Linguiphiles will never satisfy their lust for regional data

GasBandit

Staff member
I tried going to the site to enter my answers and get my heatmaps, but because it had just been mentioned on reddit my final calculation timed out, so I never found out where it thought I was from. I may have to try it again now that the furor has died down.

http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/12/20/sunday-review/dialect-quiz-map.html?_r=0

--Patrick
Here's my map -

mymap.png
[DOUBLEPOST=1408716830,1408716651][/DOUBLEPOST]Hmm, it didn't save in the image, but it thinks I'm from the southern tip of Florida -

Miami/Ft Lauderdale/Pembroke Pines area.

Which I guess comes from my wandering military family having lived in Maryland, Texas, New Mexico, and Colorado.

I am least similar from Michigan, specifically Detroit, Toledo, and Grand Rapids.
 
No love for the Midwest, eh?
Here's mine. Hardly surprising.
lingmap.JPG


Seems you and I could hardly be further apart. Weird.

--Patrick
 
We actually reviewed these in my grammar class last semester. The focus of the class was more about language as a constantly evolving thing than as hard and fast rules.
 
This would be even more fun if you included Canada and the UK. Or, you know, the rest of the world and our English usage. Because half of you or more are doing it wrong :p
 
I was surprised by the lack of green on the sandwich question, Only place it was located was central Long Island, where my family's from.

People in Texas need to tell me more about these drive through ABC stores.
 

fade

Staff member
Didn't somebody already post these?

My grandmother used to call raining with the sun out the devil beating his wife. I wasn't aware he was married. Would explain a lot.
 

Dave

Staff member
Map.png
[DOUBLEPOST=1408721955,1408721865][/DOUBLEPOST]Mine said I live in either Omaha, Lincoln, or Des Moines. Damn, language, you scary!
 
This would be even more fun if you included Canada and the UK. Or, you know, the rest of the world and our English usage. Because half of you or more are doing it wrong :p
I actually took a class on Canadian English last term. Interesting stuff, especially seeing where things do/don't overlap with parts of the US.
 
Weird that it placed me near where I live now, not where I grew up. But the answers were the way I've always said things.
 
...that quiz....In half the questions, the answers are simply not the same thing. Millipedes and centipedes are different animals, and neither of them's what the quiz is referring to.

Anyway, New York, Yonkers, Detroit...I'm not entirely surprised - having taken most of my English cues from TV and the UK, I figured I'd either end up in New England, around NY or Hollywood :p


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...that quiz....In half the questions, the answers are simply not the same thing. Millipedes and centipedes are different animals, and neither of them's what the quiz is referring to.
The quiz, like actual linguistic study, has no interest in what's right or wrong. All it's measuring is where and in which dialects words are used to represent certain things.
 
I think the point is that in some areas they don't make distinctions. It's like the concept of the color blue in Russian culture. They are taught to perceive light blue and dark blue as colors as distinct as we view orange and red, whereas we just view it as gradations of the same color, not distinct separate colors.
 
...that quiz....In half the questions, the answers are simply not the same thing. Millipedes and centipedes are different animals, and neither of them's what the quiz is referring to.

Anyway, New York, Yonkers, Detroit...I'm not entirely surprised - having taken most of my English cues from TV and the UK, I figured I'd either end up in New England, around NY or Hollywood :p


View attachment 15757
I see a lot of heavy red coloring in New Jersey.... One of us! One of us!
 
Shocking to no one...( except @Tinwhistler) canvas.png
Actually, it is a little spooky. It narrowed my dialect down to Newark/Jersey City, and I spent the first 10 years of my life living right next to those towns. :eek:
 
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