What American accent do you have? | Comments

Seems to me that:

a) many here are unable to honestly assess their own accents. They'd be better off letting someone else evaluate how they pronouce the question words for them.

b) this quiz is aimed at Americans. It's misapplied if used by English or Australian or other people. You probably are incapable of distinguishing from amongst various American accents, just as most Americans are only able to distinguish between Scottish and English and Irish accents, if that, when English people know that there are scores of different "English accents". As for non-English speaking people, it's even worse. In France, I'm asked "Are you British, American or Australian?". This question is so ridiculous to anyone actually from any of these countries because their accents are so different, yet to a Frenchman, they are all similar.

The quiz is fairly accurate if answered honestly and without embellishment. I'm a Canadian, but scored as "West", BUT that's accurate, because I live in the USA and I have an extremely generic accent now, i.e. "West". Philly, NYC, and others have certain very specific traits, and thus are readily identified as such.

80 percent off the mark on me. I have never lived in Philadelphia and grew up mainly in the South and have lived in California for the past 15 years. I learned to speak from my mother and father who were educated in Colorado and Oklahoma. I lived in New Orleans and Venezuela. Poor grammar and vowel pronunciation is not the same as dialect differences. Dialect is more from air passage, soft palette and hard palette emphasis, speaking from the diaphragm, air burst intensity and many more factors. I am so tired of people stigmatizing Southerners and bigots, morons, unable to speak English and lacking credibility and Californians as airheads who talk like Valley Girls. Thank you though for providing the forum for me to say this... : )

i spent the first sixteen years of my life in western Kentucky. After that I lived for several years each in Kansas; Missouri; SF, California; Atlanta; Washington D.C. and landed in Texas thirty years ago. It was funny that when I was living in the midwest and west (when I talked with my sister -still living in Kentucky-), I could definitely hear her southern accent. This indicated to me that I was probably losing some of my southern speech. However when I moved to Texas, I no longer could hear a southern drawl in her speech. I know that Texas has certain phrases that are truly Texan and I tried to never adopt them. I thought that I certainly have a bit of a southern accent, but the test indicated that it was indeed Southern. Do you have a scale to ascertain whether an accent is Very Southern, Mildly Southern or Deep Southern as in Georgia, North & South Carolina? In my opinion, the drawl used by most natives in South Carolina, North Carolina and Georgia is different from the southern dialect in Kentucky and Tennessee.

I'm from North Jersey and that's the accent it said even though I've been in the deep South most of my life.

Hi emoman,

The quiz is to ID an American accent, so how can it be accurate for anyone else? It had to pick something.

Also, the NY/NJ accent was heavily influenced by the British accent since it was (an is) a major port with frequent travel, business, and visitors from Great Britain.

I can assure you I don't think you, your countrymen, or your accent is in anyway posh. In fact UK is practically a third-world socialist toilet with 60% of all citizens in public housing. If you constantly hear "fish-n-chips" I would upgrade your associates rather than complain about it.

I have a 90% Philadelphia accent, with close contenders in Northeast (which is New York, North Jersey, 75%) and Midland (typical All-American accent, 70%). My accent least resembles North Central (10%) and the West (30%).

I was born in Seattle, almost immediately moved to Silver Spring MD and stayed for all of 2 years, and then to Philadelphia and stayed with my cousins (dad's side, from Wayne PA which is outside of philly about 30 minutes). Then my dad was moved to Cairo Egypt and I went to preschool at the Cairo American College. a year and a half later I moved to Philly and lived in the city for 5 years. Then in about 6th grade we moved to Cheltenham, a near suburb north of the city. After high school, I went to Penn State University in Central PA, though half of the student body there claims to be from the Philadelphia area.

This pretty much hits it spot on.

Hey I just took the quiz, and it was 100% correct!

This is the result:

"Your accent is as Philadelphian as a cheesesteak! If you're not from Philadelphia, then you're from someplace near there like south Jersey, Baltimore, or Wilmington. if you've ever journeyed to some far off place where people don't know that Philly has an accent, someone may have thought you talked a little weird even though they didn't have a clue what accent it was they heard."

And of course, I grew up in suburban Philadelphia, PA, but now live in South Florida where there are hundreds of english accents to discern here. I often guess correctly where someone grew up by their speech patterns, and sometimes others guess mine too. Sometimes I get called on for saying "take out the light" or the pronunciation of some common words. I like philly cheesesteaks and hoagies, and big salty soft pretzels, the kind I remember from childhood we got in grade school. Happy New Year, 2009!

I am often mistaken for a Northeasterner, as the test analysis suggest, however, I am a born-and-raised Texan, having lived a year as a six-year old in LA, CA as my only out-of-state living experience. I suspect that comes from having attended schools where the instructors were Irish nuns who taught us to carefully and correctly enunciate our words (in the Irish vernacular). Couple that with parents who did the same (as well as limited our socializing to a select group during our younger years – for me through age 15), and the personal desire to speak as distinctly and as nearly correct as possible.

According to the quiz, I am "Philadelphia". Being born and reared in western NC, this is somewhat surprising, although my mother was from Philadelphia so perhaps learning to speak from her, as a child, had that

influence.

The quiz further evaluates (me) ... "Your accent is as Philadelphian as a cheesesteak! If you're not from Philadelphia, then you're from someplace near there like south Jersey, Baltimore, or Wilmington. if you've ever

journeyed to some far off place where people don't know that Philly has an accent, someone may have thought you talked a little weird even though they didn't have a clue what accent it was they heard."

I have been told by people that I have a neutral, midwestern accent. I have been told by my Philadelphia relatives that I have a very southern accent. So, I'm not convinced at all that this analysis is reliable. Fun, though.

Hi!

I got Midland,but I'm actually from Canada,so I was just taking this for fun.Anyways,I'm Erin,a girl with Cystic Fibrosis(CF).

My older sister,Meghan,died at the age of (almost) three

from a blood infection.It was five days before her birthday when

she died and I was only six months.

My best friend is Maddie,a sarcastic,but sweet true friend.

I just sprained my ankle a few days ago while jumping rope at school,

but that's another story.By Sunday,I will hopefully be able to put weight

on it.I enjoy singing,dancing,act ing,guitar,piano and art.

I love the color purple,Taylor Swift and cats!

This was fun - although way off the mark geographically for me. I am that rare native Californian, and have lived here all my life (over 65 years) except for perhaps one year in Texas when I was toddler. I have, however, been exposed to people from many other cultures and languages all my life. The quiz results for me said

"Your accent is as Philadelphian as a cheesesteak! If you're not from Philadelphia, then you're from someplace near there like south Jersey, Baltimore, or Wilmington. If you've ever journeyed to some far off place where people don't know that Philly has an accent, someone may have thought you talked a little weird even though they didn't have a clue what accent it was they heard."

BUT, the interesting thing is that I have often been told that I speak with an EAST Coast accent! So go figure.... ;-)

Yes, I have your B-flat Mid Atlantic American accent: I was Raised in western PA,lived in upstate NY(where they thought I had a "southern" accent because they thought I called one of my male students "Dawn" instead of "Don" which they pronounce more like a drawn out "Done"), North TX(where they thought I had a standard "Yankee" accent). I have also been told by native speakers that I have "no accent" in Spanish, German, Urdu, Hindi, and French. People generally can't tell where I'm from (I once had a British merchant say to me in surprise: "Oh, you're not local!"

You hit the nail on the head! Though a lot of people think that we who live along the northern side of the Ohio River sound southern, as long as we live in a rural area and own a lot of land, for some reason. That could be because a lot of our ancestors came from down south before the Civil War and it made us "talk funny" to these Johnny-Come Latelys from the big cities around here nowadays. But I do know my genealogy and the "place sounds" that you identified in my voice ARE where my forebears lived at one time or another. I also think that having Native American roots makes us sound very mimicky, thus our BUFF sound ;-)

I wholeheartedly agree with Speaks, the SLPA. If the questions were answered correctly, the test is very accurate. It's difficult for the average person to perceive their own subtle vowel distortions, but we Speech & Language people have been transcribing the sounds for years. My test results said Inland-North and had me pegged on the Great Lakes. Right on! When we tell people in other parts of the country that we are from NY, they can't believe it. Most think the NYC city twang of "Noo Yawkahs" is typical for all of us, but it's those regionalisms again! And yes, we do drink "pop."

Your Result: The Midland 88%

"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.

You say Boston, when the Northeast is 33% West 88% and Midland 85%, your graph is right, but the association is not. Boston is nowhere near Kansas or LA, I have lived in the great Plains states most of my life, been to Boston once, to California twice. I have lived in Kansas, Oklahoma, Colorado, Wyoming and North Carolina, but they didn't influence my speech patterns, especially North Carolina.

Your graph shows West 88, Midland 85, North Central 66, Philiadelphia 40, Northeast 33, Inland North 26, South 23, so Northeast is totally out of the question!