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I like to think that lighter spot around Louisiana is "Po Boy"

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

PatrThom said:

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

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Here's my map -

[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.


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.

Bowielee said:

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.

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But is it literally evolving?

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

Ravenpoe said:

But is it literally evolving?

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That's actually a moot point.

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.

Bubbler? Really?

HERP DERP

Covar said:

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

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It's where you go to buy a vowel.

--Patrick

Jay said:

Bubbler? Really?

HERP DERP

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I had never heard that term until I went to the south.

Also, calling all soda/pop Coke.... what the hell man?

PatrThom said:

It's where you go to buy a vowel.

--Patrick

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You must think you're so fancy mister big shot with your non-state run liqueur stores.

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.

Covar said:

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

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Not much to tell. It's a drive thru. You pull up, order your liqour, pay, and drive away.

GasBandit said:

Not much to tell. It's a drive thru. You pull up, order your liqour, pay, and drive away.

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[DOUBLEPOST=1408721955,1408721865][/DOUBLEPOST]Mine said I live in either Omaha, Lincoln, or Des Moines. Damn, language, you scary!

Bubble181 said:

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

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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.

It thinks I'm from South Florida.

I'm actually from Central Florida, living in North Florida. YOU FAILED, QUIZ!

It says I'm from Buffalo, New York. I guess that's a pretty Canadian American city.

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.

Damn, pretty impressive. I grew up in SC, but lived a lot in Louisiana and TX

...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

Bubble181 said:

...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.

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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.

I'm going to the bubbler!

H

Am I the only one who thinks bubbler is like... DUMB.

http://nyti.ms/1torkaf


While I live in Canada I do live right above the red spot. hehe

My wife says bubbler... She's from Wisconsin

Jay said:

I'm going to the bubbler!

H

Am I the only one who thinks bubbler is like... DUMB.

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Nope. Pretty much the only people who say that, according to the map, are Rhode Island and east Wisconsin.

Imagine that.

WasabiPoptart said:

View attachment 15758

Imagine that.

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Odd, your picture seems to include the Azores when nobody else's has so far. Or maybe that's Puerto Rico. Hard to tell.

Bubble181 said:

...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


View attachment 15757

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I see a lot of heavy red coloring in New Jersey.... One of us! One of us!

There's a "Real Housewives" joke in here somewhere.

http://nyti.ms/1mvluhf

Only two whole states off. But my accent is far more southern than what most people think Texan sounds like.

Shocking to no one...( except @Tinwhistler)
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.

a-yup. I don't get out much.

I just noticed that Dave and Fade's maps are pretty close to being exact opposites of each other.

And you know.. if you say "Dave" backwards, it sounds a LOT like "Fade."

...so which one is the alt?

Celt Z said:

...so which one is the alt?

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Both. They're both alts of @JCM, and so am I, and so are you.

Celt Z said:

...so which one is the alt?

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They're not alts, they're evil twins. And we know which one had a goatee...

GasBandit said:

Odd, your picture seems to include the Azores when nobody else's has so far. Or maybe that's Puerto Rico. Hard to tell.

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I'm special.

http://nyti.ms/1mw7Om8

Y'all would never guess that I was born in California and spent my formative years in England... despite still having issues spelling realise/realize and words of that nature... to say nothing of driving my sergeants crazy by putting the word "whilst" in my reports. *chuckles*

Strongest roots in Texas, which makes sense. But I've been all over for business over the years, and I guess some of it musta rubbed off

I'm kind of annoyed that the "strip of grass between lanes on a road" didn't have "esplanade" as a choice, or that the road that runs next to a freeway didn't have "feeder" as a choice.

Nailed it. Though I do find it amusing that I apparently have similarities to those who live in Salt Lake City...

CrimsonSoul said:

My wife says bubbler... She's from Wisconsin

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And you make fun of her right? I'd understand a 4 year old saying it... but an adult? Gonna be PC, sounds LAAAAAAAAME.

Jay said:

And you make fun of her right? I'd understand a 4 year old saying it... but an adult? Gonna be PC, sounds LAAAAAAAAME.

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I laugh at her, yes.

Tinwhistler said:

the road that runs next to a freeway didn't have "feeder" as a choice.

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They didn't mean the ramp, though.
In my case it's the "service drive" but the only choice they had was "service road."

--Patrick

They nailed it. Gave me "Birmingham, Montgomery, or Mobile".

I took this forever ago and got my hometown, I'm boring.

I took the test. I don't speak english. I've never had a conversation with someone else in english. Apparently I'm from New York

Cog said:

I took the test. I don't speak english. I've never had a conversation with someone else in english. Apparently I'm from New York

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Makes sense. There's a great many people there who don't converse in english either.

WHO THE FUCK CALLS IT A BUBBLER IT DOESN'T HAVE BUBBLES WHAT THE FUCK

I recently had a conversation with our daughter as to why they called them crayfish if they weren't fish. Maybe crawdad is a better word for them...

phil said:

WHO THE FUCK CALLS IT A BUBBLER IT DOESN'T HAVE BUBBLES WHAT THE FUCK

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I think British speakers call it a bubbler? So it probably came from... there...ish.

No surprise here. In Bermuda, most of the Brits working there were more familiar with east coast Americans (which were the most common ones on the island), so they expected Californians to sound like Bill and/or Ted. "You sound like people reading the news."

"Yinz" is not an option. The data is invalid.

It is an option when you take the test though.

doomdragon6 said:

I think British speakers call it a bubbler? So it probably came from... there...ish.

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Not even remotely, brother.

Every Brit I've ever known called it fizzy drink.

It said I'm from Buffalo too which is kinda surprising because I'm basically the only person in the city who calls it soda.

Frank said:

Every Brit I've ever known called it fizzy drink.

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Bubbler is what some people call a water fountain. I've actually heard it called that up here in Wisconsin.

What you're referring to is soda/pop.

I wound up in a Baltimore/D.C./Louisville triangle. Less Pittsburgh than I expected, but the Baltimore accent is fairly close.


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk HD

phil said:

WHO THE FUCK CALLS IT A BUBBLER IT DOESN'T HAVE BUBBLES WHAT THE FUCK

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Southern Wisconsin has a lot of underground springs, thanks to the receding glaciers and the Kettle Moraine lakes they created. When someone decided, long long ago, to stick a pipe down into the ground to free some of that water for drinking, it "bubbled" up to the surface. Hence, when people would go to a spring to get water, they would turn on the spigot and it would "bubble" up through the well, and into their jar/bottle/bucket.

Sorry, you're talking to someone from a city known for its springs. (Even if they were highly infused with radium.)

stienman said:

Like Kleenex and Ibuprofen, it was a brand name that entered the language as normal use, though in this case only in a small portion of the country:

http://whoonew.com/2013/03/why-a-bubbler/

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You mean Kleenex and Advil?

GasBandit said:

You mean Kleenex and Advil?

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I think Aspirin would be the go to example of a trademark brand name pain killer that is universally used to mean all pain killers.

Bowielee said:

I think Aspirin would be the go to example of a trademark brand name pain killer that is universally used to mean all pain killers.

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Eh, maybe 20+ years ago. It certainly became the naming standard for acetylsalicylic acid.. but these days whenever anybody asks me if I have something for their headache, it's always "Can I borrow some Advil?" They had a REALLY effective marketing campaign in the 90s, and from what I've read, it's much more effective on menstrual pain.

I think the trademarked name you were thinking of was "Motrin." That's the one that got all the traction before Advil came on the scene.
Poor Nuprin, nobody remembers you any more. Maybe you were too yellow, too different.

--Patrick

Huh.

http://nyti.ms/1mIJ0rg

A non comprehensive list of name brands that became the name for the thing that they are.

Band-Aid
Kool-Aid
Q-tip
Vaseline
Aspirin
Kleenex
Dry Ice
Linoleum
Thermos
Escalator

Q-Tips and Band-aids.

Edit - DAMMIT Bowie, too fast for me today.

I could have done that, but that takes all the fun out of it.[DOUBLEPOST=1408985695,1408985455][/DOUBLEPOST]I still remember it blowing my mind when I found out that Escalator was a brand name.

Bowielee said:

I could have done that, but that takes all the fun out of it.[DOUBLEPOST=1408985695,1408985455][/DOUBLEPOST]I still remember it blowing my mind when I found out that Escalator was a brand name.

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... the hell is the generic name for Escalator then? Moving stairs?

stienman said:

Yep. Moving staircase; just like moving sidewalk.

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"That's the thing about a moving staircase. It can never go out of order, it can only become stairs."
Nah, doesn't have the same ring.

--Patrick

PatrThom said:

"That's the thing about a moving staircase. It can never go out of order, it can only become stairs."
Nah, doesn't have the same ring.

--Patrick

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That comic never saw this Metro escalator accident in DC

I remember that. Flywheel broke loose, or something, which meant there was no braking system working to keep people who got on at the top from accelerating the whole shebang into the big pileup at the bottom, just like an overshot waterwheel.

--Patrick

blotsfan said:

It said I'm from Buffalo too which is kinda surprising because I'm basically the only person in the city who calls it soda.

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BURN THE HERETIC!