US folk: map your language use

[jesse_the_k]

U.S. language research!

It's happening now:

https://www.dialectsofenglish.com

I answered fifty questions and they really made me think. The survey offers various vocabulary and pronunciation options--you can choose one or all, and add chatty comments.

Based on the first box you tick, the survey shows a "heat map" (inaccessible to screen readers) where they think you're from.

Not surprisingly, my language is mixed: most often from Wisconsin and Boston-area.

Comments

[isis]

I had to laugh at the question about "Colorado" - I used to pronounce it rhymes-with-father, but after moving to the Western Slope I adopted the rhymes-with-bad pronunciation so as to blend in with the locals. :-)

[jesse_the_k]

I was wondering what your answer would be.

Are there other local tells?

There's a way that every body else says "Wisconsin" that makes my skin crawl--too many syllables? too slippery on the first "s"?

[isis]

Oh, yes. Some local shibboleths, by which I mean that even natives who live on the Front Range (the strip of cities running roughly north-south just east of the mountains) will get these wrong:

The name of the town 75 miles north of us, Ouray, is pronounced yur-RAY.

The name of the national park 40 miles west of us, Mesa Verde, is pronounced without the final 'e' by the old-timers here, though I can't bring myself to do this.

The name of the river east of town, and the road that parallels it and then comes into town from the northeast, Florida, is pronounced in the Spanish style, flo-REE-da.

The name of the river east of town that runs through the neighboring town of Bayfield (we have one, too!), Los Pinos, is pronounced "the Pine". Which seriously is the best way of identifying tourists. It says Los Pinos on every map, but nobody calls it anything but the Pine!

[jesse_the_k]

Ouray for Ouray!

but the Pine is the best.

[sasha_feather]

Neat!

[jesse_the_k]

<3

[wendelah1]

The test thinks I live in the southeast and my patients mostly thought I was from the midwest, but in reality, I'm a native Californian. My mom grew up in North Carolina, my dad in Los Angeles.

[jesse_the_k]

Yeah, the whole notion of a single zip code--people don't live in one place anymore. My folks grew up speaking Yiddish and Philly-english. I lived all over the world, and the test placed me in all four corners of the continental US.

Is there a tell/shibboleth for native Californians?

[wendelah1]

Well. We give our freeways names, like the Ventura Freeway, the Hollywood Freeway, and so on. If we use the number, we put a "the" in front of it, as in "Take the 5 south and get off at Burbank." If someone is writing a character who is a Californian, and they get that wrong, it would be a dead giveaway. We call the HOV a carpool lane. When giving general directions, we don't talk about distance. We always talk about time. "It takes 20 minutes, depending on traffic." So, more like 40 minutes. *g*

"June Gloom" describes a weather pattern specific to our area.

People who work in any aspect of show business work for "the industry."

I'm sure there are others.

[jesse_the_k]

Oh -- the time for mileage makes so much sense (as if the whole trip isn't a parking lot).

[capri0mni]

I only got 30 questions! Maybe based on what zip code I put in the first field?

[bibliofile]

At the end of the round, I kept getting options to answer ten more questions (an extra green button).

[jesse_the_k]

That's not fair! You can try it again with my zip code if you'd like :,)

[julian]

I admit to changing a few of them based on the heat map, which is not reasonable survey behavior, but I stood firm on what a water fountain is called. I'm from the Boston suburbs, and we used to call it either a water fountain or a bubbler, pronounced bubblah, durnit.

bubblers

[bibliofile]

Boston and Milwaukee and Rhode Island. That's where the Bubbler company had its customer base.

Re: bubblers

[jesse_the_k]

THERE WAS A BUBBLER COMPANY! Now I get it. Thank you for this crucial historical fact.

Re: bubblers

[julian]

I had no idea! Thank you!

Re: bubblers

[bibliofile]

School districts! Customers were school districts, IIRC.

Re: bubblers

[magnetic_pole]

Aha! That explains to much! Thank you. M.

[wrdnrd]

I will only ever be from one place based on my word for the long sandwich full of cold cuts and veggies.

[julian]

What was your answer there?

[wrdnrd]

Hoagie. (I'm from Central Pennsylvania.)

[julian]

That's how I knew them in the Philadelphia-area, too, when I was there.

[jesse_the_k]

I didn't get that question!

Hero?

[wrdnrd]

Hoagie. Very southeast/east/central-ish Pennsylvania. Now i'm wondering what they call them in Pittsburgh.

[bibliofile]

Any idea where that survey comes from? Like, there's no info there, no way to know it's not another front for Cambridge Analytica (e.g.).

[jesse_the_k]

Good point. I saw it on Language Log, which gave it some veracity, but they only attributed it to Bert Vaux, a Cambridge linguist. The domain is registered with the authoritative-sounding "cheapnames.com" OTOH, it only asks for your ZIP code (well, it's got a FaceBook tracker, but AdGuard suppresses those).

[julian]

It is devoid of info there, which I sigh at, but, to back Language Log up, Twitter to the rescue.

https://twitter.com/BertVaux/with_replies

More on him: https://www.languagesciences.cam.ac.uk/directory/bv230@cam.ac.uk

[bibliofile]

Thank you for doing the homework for me!

/dons deerstalker/

[jesse_the_k]

So, do you get from that it is Vaux' own survey? His interests on the cited page don't mention anything to do with lexical regionalisms in North America!

Re: /dons deerstalker/

[julian]

I can only go with wording, because otherwise his CV on his webpage is... very different.

But he does say "My new American dialect survey" on Twitter, so... Shrug

ETA: Oh, he was part of the team behind the Harvard survey in 2003! (Or, he says, leading it.) OK. Well then.

See also here and here. This whole American regionalism thing seems weird, given his Armenian-and-so-on focus, but it seems to have been an offshoot of one of his intro Harvard classes.

[chanter1944]

I took the survey, but I wish the maps were screen reader accessible. I’d love to know where the data predicts I’m from!

[jesse_the_k]

Of course they need numbers underneath to draw the heat maps, so why couldn't they offer the numbers directly????

(I'm guessing, N Central Wisconsin, but I'm risky like that.)

[magnetic_pole]

I'm always curious about how parents figure into this equation. I tend to get California on these tests because 1) I grew up there, and 2) "freeway" is a dead give-away :), but my parents are both from the midwest, and some of my vocab reflects that. Is that a common phenomenon? I'd think so, but the tests don't seem to ask.

Thanks for the link! This is better test than most. M.

[jesse_the_k]

Happy to provide. I think this test is truly trying to collect data, and not enlarge the email list of an advertiser. But the notion that our lives can be defined in a single ZIP code just doesn't seem realistic.

I've got linguistic influences from A to Z, not to mention Α to Ω