. Unless you're a SoCal surfer, no one thinks you have an accent. And really, you may not even be from the West at all, you could easily be from Florida or one of those big Southern cities like Dallas or Atlanta.

I was born in SoCal and have lived all of my life here in California. Not always in Southern California, but always California.

Tara

I had to go digging from when I took this test a few years ago, but I have a Midland accent, which makes sense since that's where I grew up. I spent 7 years of my early life in Southern Illinois, then spent the next 7 in Indiana, Ohio, and Pennsylvania trying to lose the southern accent that I had in IL. It still sneaks in from time to time, especially now that I've been living in NC for 10 years.

Hmmm . . . I came out as Inland North, which is kind of strange, because I live in Maryland, which I'm pretty sure is technically South.

I don't get any questions like, "Are you from Chicago?" though.

Midland here.

Born in MO, 4.5 years in CO, 12 years in Phoenix and now almost 16 years in SW MO...

Sounds about right I guess...
Carol

I came out Inland North, too - almost equal amounts, on the graph, of The Midland, The Northeast , and Philadelphia - and a strong presence of The South.

I guess that kinda makes sense. I was born and raised in northern Indiana, near Chicago. Both my parents grew up in Chicago. As a young adult, I lived for a number of years around Washington, D.C. - in both Virginia and Maryland, and then moved to my current central Indiana location. Many people in central Indiana, to my ears, have a very pronounced southern accent. And my parents retired to northern Michigan (Traverse City) about 14 years ago. We spend a lot of vacation time up there with them.

'Toc

For some reason the quiz said I had 'the Minnesota accent'. Go figure.

Tank (who doesn't care what hollywood says, few of us talk like they did in the movie Fargo)

I got 'the midland' on mine. Funny, because I was born and raised in Texas and have lived in South Carolina for the past 11 years. I do have an extensive theatre background, so I was trained to not have an accent...maybe that has something to do with it? I still get asked 'you're not from around here, are you?' all the time.