Saturday, September 5, 2026

That Dialect Map

Did you do the most recent version of the U.S. dialect quiz? (I took the 60-question version.)

I don't know how valid it is, even for native English speakers in this country. Here's mine:

This was my second attempt. My first landed me even more solidly in northern Michigan with almost no medium red in Minnesota, and listed my most similar cities as Milwaukee and Chicago. 

Quizzes like this are hard for me as an East Coast transplant. Sometimes I hear word choices from my earlier life and don't know which one I should answer. Do I say soda or pop these days? It depends on who my audience is.

On this second pass, I consciously went with more "Minnesota" answers, and the medium now red extends into the place I've called home for 40 years, with Minneapolis showing up as one of my most similar cities. 

It seems pretty odd to me that Upstate New York would be in the low end of the blue range for me, though. I think the quiz-makers don't know how people talk in that part of the country and think they're the same as people from the New York City area, which is not true. (The Mary/merry/marry question for instance: that is not something people from Upstate New York differentiate, in my experience.) 

Where do your words say you're from? How accurate do you think this quiz is?

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