Wednesday, April 09, 2008

Okay, what?

As seen all over the durn place...

I don't really get this. I mean, I know I'm not American, but it doesn't make sense to me that I would have this particular kind of American accent. What do I know, though? I'm curious to know what other Canadian readers got...

What American accent do you have?
Your Result: The West

Your accent is the lowest common denominator of American speech. Unless you're a SoCal surfer, no one thinks you have an accent. And really, you may not even be from the West at all, you could easily be from Florida or one of those big Southern cities like Dallas or Atlanta.

The Midland
Boston
North Central
The Inland North
Philadelphia
The South
The Northeast
What American accent do you have?
Quiz Created on GoToQuiz

3 comments:

Pantagruelle said...

I took a similar quiz a while ago and ended up being a "general American" (http://pantagruelle.blogspot.com/2006/06/egad-general-american.html), which I guess just means not much accent at all. My quiz had slightly different categories than yours though. I don't think it really applies to us anyway. I think it would be more fun to have a quiz that measures if one speaks more like a Brit, Canadian, or American.

Anonymous said...

Huh. I got "North Central":

"North Central" is what professional linguists call the Minnesota accent. If you saw "Fargo" you probably didn't think the characters sounded very out of the ordinary. Outsiders probably mistake you for a Canadian a lot.

I'm from Alberta. That was interesting!

Hilaire said...

Pantagruelle - Yeah, I think this is general American. I'm not surprised that that's what kind of accent I have - I am mostly surprised that it's associated with the south...and the west? Weird? Dallas and Atlanta? Say what?

Anne - Oh, yes, I definitely know the Minnesota/rural central-west Canadian accent and don't have that...As above, I'm more surprised at being told I sound like I'm from the west or the south! And not the northeast. Endlessly fascinating, accents are. I think one day I want to take a linguist out to dinner and pick their brain about this...Southern Ontario/upstate New York is always the strangest example to me. How people who live in Buffalo can have such an incredibly different accent from those who live 1/2 hour away, over the Canadian border (and have the apparently "accentless" English I have...)