...or even if you don't, this is a fun quiz.

What kind of American English do you speak?

I came in this way:

75% General American English
10% Upper Midwestern
10% Yankee
5% Dixie
0% Midwestern

And actually, this is pretty accurate. I've lived a lot of places across the US and I generally think I have no accent. Since I currently live in the Upper Midwest, I think this quiz really tells it like it is.

Lynn

Interesting quiz! I've been curious about this sort of thing for a while, actually, and was looking through an old linguistics book that had a sample survey--but it didn't say which words came from where, unfortunately.

I test:

70% General American English
15% Upper Midwestern
10% Yankee
0% Dixie
0% Midwestern
(Note: The missing 5% is due to the question on what you call an easy class. I've never called it anything, and have barely even heard of one or two of those terms, so they don't apply.)


My mom grew up in Pennsylvania and my dad grew up in Ohio, more, though he was born in Massachusetts and lived for a time in upstate New York. However, I have not lived east of Illinois since I was 3, and lived in Iowa and Missouri alternately from 6-13. After that I've lived solidly in the Northwest (WA state) for the last 6 years. So that explains the Yankee and Upper Midwestern portions.

Fun

75% General American English
10% Dixie
5% Midwestern
5% Upper Midwestern
5% Yankee

I grew up in Pennsylvania, but I'm not surprised about the high percentage of Dixie; I've lived in North Carolina nearly 15 years *and* I listen to country music

PJ

55% General American English
30% Yankee
10% Dixie
5% Upper Midwestern
0% Midwestern

I think that 5% Upper Midwestern comes from the random choice I made on the "easy class" question (didn't realize no choice was an option). I've never even heard any of those terms before.

I'd be more impressed with the quiz (which is cribbed almost entirely from somewhere else -- I have taken the older version) if they could spell mischief properly.

A related map.

And I need someone to call me up and pronounce the word 'caramel' in less than three syllables.

That cannot be done, can it??

CC- who figures the 'y'all' was a dead give away

Well, I've heard it pronounced - and even seen it spelt - carmel!


Wendy

55% General American English
25% Yankee
15% Dixie
0% Midwestern
0% Upper Midwestern

A bit surprised about the 15% Dixie, but I was born in Georgia. <shrug>

Also no idea what to call an easy class other than an easy class. Certainly never heard any of the terms mentioned there. So, I left that one blank. Thanks, Rivka.

CC, there is an alternate pronounciation of "caramel" that basically skips the A in the middle. It comes out sounding something like "CAR-mul," and you say it fast, almost slurred. I use either pronounciation, depending on my mood and the situation. Usually, if it's part of a phrase/name, it's "CAR-mul," but if it's on it's own, it's "car-a-mel."

Paul

Indeed. More about saying "caramel" and other words. I do! I used to think "carmel" and "caramel" were to different words, with distinct meanings. I now know to spell both "caramel," but still use the two pronunciations to mean different things.

They are "caramel" apples, because you make them by melting those little square, mostly solid, candies that Kraft makes (caramels). But Twix bars have "carmel" -- the gooey, liquidy stuff. Oh . . . except I say "carmel" corn. I don't know why!

And that article had the linguistic maps I was trying to find before:
Linguistic Survey Results

Here's a couple in particular:
carmel
in honor of the packrat thread
by accident (I know we had a poll here on this one)
soda!

This is me:

70% General American English
20% Dixie
10% Yankee
0% Midwestern
0% Upper Midwestern

And how many of you remember the Nestle Crunch commercial that they were voting for how to pronounce "caramel"?

See y'all (I never said that except when I'm kidding, even though I live in Texas -- been here for only a few years, probably not enough to actually start speaking like a true Texan),

malu

Fun quiz!

I'm such an anomaly here in Alabama. My mom is from San Antonio, but I haven't lived there since I was 3. My dad and all his family are from Queens. I realized in high school that it was quite the crime to say "you's guys" down in the Deep South. :p Two of my roommates are originally from here, though, so every now and then a "y'all" will slip out when I'm around them. Eek.

LOL. Of course it can be done!

JD

Interesting . I've lived in Cleveland my entire life . . . I have no clue how I picked up any Dixie! And I had no idea that anyone pronounced the "a" in caramel until I saw that commercial a few years ago! I always thought the a was silent. And I won't go into pop vs. soda or tennis shoes vs. sneakers . And no one will ever hear y'all coming from my mouth. EVER!

Just because I was curious...

Not that I know the difference between Yankee or Dixie

I didn't know you could leave a question unanswered - if I did, I'd leave that easy class one.

See y' all
AnnaBtG.

This was fun.

I left no questions unanswered ... I am well versed in the term "blow off class" (also have heard it called a "Mickey Mouse class", but that wasn't an option) and I always pronounce caramel with only two syllables.

I did get quite a kick out of the mary/merry/marry thing, since I used to work with a guy from Long Island and he insisted that there was a difference. We could all hear it when he said it, but no matter how much we practiced, we could never imitate it!

But the results definitely fit me, since I've lived in four states, but they are all midwestern (Michigan, northwest Pennsylvania, Illinois and Indiana). Though I will confess that, having lived in central IL and central IN for the last 7 years, which seems to be where the "southern accent" thing starts creeping in, I have noticed myself beginning to drawl more than I used to. I have yet to catch myself using "Y'all" in easy conversation, but I will no longer be shocked if and when it finally happens.

Kathy

Well, I can't explain my score:

55% General American English
25% Yankee
15% Dixie
5% Upper Midwestern
0% Midwestern

I was born and raised in Toronto, but I've lived a good chunk of my adult life in the U.S. Some Canadians tell me that I sound American; some Americans say that they can hear the infamous "out/about" thing. I've never heard it.

But where on earth did the Dixie come from? I've lived outside of New York City and in California. My only idea is that for a couple of the questions, I had never heard of the answer choices, or at least never used any of them. So I arbitrarily picked one - maybe those were "Dixie" choices and enough to skew the score. Or maybe I could blame it on the 3.5 years I spent in Germany...

Kathy

75% General American English
15% Yankee
5% Dixie
5% Upper Midwestern
0% Midwestern

That's my score.

I spent most of my childhood living in Northern Virginia, which is significantly different than the rest of Virginia. There's very little accent there, unlike the southern accents used in the rest of the state.

Then I spent fifteen years in San Diego, followed by several years in Oregon, where I am now.

Well, as a Brit, I was curious to know how American I am <g>.

35% General American English
25% Yankee
5% Dixie
5% Upper Midwestern
0% Midwestern

Of course, I wasn't able to answer several of the questions, because the word I use wasn't listed. One had me totally baffled:

"The act of covering a house or area in front of a house with toilet paper is called..."

What??? Is this done as a prank? To keep the toilet paper industry bouyant?

And to this:

"You tend to call the sweet spread on top of cake: Icing, Frosting, Both"

...I say - it depends on whether the stuff on top is icing or frosting.

Yvonne

Vandalism. <G> I know this is a teen custom, but not much else about it. Something to do with celebrating graduation? Hallowe'en? Both? Neither? An 'any excuse' 'prank'? No idea. Mostly, like egging houses, I'm just glad these customs haven't yet travelled across the pond.

My scores were roughly around the same area as yours, Yvonne. Which is grossly unfair. How are we supposed to write US for US characters when you guys can't even agree on what you call soda/coke/pop/whatever? Make it difficult, why don't you?

LabRat

Vandalism sums it up just right. <g> And it's such a small world, too. I rolled somebody's trees in junior high, and then went I came to college, I made a friend whose fiance lived in that house. We're still chuckling about that every now and then. Anywho, it's just an excuse to play a prank.

JD

Oh, there's nothing more satisfying than admiring your handiwork when the sun comes up to reveal trees swathed in ribbons of Charmin and bushes wreathed with bands of white! It looks so cool.



But dang, is it a pain to clean up. Especially if it rains and the toilet paper starts to disintegrate.

I call this "TP'ing". And I've done it before. Yes, as a prank.

Anna, a Yankee is someone who comes from the north, usually the New England states, and would have fought on the side of the Union back in the Civil War. Dixie refers to those in the south (usually south of Virginia) and who would have fought for the Confederate side during the Civil War. That's a pretty generic description, but if you live in the south, "Yankee" is derogatory for northerners.

Lynn

70% General American English
10% Midwestern
10% Yankee
5% Dixie
5% Upper Midwestern

I think that 5% upper midwestern is from refering to soda as pop, which is what I grew up saying, but now that I live lower in the states, I say soda, like all the other normal people around me...

James

Rolling houses -- We did it as an initiation thing for freshman who played soccer. So first, we rolled their houses, then we came to get them at around 4 am, got them all dressed up in various hiddeous costumes, took them out to breakfast, and then took them to school. It was great fun :p .

Actually, we got arrested for breaking cerfew one of those nights . . . We stopped at an all night grocery store in North Royalton to buy more toilet paper . And all they said after they drove us to the police station was, "Go back to Parma and have fun. Stay out of North Royalton."

Thanks, Lynn. I knew the term Yankee, but had no idea about Dixie.

Well said, LabRat

See ya,
AnnaBtG.

But see, therein lies the magic of our English. You can give a character a whole lot of definition simply by the words you choose to put in his or her mouth.

"Hey, hon," the waitress said, giving her gum a loud snap. "Whatcha want to drink?"

"What do you have?" the young man asked, flipping the menu over looking for a list of beverages and failing to find more than the daily specials.

"Coffee and coke."

Coffee? Ugh, it was ninety degrees in the shade.

"Um, all right," he said, not looking forward to the sickly sweet soda but so thirsty he'd pretty much drink spit if that's all they had that was wet. "Guess I'll have a Coke."

"What flavor?"

Now, from reading the above, I know that the scene is set in the south and the young man is not from the south. All because northerners and midwesterners don't refer to all carbonated beverages as "coke" even though southerners do.



Lynn

Yeah, really what we need is a list of terms you'd never use, no matter where in the US you lived. In fact, that quiz was helpful in this regard, precisely because some of my Brit terms weren't listed as options. So, I now know (well, I knew before, but I'm using this as an example) that no-one in the US calls carbonated drinks soft drinks.

I've said it before, and I'll say it again - we need a US/UK dictionary!

Yvonne

Waving hand frantically...

I do, Yvonne! I've been known to ask in a restaurant "What soft drinks do you have?" as often as "What kind of soda?" Is it the Canadian in me?

Kathy

Like Yvonne, I was curious. My scores are a bit different to hers and LabRat's, though, which I put down to being raised in the South West of England. (By the way, it took me years to stop using the word 'dap' to mean 'trainers'... or, in line with the quiz, 'sneakers'. Very West Country, that word. )

H'm. Probably ought to have left the sneakers question blank. And the soda question. (Soft drinks! Thanks, Yvonne! That's the term that had slipped out of my brain.)

I did leave the easy course question out, though had they offered Mickey Mouse Course I might have been tempted to check that option. Anyway...

45% General American English
35% Yankee
15% Dixie
0% in the other categories.

Interesting, really, that I can get any kind of score, given that I have only ever spent two weeks in the US, and that was some 18 years ago.

Chris

Me too! I call it soda for everything else, but on the restaurant menus, they usually list them as "soft drinks," so that's what always comes out of my mouth when I inquire.

JD

I suspect soft drink is a generic term used nationally. Everyone knows what it is, but don't necessarily use it when speaking.

While Coke may be used regionally, people can get really confused by it, so it rarely appears in written form unless the reference is actually to Coca-Cola. But then, most of the time, the menus will print Coca-Cola with the Coke logo.

As a side issue, Coca-Cola Co. gets really upset when people use "Coke" generically to refer to any soft drink. Trademarks are everything, so companies avoid getting their products classified as generic to the point where Coca-Cola Co. will send ringers into a restaurant and ask for a Coke. If they get anything else but Coke, out come the lawyers. This is why a server is taught to say, "How about a Pepsi?" or something similar if they don't actually have Coke products. It's to prevent being sued.

Just ask Kleenex how they feel about being generic.

Companies actually will spend millions of dollars on research to find a name that means absolutely nothing in every language on earth. That way, they can more easily avoid being labeled generic. For example, Esso discovered that there is no language that uses two X's together in a word. So came the name change from Esso to Exxon.

For those who are curious, I use the term, "soda".

Didn't we have a thread on this very subject at some point?

Yes, I know, it's sad, but we did! I'm (almost) sure of it.

LabRat

Indeed, Lab. I've been thinking about that thread myself. It was started here and then revamped here .

Paul

Well.. I'm Canadian but I was curious how I would test...
I had to leave a couple blanks too but my results were
50% General American English
15% Upper Midwestern
15% Yankee
5% Dixie
5% Midwestern

I don't work out in sneakers or tennis shoes. I wear runners.
And if I take an easy course, it's a bird course.

Allie

Good thing you live in Greece, Anna:
You'd be in trouble here Yankees are North of the Mason-Dixon line and Dixie speakers are South of the Mason-Dixon line. We have such a short history, the Civil War of 1860 is still burned in our minds.

As for TP-ing a house: It is a common Halloween ritual spread to other just because days. Tipping over out-houses was popular, but with indoor plumbing now, that's harder to do. Also popular with teens is stealing road sign posts, particularly if the street name is their name.
Edit: when lynn said she "rolled trees" I visualized her rolling logs on the lawn like a lumberjack. We call it toilet papering or TP-ing, never rolling. When my kids were teenagers, our front trees got it a lot. My kids had to clean up, because it was their friends who did it!

As for an easy class, I have heard it called a gut but never used the term myself since I didn't take any. Not if you want to get through physics in 4 years.

My scores:
65% General American English
15% Dixie
10% Upper Midwestern
5% Midwestern
5% Yankee
This makes sense because I was raised in California by parents from Minnesota. I had many friends originally from the south while I was in school. But in my neck of the woods, y'all isn't really understood.

I remember a rather large discussion on Pop, Soda and Coke. I was brought up on Pop or Soda, but use Coke even though I drink Pepsi

Here's something very Upper Midwestern: Anyone remember the white margarine that came in a bag with a color pill? You squished the pill inside the bag and massaged it through the margarine to make it look like butter. My California eyes had never seen anything like it until I visited the family in Minnesota. The dairy industry made this a law so that margarine could be visually distinguised from butter. To those who may not know what margarine is - butter is from cows, margarine is from a chemical plant.

Artemis

Tsk. You didn't follow my link , hmm? Although less than 6% is a pretty small fraction . . .

I've lived in different parts of the country, so it's no surprise my speech came out this way:

55% General American
20% Dixie
10% Upper Mid-Western
10% Yankee
5% Mid-Western

Some comments:

I've never heard an easy class called any of the choices. As best I can recall, we called it a class for jocks.

I pronounce route both ways but didn't have that choice. Don't know why I choose what I choose, but I would say State root 60, and follow this rowt to get to the school.

I spent the first 20 years of my life in the south, and a coke was a coke. Anything else was a cold drink. Now I say pop.

And CC, caramel pronounced care a mel is a song by Suzanne Vega. But it's CAR mul apples and CAR mul corn.

Jude

Thanks for the link, Paul. That was a fun thread. And interesting.

LabRat

My varsity basketball team TPed our coach's house during the night after our last home game. We actually managed to grab a 'no parking' sign, cement block and all, among other things from various construction sites around the county. Don't ask how -- I think it took our entire starting lineup just to lift it. And traffic cones! Ahh, for the love of traffic cones.... The act of TPing itself was just the frosting/icing on the cake. Anyways, after our lovely act of decoration, we sped off, exhilarated, only to find out the next morning we'd hit the wrong house. Suffice it to say we never tried again.

Like Anna, I was curious. These are my results:

45% Yankee
30% General American English
15% Dixie
5% Upper Midwestern
0% Midwestern


I'm surprised about the 45% Yankee. I thought I would get a higher score for General American English.

Elena

I've gotten such a kick out of all the caramel vs carmel (seriously?) information you very nice people have provided.

I went back and retook the quiz. When I changed that one answer from three syllables to two, I was suddenly 5% less Dixie and 5% Upper Midwestern.

So, now I know exactly who to blame for that 'drop out the A' thing.

Not too long ago I was able to meet some genuine FoLCs. Real people with faces and voices, if you can imagine such a thing. Therefore, many different accents.

And the one that really stood out for me was that MidWestern 'Oh, we don't have any accent at all' accent.

Yeah, right. Then where's your 'A', people? Hmmmmm?

CC

Oh yeah, the 'Accent Convention'.

But there we had two MidWesterners. "Don't you think we have the same accent?" Lynn asked us of Kathy and herself. "Um... you each sound completely different," replied we non-North Americans.


Wendy (who just loved hearing CC say y'all )

About the soda/pop question...

To be honest, I've never been in a restaurant where I had to speak English. But if I had to ask for such a thing, I'd ask for a refreshment. I don't know if the term is correct, (it's the exact translation of the Greek word and I'm sure I've seen it many times in menus) but neither soda or pop sound good to me, because:

a) Soda, in Greek, (pronounced with a soft d) is a carbonated, colorless beverage we drink when we've eaten too much... anyone knows what I'm talking about? Anyway, since I don't know its English name, I'd fear they'd get me one of these.

b) Pop is the kind of music we all know. And you can't drink music, can you?

BTW, which is the term L&C would use?

See ya,
AnnaBtG.

I know what you mean by 'soda', Anna - it's what we (ie in the UK/Ireland) know as bicarbonate of soda. There's also a drink called soda water, which is carbonated water, but not quite the same as Perrier (though I couldn't tell you what the difference is! ).

I grew up in Dublin calling soft drinks 'minerals' - it was what everyone around called them. I think that's an Irish thing. Then they became 'fizzy drinks'. And then, when I moved to the UK, 'soft drinks'. In Canada, or at least in Ontario, 'pop' seems to be the most common term - but I can't quite bring myself to use that, because my mental image from the word is of a minor explosion!

In English, you wouldn't ask for 'a refreshment', however; it's either 'refreshment' or 'refreshments', without an indefinite article. But refreshments can mean food and drink, so if you asked for that in a restaurant it wouldn't be specific enough. Better just to ask for a drink - as in "What drinks do you have?" That's mostly what I do these days, in order to avoid the thorny soda/pop/whateverelseitmightbecalled question!


Wendy

Anna, around here that's called "seltzer" or "club soda." I believe there's a technical difference between the two (seltzer has slightly more carbonation, I think), but they're often used interchangably. Airlines always call it "club soda," as do higher class bars and restaurants (or those that want to appear higher class). If you're at home, though, or at a diner or something, it's probably seltzer.

About accents and pronounciations -- Webster\'s Online has audio clips of the US standard (aka "unaccented" ) pronounciations of most common words. For some words, like caramel , they have two. The first little red speaker icon has the two-syllable pronounciation. The second has the three-syllable version.

Paul

But isn't there a difference between seltzer and soda water/club soda? At least, there is in the UK - not in the US?

Seltzer, I'm assuming, is what I call bicarbonate of soda, and which you take for an upset stomach or hangover.



Whereas this is soda water/club soda:



Curious now,


Wendy

When I think of what you call Seltzer, Wendy, I would say Alka Seltzer. When i think of the word Seltzer, I think of flavored carbonated water (like the New York Seltzer from when I was a kid and can't find pictures of) or the pressurized water that clowns spray on each other.

Anna, I think Lois would say 'soda' because she is born and raised on the East Coast. Being from Kansas, Clark, would have likely grown up saying "pop", but with all of his travels and living in Metropolis, he might have picked up saying "soda." I think Martha and Jonathan would say "pop," though.

Anna:
isn't a drink necessarily. It is anything that refreshes including a cold shower! Or food. Menus would say "Drinks" and include coffee, hot tea, iced tea, soft drinks (unspecified but usually Coke, Pepsi or both). The server usually lists the brands of soft drinks verbally. If I remember correctly, the McDonalds in Athens on the Plaka listed "Drinks" and then the Coffee, tea and Coke. Also, that includes diet Coke here even if they don't say so. Oh by the way, Lois's favorite cream soda is called that and usually isn't ever served in a fast food place. It's kind of a New York thing.
Actually, pop the drink came before pop the music. Pop music is called that because the fans were young people who drank pop.
Alka Seltzer is a pill dropped in water to help cure an upset stomach. Selter water is an east coast thing and was the separate fizzy part you put into a flavored syrup to create a beverage like Coke before Coke was bottled and sold everywhere. Soda water (also club soda) can be drunk separately but is commonly used like tonic water with alcoholic beverages. The difference between club soda and tonic water is the quinine in the tonic water. That's how people got their anti-malaria drug for the tropics in the 18th century.

Artemis

Okay, Bethy made me do it.

65% General American English
15% Yankee
5% Dixie
5% Upper Midwestern
0% Midwestern

Kaethel

Here's mine ... El made me do it so she could prove she's more of a Yankee than I am.

45% General American English
25% Dixie
25% Yankee
5% Upper Midwestern
0% Midwestern

I'm surprized cow tipping ain't in there, but TP'ing was.

CC observed:
ROTFL! /me hides behind a big box of caramel corn to escape the glare. <bg>

I must say, though, this thread has taught me one thing -- I have never been able to spell caramel correctly because it's not how I say it. But I think after this, that's one typo I won't make any more. <g>

LOL! Oh, Paul, I could kiss you. Two was first ... heh heh heh.

Wendy remembered:
LOL, I remember you saying that, and I've been dying to ask ... *how* do we sound different?? (And yes, I know that's probably an impossible question to answer. I mean, how does one describe an accent?)

And Anna, in an American restaurant, you could also ask for a "beverage" -- that's usually what that part of the menu is labeled. But "soft drink" is the generic term here for things like Coke, Sprite, Root Beer, etc.

Kathy

Seltzer vs. Club Soda vs. Perrier:

All are clear beverages. Seltzer has bubbles added, but no salt. It's made by adding carbon dioxide gas to plain water.

Club soda (aka soda water) has bubbles (usually a bit less than seltzer) AND sodium (or an acid, or both) added. It's made by adding sodium bicarbonate to water, which results in bubbles of carbon dioxide -- and sodium left dissolved in the water.

Perrier doesn't need to have bubbles added; the water is naturally effervescent.

Any of them may also have flavorings added. And I detest the lot of 'em. I prefer my water bubble-free.

Geesh... should be sleeping, but I had to add in my fun little (OT?) fact about TP'ing. This was an end of the season tradition in my softball league. Late at night after the team party, we'd pick a few houses (usually rival teams or popular coaches... was a pretty close-knit league so some were well known amongst us

Okay, going to bed now like I should have done hours ago...

Sara (who says "soda" and prefers Coke )

Thanks for answering my soda question, people And Laura, for answering the L&C soda/pop question.

Thanks for the clarification, Artemis. The term pop for the drinks hasn't made it over here but it has, for the music.

See ya,
AnnaBtG.

Artemis said:

That puzzled me; I'd always understood that 'pop' was simply an abbreviation of 'popular'. I don't have access to the complete Oxford English Dictionary online any more (to check the etymology there), but a quick Google found several references to pop music being a shortened form of popular.

Here's one encyclopaedia entry:

http://www.absoluteastronomy.com/encyclopedia/p/po/popular_music.htm

Britannica uses popular music and pop as synonymous.

Looking up 'pop music' in www.infoplease.com retrives this:
Cambridge Online Dictionary:
I won't bore people with any more - but the two terms, pop and popular music, are used as interchangeable on virtually every site I looked at.


Wendy

Yup, I'm totally with Wendy on the origins of the term pop music. I've never heard of your suggested derivation, Artemis, and I was going to say that since we Brits don't (and didn't) commonly use 'pop' to mean fizzy drinks, it wouldn't make sense that we'd make the same association you suggest, yet 'pop music' as a term has been in use here as long as I can remember. However, I guess it's possible we imported the term from the US, in which case my argument goes out the window.

Yvonne

Have to say I'm with the Brits on the pop music thing. I always believed it was simply a short form of popular music, just as fan is short for fanatic.

Have no idea why soda is called pop unless it's because the carbonation kind of "pops" as it bubbles in the glass. That might be a stretch.

Lynn

To throw things for a loop, some people here in America actually say "soda pop".

Well, Yvonne, here's something to start with. It's for US speakers, but I think it could work in reverse by looking up the British expression and seeing what it "translates" to in US English.



Lynn

Ooh, I actually have that book! (thanks, Kae! ) But some time ago I did actually find a British-American 'dictionary' on the web.

British/American Dictionary

Haven't tested it too far to find out how accurate it is, though!


Wendy

75% General American English
20% Yankee
5% Dixie
0% Midwestern
0% Upper Midwestern


No idea as to why it came out like that . I had to guess at some points (like the easy class... I'd never heard any of the terms :S... but ask me in Spanish and I'll give you a few )

I learned English when I was a kid, during the year we lived in Reno. But I've only gone back to the US a couple times after that (reno again and N Carolina), and it was only for a month in both cases... I guess it comes from reading, and this mbs...

well, I'm italian, so just for fun:

50% General American English
35% Yankee
5% Dixie

I didn't answer to "sweetened carbonated beverage" (I'd call it "soft drink") and "easy class" (never heard of these choices). I learnt English in High School with an English lady from Hull, I think, in College with a Canadian lady married with an italian, but above all here with your fics! Before discovering the L&C fanfictions world I have never read an whole novel in English just for fun; now I read a lot in English because of L&C fics and, beeing Jane Austen, E.M. Forster and Henry James my favourite authors out of Italy, I'm able to read them in their original language without problems. My conversations in English rarely are more than "yes, the station is at the end of this street", or "how much to the Duomo? Perhaps twenty minutes if you go on foot", so not very useful for me; so thank you for your daily help with my English! (still lacking, I know, but I'm improving)

simona

who's asking helself if this was understandable; at this hour I'm so tired and sleepy that my grammar feels the effects, I fear.

I confess to skimming the thread, but I don't think anyone mentioned this...

For a two-syllable pronunciation of "caramel", listen to Clark in GGGoH - I think it's in the car with Lois before they arrive in Smallville. It took a while for me to work out what "Carmel apples" were supposed to be!

Mere

I tried to do it, but there was just too many with no options open to me. I thought it was just me, but I asked others and I'm not alone

I couldn't take part

EDIT -
I didn't know it would accept blank ones so I tried:
Your Linguistic Profile:
50% General American English
20% Yankee
5% Dixie
0% Midwestern
0% Upper Midwestern

I skipped: 2,3,5,10,14.

The whole caramel thing. Car-mul sounds so odd to me. My mum-in-law says it that way and it is so weird to me.
I say it Car-a-mel.
I've never said/used caramel corn or caramel apple...I've said candy apple, but I guess that's the hard cady coat.
...Hmm...<thinkin> I saw some caramel apples on sale at Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory at Christmas and I called them car-a-mel.

They had that here. I never saw it though. Very odd 'eh?

My mum uses that, but I have never. It just doesn't occur to me. I use Diagonal.

Me --> runners

People don't say that here, but I like to say it b/c it sounds ... dare I say cute, I use it once in a while.

I'm not 100% positive the differences between the types. I can sort of visualize it, but I'm not sure down right to the line.

I wonder if there is one for the different Canadian types. eg. Atlantic, rural, North....
I don't know the proper ways of describing them.

I always thought pop was short for popular, as Wendy clarified.

With that said, where on earth did soft drink come from!

I got curious, so I had to try

70% General American English
15% Yankee
10% Dixie
5% Upper Midwestern
0% Midwestern

This thread is probably long-dead, but I saw it and wanted to try the quiz. I'm
75% Standard American English (of course, in Linguistics we learned that there *is* no "Standard American English," but I won't go into that...)
20% Dixie
5% Yankee
0% everything else.

Seems reasonable to me. Got a Yankee father (Pennsylvania), live nominally in Dixie (Maryland is south of the Mason-Dixon line, but isn't usually considered to be part of the "South" nowadays), and a grandmother with a strong Bal'more accent.

I've always said "Coke," but I am conscious, in general, of who I'm talking to. In a restaurant I'd try to find out on the menu whether it's a Pepsi or Coke place, because I actually do prefer Coke to Pepsi and will order another drink if it's not a Coke place. If I want to be clear that I mean any sort of carbonated beverage, I generally say soft drink or soda.

Have you heard the joke about the person who wanted to make it clear they didn't care which side of the Coke/Pepsi wars a place was on, they just wanted whatever the place had, so they ordered a "dark, carbonated beverage," and the waitress laughed and asked if they wanted a long cylindrical plastic drinking object to go with it?

Re the pop music discussion. Yes, I suppose it is short for popular too. But MTV uses it also to mean the teenage set that drinks pop. Maybe that's where I got the notion from.

Artemis

Being a military brat with a Southern mom and a Yankee dad (and I say 'care-a-mel' corn), I've moved all around. What could it be but:

35% General American English
35% Yankee
25% Dixie
5% Upper Midwestern
0% Midwestern

Great quiz!

60% General American English
25% Yankee
10% Dixie
5% Upper Midwestern
0% Midwestern

I'm brazilian, so of course, my mother language is portuguese, lol, but most of my english comes from american tv shows, I also take english classes but they change out teachers every semester so we don't get a teacher's accent and stuff

50% General American English
30% Yankee
15% Dixie
0% Midwestern
0% Upper Midwestern