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What is your American dialect?
Gene Expression ^ | 16 Sept 2013 | Razib Khan

Posted on 09/16/2013 11:54:23 AM PDT by Theoria

Razib’s Dialect Similarity

Language dialect is something that we often pick up unconsciously, so I find it an interesting if narcissistic project to query my own dialect affinities. The above was generated using a 140 question test (warning: server often slow). In case you were curious, my most ‘similar’ city (to my dialect) is Sunnyvale, California. Though most of my life has been spent on the West coast of the United States, I did spend my elementary age years in upstate New York. You can see evidence of that in the heat-map. There are particular words I use and pronunciations that I have which I know are probably relics of my formative years, but it was a little surprising that this survey picked up on that, as I thought most of them had disappeared.


TOPICS: History; Science; Society
KEYWORDS: anthropology; dialect; language; linguistics; speech
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To: NKP_Vet

Coastal accents are different from tidewater to outer banks to Gullah to Naples Florida

Different linguist stimuli

Charleston sounds southern to me

But not country

Younger college educated all of America sound alike now mostly

They are all ashamed of the accents of their ancestry

Pity

My wife is Charleston raised and has cotton state accent

Dah-lynn


61 posted on 09/16/2013 1:40:28 PM PDT by wardaddy (the next Dark Ages are coming as Western Civilization crumbles with nary a whimper)
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To: Theoria

Eastern Patrician.


62 posted on 09/16/2013 1:42:03 PM PDT by Sirius Lee (All that is required for evil to advance is for government to do "something")
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To: SpinnerWebb

Hall County where?

I grew up in KC, and my best friend’s whole family warshed and wrenched stuff. They were from S. Missouri.


63 posted on 09/16/2013 1:43:26 PM PDT by Sherman Logan (Mark Steyn: "In the Middle East, the enemy of our enemy is also our enemy.")
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To: Theoria

Ping for later ... server overloaded


64 posted on 09/16/2013 1:45:50 PM PDT by Fast Moving Angel (A moral wrong is not a civil right: No religious sanction of an irreligious act.)
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To: wardaddy

I used to think there was “a southern accent.” That’s before I lived and traveled in the South and discovered there are a WHOLE BUNCH of southern accents.

With exception of NE, the rest of the country sounds pretty much the same to my ear. But southerners are wildly diverse, though possibly not as much as they used to be.


65 posted on 09/16/2013 1:46:53 PM PDT by Sherman Logan (Mark Steyn: "In the Middle East, the enemy of our enemy is also our enemy.")
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To: Sherman Logan; Albion Wilde

Texas... but I understand my grandparents are of Scotch-Irish descent..

You learn something every day.


66 posted on 09/16/2013 1:48:21 PM PDT by SpinnerWebb (In 2012 you will awaken from your HOPEnosis and have no recollection of this... "Constitution")
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To: Sherman Logan

If you lived where there was a strong divergence of accents like I do you would realize a degree of income and education affiliation

We simply don’t think much about class period except in old robber baron environs....Newport..... Brewster

Down here...you speak like a hick....you will be judged as one

I saw upper class manhattanites treat bensonhurst and bay ridge and other bridge and tunnel folks the same way

I love how for you only southerners have crappy white accents

You’re such a snob Shermie.....and oblivious to your own bigotry


67 posted on 09/16/2013 1:50:57 PM PDT by wardaddy (the next Dark Ages are coming as Western Civilization crumbles with nary a whimper)
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To: Sherman Logan; Pelham

If you lived where there was a strong divergence of accents like I do you would realize a degree of income and education affiliation

We simply don’t think much about class period except in old robber baron environs....Newport..... Brewster

Down here...you speak like a hick....you will be judged as one

I saw upper class manhattanites treat bensonhurst and bay ridge and other bridge and tunnel folks the same way

I love how for you only southerners have crappy white accents

You’re such a snob Shermie.....and oblivious to your own bigotry


68 posted on 09/16/2013 1:51:57 PM PDT by wardaddy (the next Dark Ages are coming as Western Civilization crumbles with nary a whimper)
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To: Theoria

I grew up in Western Pennsylvania but after all these years I have a voice pattern that is a mix on the NYC area and the SF Bay Area.


69 posted on 09/16/2013 1:54:37 PM PDT by Wordkraft (Remember who the Collaborators are.)
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To: Theoria

I speak flat American announcer English. Even though I grew up in the Valley, I did not take on “that” local dialect.


70 posted on 09/16/2013 1:55:40 PM PDT by Yaelle
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To: Windflier

I don’t get it. The midwest has a detectable accent, and of course the south, but California is especially noted for not having an accent


71 posted on 09/16/2013 1:56:22 PM PDT by sasportas
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To: wardaddy

I said “extreme backwoods southern accents.”

While there probably are “extreme northern backwoods accents,” I don’t recall ever running into them.

Some people in all regions sound uneducated, but that has little, as such, to do with accent.

Many southerners sound highly cultured, more so than most other Americans. I think of Shelby Foote.


72 posted on 09/16/2013 1:58:20 PM PDT by Sherman Logan (Mark Steyn: "In the Middle East, the enemy of our enemy is also our enemy.")
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To: wardaddy

Also, I didn’t say I assign class/status connotations to southern backwoods accents. I said Americans do.

Do you disagree?


73 posted on 09/16/2013 2:01:52 PM PDT by Sherman Logan (Mark Steyn: "In the Middle East, the enemy of our enemy is also our enemy.")
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To: Albion Wilde

We’re in Merlin, too...In Maownnaery, in Kaerl Cahnny near the Haird Cahnny line.

For those of you not from the Old Line state, that would be in Mount Airy, in Carroll County, near the Howard County line.


74 posted on 09/16/2013 2:05:29 PM PDT by mrs. a (It's a short life but a merry one...)
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To: Cowboy Bob

Yes, dawlin. My hawt is beating now as I speak. (New Orleans bawn and bred).


75 posted on 09/16/2013 2:13:57 PM PDT by murron (Proud Mom of a Marine Vet)
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To: mrs. a

Mouwnerry? Near the canny lahn, blow Dorsetohwn?


76 posted on 09/16/2013 2:17:19 PM PDT by Albion Wilde ("Remember... the first revolutionary was Satan."--Russian Orthodox Archpriest Dmitry Smirnov)
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To: Theoria

I live in the South (suburb of New Orleans)and I notice that black people pronounce “bedroom” as “bayroom”, “jewelry” as “jury”, and “children” as cheeren”. And when I listen to reality TV such as court shows and hear black people speak on those shows, they pronounce these words the same, so I don’t think it’s regional.


77 posted on 09/16/2013 2:23:03 PM PDT by murron (Proud Mom of a Marine Vet)
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To: Theoria

I’m an Army Brat and averaged a new home every two years, including a couple of places in Europe. My parents are from Georgia and Florida so I figured that’s where the test would place me. Oddly, it said my dialect was most similar to four cities in Texas and Shreveport, LA. At least I don’t sound like a damned Yankee!


78 posted on 09/16/2013 2:26:35 PM PDT by 109ACS (If this be Treason, then make the most of it. Patrick Henry, May 1765)
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To: Albion Wilde

Yeah, not too far from WessMINISTER...


79 posted on 09/16/2013 2:36:10 PM PDT by mrs. a (It's a short life but a merry one...)
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To: NKP_Vet

Typical for the East Coast where different cities have very different accents. Supposedly, it’s the “Coastal Southern” dialect which is different from Inland Southern dialects. It’s speculated that a Tidewater planter like George Washington wouldn’t have sounded much like much like what we’ve come to understand as a “Southern accent.”


80 posted on 09/16/2013 2:47:27 PM PDT by x
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