I’ll start by saying that I am not a southern belle, valley girl, nor angry New Yorker. So then, you may ask, what does that make me? Well, that’s the whole point of today’s blog post. Basically, there aren’t dialects in America like there are in countries like China, but people from different places definitely pronounce things differently and call objects by different names. It’s like accents but a little more all over the place. For example, some people call carbonated drinks pop while others call it soda, and some people pronounce caramel care-uh-mel while others say car-mul. These slight differences are the subject of debates (at least where I’m from) as well as a nifty little New York Times quiz that tells you what your American dialect actually is.
I took the NYT quiz first and coincidentally(?) got a place that is um… about ten miles from where my house is. Since I didn’t want to plaster that information all over the Internet, I filmed myself taking this quiz from Babbel instead. We all on the same page? Yes? Great. Take the quiz along with me if you want to, and sit back, relax, and watch the Internet narrate my life for the third time!
Pre-Thoughts
Let me get this straight: I don’t have a strong, notable accent. Y’all probably heard me speak before, but I don’t have a southern accent or a Midwestern accent or anything like that. I’ve spoken to people from all over the country and in my eyes (or ears), they all sound the same as me. With that being said, though, to people from foreign countries or who have accents different than mine, I would have an accent. What I mean by strong and notable is that if someone heard me speak, they would not have a clue where I was from outside of being able to say “she’s an American gal”. However, I do say y’all a lot, which is a very southern thing. I’m not from the south, but a lot of people in my area say y’all. I have no idea why. We just love to say y’all. Hey, y’all.
Game Time
Have fun listening to my voice 🥰
Result: Northeast
"From the movies, you would think everyone in the Northeast goes around "pahking the cah" or yelling "fuhgeddaboudit." And while the cities on the east coast have very distinguished dialects, you can't forget about the rest of the northeast. The older a place is, the more diverse the ways of speaking, so New England has perhaps the biggest variety of dialects (though the rest of the country is catching up)."
Reflection
I’m honestly not surprised about this one because I feel like if there was a region I would attribute my speaking style to, it would be the Northeast. I still kinda think of Boston, Philly, and NYC with those stereotypes of "pahking the cah" and "fuhgeddaboudit” in mind, but I have met many people from that area who speak the exact same way that I do and I don’t think the way I talk would match up with any other region. As I said before, I’m not southern in any stretch of the mind other than saying y’all, and I definitely do not sound like I’m from the Midwest. I was expecting to get a region from either coast, and sounding like I’m from the east coast fits the bill. Anyway, that’s it for today y’all (hehe)! Hope it was fun!
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