I'm surprised someone from Indiana comes out that northern; we're really suspended halfway between Mason and Dixon in many ways, and the folk speech of southern Indiana is in many respects indistinguishable from that of the Appalachians and Virginia Piedmont. I must have been contaminated by all that time in Minnesota.
I'm 43% Yankee, barley as it says. Hey, I HATE the Yankees. How does somebody from SoCal rate? I've spent 10 years in PA, 7 so far in Chicago, and I married a southerner. I'm afraid I've been contaminated. I love the carbonated drink question. It's "pop" for a lot of folks around her, and I refuse to let that word in my house!
I'm a bit curious about how fine-tuned this model can get, because some of the answers are really quite rare. There cannot be more than a couple hundred thousand people in the US who call a drinking fountain a "bubbler" -- and they all sound like Marge Gunderson.
That's a good point, Kathy, though I think it's pretty common in New England to use the term "bubbler." The real limit of the test is that it's entirely linguistic. It would be much more interesting to ask, for example, what you expected your iced tea to taste like (or if your grandmother has a "recipe" for iced tea), what you think of BBQ being (pork, beef, vinegar sauce, tomato sauce), etc.
Odd thing is that even though I was born in the South and all my family is from the South, I've lived all over and have only a very slight drawl. But I still hit all the linguistic markers.
5 comments:
31%. "Definitive Yankee."
I'm surprised someone from Indiana comes out that northern; we're really suspended halfway between Mason and Dixon in many ways, and the folk speech of southern Indiana is in many respects indistinguishable from that of the Appalachians and Virginia Piedmont. I must have been contaminated by all that time in Minnesota.
I'm 43% Yankee, barley as it says. Hey, I HATE the Yankees. How does somebody from SoCal rate? I've spent 10 years in PA, 7 so far in Chicago, and I married a southerner. I'm afraid I've been contaminated. I love the carbonated drink question. It's "pop" for a lot of folks around her, and I refuse to let that word in my house!
I'm a bit curious about how fine-tuned this model can get, because some of the answers are really quite rare. There cannot be more than a couple hundred thousand people in the US who call a drinking fountain a "bubbler" -- and they all sound like Marge Gunderson.
That's a good point, Kathy, though I think it's pretty common in New England to use the term "bubbler." The real limit of the test is that it's entirely linguistic. It would be much more interesting to ask, for example, what you expected your iced tea to taste like (or if your grandmother has a "recipe" for iced tea), what you think of BBQ being (pork, beef, vinegar sauce, tomato sauce), etc.
Odd thing is that even though I was born in the South and all my family is from the South, I've lived all over and have only a very slight drawl. But I still hit all the linguistic markers.
58% Dixie. I even used "all y'all" recently and I don't know that anyone raised an eyebrow . . .
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