me vs. the nyt dialect quiz

[alexiscartwheel]

In case you missed it, last weekend the New York Times posted an interactive dialect quiz, complete with fancy heat maps and stuff. Answer 25 multiple choice questions and a magical algorithm tells you what region your speech characteristics match up with best. Cool? Cool.

So I took the quiz, and I think the first time it said my speech matched best with the dialects of Springfield, Missouri, and Reno, Nevada. Excuse me, what? Well, I thought, there were a bunch of questions where I really could've gone with one of two answers, so maybe I'll switch some of them. Still no good. Springfield again, plus Overland Park, Kansas, and Tulsa, Oklahoma.

I lived in Columbus, Ohio, for 22 years and Washington, D.C. adjacent for another 5 or so, with short sojourns in Montreal and, well, actually, Overland Park, Kansas. But that means I should sound mostly like an Ohioan, with a few Maryland oddities—for instance, I like "traffic circle" a whole lot better than "roundabout", so I default to the former—not like someone from Missouri.

At this point, I've taken the damn quiz at least 20 times, because a) I can get freakishly narrowly focused sometimes and wanted to figure out what was going on with my results, and b) I have too much time on my hands. Here's what I've found:

• If you only took the quiz once (congratulations, sane person!) you won't have noticed that there are actually more than 25 questions. The quiz always starts with the "you all/y'all/you guys/y'inz/etc." question, but the rest randomly change order each time, and the 25 question set changes.
• I absolutely do not, under any circumstances, sound like I am from Boston, Providence, Jersey City, NYC, or Jackson, Mississippi. The quiz is much more consistent about who I don't sound like than who I do sound like.
• My results were disproportionately skewed by the responses to a smaller set of questions. Apparently the more unique features of my idiolect are: "blow-off class", "potato bug", "drinking fountain", "lightning bug", "highway", and, dammit...
• "Crawdad." The one's above were all cited as distinguishing at some point, but whether I got this question and how I answered it ALWAYS drastically changed the result. I grew up going to summer camp, and one of the activities was always going "creeking" and catching "crawdads." Were I to go creeking again, I would probably call them that. But the rest of the time, I'd call them "crayfish" because I think that's their actual name? So this one's a register problem. I do know that finally switching my answer to "crayfish" got me the most reasonable sounding result of Cleveland I'd had up to that point.
  • Creeking, fyi, is basically fishing. In a creek. While standing in a creek. I'm pretty sure this is a regional thing, too, because Google says creeking is some sort of activity involving a kayak, not wet feet and a fishing net.
  • Crawdad is one of the main factors in my repeated Springfield, Missouri quiz result.
• I decided to settle on a single answer for each question, even though there were some I was conflicted about (e.g. I both think "dinner" and "supper" have the same meaning but don't actually use the word "supper" ever) to see if I could replicate any of my quiz results. That didn't work, because, like I said, the results were drastically skewed by the words listed above, so if I, for instance, didn't get the potato bug question, I knew I definitely couldn't be from Portland this time.
• Cities that popped up repeatedly included: Grand Rapids, Springfield, Overland Park, Fort Wayne, St. Louis, Indianapolis, and Rockford (Ill.) which are at least all in the Midwest, but I also got everywhere from Pittsburgh to Portland to Mesa (Ariz.). Basically the entire country that isn't New England or the Deep South.
• If you take the quiz enough times, you stop having to read the questions, because you can locate your answer automatically.
• One magical time, I got the right set of questions to land Columbus, Ohio. Don't ask me how, it was like 1 a.m. and I wasn't very scientific about any of this.

My conclusion isn't that I'm a special snowflake as much as that my idiolect is just weird enough to flummox the quiz a little bit. It's been awhile, but I studied enough linguistics in undergrad to know that I sound not only very Midwestern, but very Ohioan. If the quiz were heavier on phonological variation instead of lexical variation (but that doesn't make for fun quiz questions that make you think "They call it what now?") or if it were just longer, I'm pretty sure it could pin me in Central Ohio much more easily. 

Comments

[ceitfianna]

That quiz is fascinating, it keeps putting me farther north than the area I grew up in. I was born outside Philly but it keeps saying I'm Rochester, or Buffalo or even Providence. Though I've been told by people that I sound more English in the US, so I don't know.

[alexiscartwheel]

Do you say 'hoagie?' My non-use of that word seems to be the number one reason the quiz is sure I'm not from Philly. XD

[ceitfianna]

Grinder actually but the thing is I've used hoagie, grinder and sub sandwich growing up. I had that problem with a few of them, I've used a variety. Also I've picked up some expressions from my mother who's from the west coast.

[alexiscartwheel]

See, there's your problem. If you were really from Philly, you'd say hoagie. ;)

Are the ones where you have variations the ones with different words or with different pronunciations? I feel like with most people, the pronunciations tend to be pretty consistent, even if you might have incorporated different regional words for things.

[ceitfianna]

Pronunciations, I think, its always hard to know how I say something. That's a problem I tend to have with these quizzes, because I don't know if I'm picking the one I actually say or think I say.

I only took it two times but I might go back and take it again.

[alexiscartwheel]

The pronunciation ones would really work best if you were reading it off while a second person interprets the recording, because then you wouldn't have the other pronunciations to confuse you. Some words I can say either way (like "aunt" as 'ant' or 'ahnt') but that doesn't mean I naturally would.

Just, uh, don't go insane and take it over 20 times like I did.

[lunamystic]

Arlington. Ahahahahaha.

Also Boston and Florida. Basically the entire east coast was bright red.

[alexiscartwheel]

It's almost like you've... lived on the east coast a lot :)

The whole Arlington thing just further convinces me that everyone but me is getting pretty darn close on the first try. SPRINGFIELD MISSOURI IS 630 MILES AWAY.

[lunamystic]

I took it again and got Arlington, but also Laredo and San Antonio, Texas.

Uh.

Okay?

Apparently I sound Texan now?

XD

[lunamystic]

I do think it's interesting that the most distinctive question for San Antonio yields nearly the same heat map signature around Atlanta. Not the rest of GA, just Atlanta. And of course I spent years there, so.

*falls down rabbit hole*

[alexiscartwheel]

I'M SO SORRY. I FEEL RESPONSIBLE FOR INCITING THIS MADNESS.

So I did again, and twice in a row got both Portland and Reno again, plus Seattle and Santa Rosa. WHAT EVEN??

So, uh, what is this distinctive San Antonio feature. Presumably it is not effing crawdads.

[lunamystic]

Access roads. Which I didn't know existed until Atlanta, so yeah. I picked that up there.

[alexiscartwheel]

Hahahahaha. That's one of my outliers, cause access road is totally what I'd use, but that answer doesn't fit with ANYTHING else for me.

I really wonder how it weighs the various answers. Like will a single bright red answer outweigh a group of yellows? What if you have a whole bunch of answers that are just light blue all over the map? Cause I had a couple like that where my answer is just not that common anywhere in the US.

TELL ME YOUR SECRETS, QUIZ.