American accent test

Barnhart barnhart at HIGHLANDS.COM
Mon Mar 24 22:36:20 UTC 2008


This is what it said about me:

"You have a Midland accent" is just another way of saying "you don't have
an accent." You probably are from the Midland (Pennsylvania, southern
Ohio, southern Indiana, southern Illinois, and Missouri) but then for all
we know you could be from Florida or Charleston or one of those big
southern cities like Atlanta or Dallas. You have a good voice for TV and
radio.

My mother was from Wisconsin; my father was born in Missouri and raised in
eastern Kansas.  I was born in suburban Chicago.  But we moved to suburban
NYC when I was 4 years old.  I spent by Freshman year in college at Beloit
(s. Wis.) and the remainder of my undergraduate days in Syracuse.

During orientation at Syracuse, a graduate student who was surveying
incoming transfers and freshmen for the school of speech, questioned my
need for speech therapy.  The supervising professor dismissed my "speech
impediment" as just extra-nasal twang.  Nevertheless, I received a summons
to attend speech therapy classes.  I was so exacerbated that I tore up the
post card and never thought about it again until just before graduation
when one gets the warning about returning all library books and fulfilling
all "other" requirements.  I sweating out getting my orange diploma.  It
came in the mail about two months later.

Regards,
David B

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



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