Re: [ADS-L] [FL-LIST] dialect test

RonButters at AOL.COM RonButters at AOL.COM
Thu Nov 30 22:55:32 UTC 2006


In a message dated 11/30/06 3:47:01 PM, flanigan at OHIO.EDU writes:


> 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.
> 
> 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). "
> 
> 
> In large parts of North and South Carolina, "on" and "gone" rhyme with "bone" 
...

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



More information about the Ads-l mailing list