[FL-LIST] dialect test

[Beverly Flanigan]

At 10:54 AM 11/30/2006, you wrote:
>In a message dated 11/30/06 6:05:33 AM, mamihoka at TCUE.AC.JP writes:
>
>
> > I've found this test very interesting, because my results is 'you may
> > think you speak "Standard English straight out of the dictionary" but
> > when you step away from the Great Lakes you get asked annoying
> > questions like "Are you from Wisconsin?" ,,,'.
> >
> > I am a nonnative speaker of English and I do have Japanese accent on
> > my English.
> >
>
>Apparently I am from Japan, too, since I got the same response. No one has
>EVER accused me of being from Wisconsin. Still, "inland North" is not too far
>off for someone from east-central Iowa.
>
>The quiz could be far more accurate if it were not obsessed with the
>"ah"/"awe" distinction. It missed entirely the Southern pronounciation of
>"on." No
>mention of the diagnostic word "tour." A true dialect test (as opposed to an
>"accent" test would have included some lexical and morphological questions.

I came up Inland North too, which isn't how I'd label far western
Minnesota.  But I am an "ah/awe" splitter (the quiz's obsession, I agree),
and my "on" rhymes with my Northern "Don," not with "dawn" (as is the case
in southern Ohio and the South).  But it missed my Canadian/Minnesotan
raising of "ay"; a lot of us up there raise "ay" but don't say
"aboot."  And yeah, we said "pop."

As I recall, there was an online quiz a few years ago that included more
items but got almost everyone of our listers wrong; it wasn't subtle enough
and blurred some common distinctions.  This short diagnostic seems to be
getting most of us right, though too broadly so, perhaps.  The Japanese
respondent very likely got her English from Northern (otherwise called
"Standard," pace Dennis) teachers and pronunciation textbooks--which ought
to please our "straight out of the dictionary" correspondent.

>------------------------------------------------------------
>The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org

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The American Dialect Society - http://www.americandialect.org