We Speak American Here

What American accent do you have? Your Result: The Northeast   Judging by how you talk you are probably from north Jersey, New York City, Connecticut or Rhode Island. Chances are, if you are from New York City (and not those other places) people would probably be able to tell if they actually heard you speak.
Philadelphia
The Inland North
The Midland
The South
Boston
The West
North Central
What American accent do you have? Take More Quizzes

The quiz speaks the truth. I am, indeed, from the Northeast and even specifically from New York as they specify. Of course the northeast, at least to this northeasterner's ear, comes with a variety of sub-accents. At least among older and less educated people minimally impacted by the ongoing homogenization of American speech you can detect distinct North Jersey, Long Island, Rhode Island, etc. variations of the accent. A few of the characters on The Wire (Colvin's Deputy Commander in the Western District, the Assistant Principal at Edward Tilgman Middle) have opened our ears to the traditional speech patterns of Baltimore's white ethnic types.

This comes via Jim Henley. In terms of American accents, the thing I find really weird are the people who pronounce "bag" like it rhymes with "vague." I used to think this was just how Canadians talk, but it seems to be widespread in our northern midwest and so forth as well.

Comments

I just took the test, and it tells me I'm from the Northeast as well--and I grew up in South Carolina.

Posted by David | November 28, 2006 8:35 AM

I was Philadelphia, with Midland close behind. Which is shockingly accurate, since I'm from Baltimore but was raised by military kids who mostly had been beaten out of their accents.

Posted by MDtoMN | November 28, 2006 8:35 AM

It will come as no surprise to anyone who knows me that I also got a 100% northeast rating. They probably could have narrowed it down a little more with a "talk" and "tok" question.

One quibble though. Speaking as someone who grew up in Manhattan and Brooklyn, I've never heard any difference between the accents in North Jersey and the accents in Long Island. A lack of difference shouldn't be a surprise considering that both were populated relatively recently by people leaving the urban core. What you do have, however, are racial and class distinctions that are distributed differently in different places. That makes it seem like Newark and Great Neck have different accents, or the Bronx and Staten Island, when what really differs is the preponderance of various linguistic groups who speak homogenously across the metro area.

E.g., a young poor white Catholic fellow in Saddle River speaks just like a young poor white Catholic fellow in East Harlem, although any two people picked randomly from those two places won't sound terribly similar. Or, put differently, a middle-class African-American in Paramus speaks a lot like a middle-class white guy on the Upper West Side. It's the distribution of classes and ethnic groups in those categories what varies across places, not the accent of people with similar backgrounds.

Posted by Noel Maurer | November 28, 2006 8:41 AM

I'm Canadian, but I took the test anyways. Turns out I'm a "North Central", and that outsiders often mistake me for a Canadian. Fancy that.

Posted by James Ross | November 28, 2006 9:07 AM

Interesting quiz! I have a Midland accent (no accent, they say), which apparently can be achieved by spending one's childhood in San Francisco and one's later teen years in Baltimore. Their other guesses (Penn, Ohio, Dallas, etc. were completely off base.)

Posted by RSA | November 28, 2006 9:09 AM

It pegged me correctly with a Midlands accent, having been born in southwestern Ohio and raised in southwestern Indiana. I'm told by most Europeans that I work with that I have an easy accent to understand as compared to my coworkers from the Northeast, Texas, or the South. Which I suppose makes sense with the media exposure we Midlands-speakers have.

Posted by josephdietrich | November 28, 2006 9:10 AM

Noel: there are like four "talk"/"tok" questions already on that survey.

Also, you're right that within a particular dialect region like the New York City region, there's not really much geographical variation—there's no distinct Bronx and Staten Island accents; the variation that one hears is mainly based on ethnicity and class. But Matt's right that what that survey calls "the northeast" is actually several different dialect areas with some features in common. Even most of North Jersey is outside the New York City accent, though just barely.

Posted by AJD | November 28, 2006 9:12 AM

I was told I have a Boston accent. I spent my first 11 years in DC and then moved to New Hampshire. I thought I still spoke with a DC/Baltimore accent, but apparently not.

Posted by vanya | November 28, 2006 9:13 AM

I'm Canadian, and I don't rhyme "bag" and "vague." Canadians aren't generally affected by the Northern cities vowel shift -- that's more in the Great Lakes areas south of the border.

I do pronounce "about" and "loud" with different vowels, but they sound near-identical to me. In my experience, a lot of Canadians can't hear the difference. (Americans can, though they generally think we're saying "aboot," which we aren't.)

Posted by Matthew B. | November 28, 2006 9:14 AM

Joseph: Media exposure, nothin'. Everyone in the country has the same amount of media exposure. It's just that the sound changes that have happened (or are happening) in the Midland are, for the most part, either less drastic than the ones that have happened in other parts of the country, or the same sound changes that are happening in other places as well.

Posted by AJD | November 28, 2006 9:14 AM

The test is nuts. I've lived all but 5 years of my life in the South and it thinks I'm from Philadelphia. (Never been to Philadelphia. Never been to Pennsylvania except for a 1972 trip to DC along the Penn Turnpike.)

The question I'd ask is how many syllables does "I" have. Most people from the north and east dipthong their long Is so that it comes out I-eee. "I-eee am going to the store." People from the South don't. It gets parodied as "Ahh", but it isn't. The single syllable "I" for some reason strikes Northerners and Easterners as hysterical. Not as funny as the Canadian "oo" in "oot and aboot", but getting there.

Posted by Jeffrey Davis | November 28, 2006 9:16 AM

It tells me I'm from the inland north. I suppose Cambridge is slightly inland from Boston, but that's not how I would have described it.

Posted by hilzoy | November 28, 2006 9:16 AM

Also, you're right that within a particular dialect region like the New York City region, there's not really much geographical variation—there's no distinct Bronx and Staten Island accents; the variation that one hears is mainly based on ethnicity and class. But Matt's right that what that survey calls "the northeast" is actually several different dialect areas with some features in common. Even most of North Jersey is outside the New York City accent, though just barely.

I'll endorse this analysis.

Posted by Matthew Yglesias | November 28, 2006 9:18 AM

Interesting quiz. I got Midlands -- grew up in Arizona, which I'd think would give me a "Western" accent of some sort, but the area is mostly recent transplants from the Midwest, so I suppose it makes sense.

Ever noticed how *different* people sound in older movie and TV shows, from as recently as the 1960's? It's not really noticeable unless you imagine someone talking like that today, and then you realize how unnatural it would seem. Very articulated and precise, with a hint of British. I've always wondered if this was an actual accent -- perhaps some remnant of the old mid-Atlantic accent that's only in evidence by William F. Buckley today -- or whether it's just "stage" English, and has been purposely stylized both for effect and to be picked up on boom mics easier.

Posted by Alex | November 28, 2006 9:30 AM

The quiz is nuts!

I got "the South" which is interesting seeing as how I grew up in Minnesota, lived in North Dakota, Illinois, and California before moving to the Maryland suburbs of DC. I guess technically MD is south of the Mason-Dixon line, but come on!

Posted by DanMD | November 28, 2006 9:44 AM

A very dubious test ... I got "Inland North," which seems to be the Great Lakes region. I've never lived there - I grew up in Connecticut and have been on Long Island for the past nine years.

E.g., a young poor white Catholic fellow in Saddle River speaks just like a young poor white Catholic fellow in East Harlem

Not too many whites in East Harlem. Or many poor people in Saddle River.

Posted by Peter | November 28, 2006 9:55 AM

Inland North.

I was taught the Queen's English which I speak with a heavy Dutch accent.

Sure fooled that quiz.

Posted by jasper emmering | November 28, 2006 9:57 AM

I'm told I am from the Northeast, which is correct (grew up in North Jersey; live in Manhattan). Seems to me from the results on this thread that the quiz gets "Northeast" accents correct but is spotty on the other ones.

Also, you're right that within a particular dialect region like the New York City region, there's not really much geographical variation—there's no distinct Bronx and Staten Island accents; the variation that one hears is mainly based on ethnicity and class.

I think this is wrong, to some extent. In my father's generation, there was definately a distinction between NYC-area sub-regions - even within New York City. My father's Brooklyn accent is different than my parents' friends' Bronx accents and my mothers' New Jersey accent. (Perhaps this is too subtle for those who don't live with some of those accents on a day-to-day basis?) However, as far as younger people living in those sub-regions today, I don't think there are those distinctions any more, and I would agree that distinctions based on ethnicity and class are more important. Given TV and transportation today, geography is such a less important factor - you simply grow up dealing with and listening to people from all the different sub-regions a lot more today than you did 50 years ago.

Posted by Al | November 28, 2006 10:00 AM

Well, I'm going to have to stand behind the test:
"You definitely have a Boston accent, even if you think you don't. Of course, that doesn't mean you are from the Boston area, you may also be from New Hampshire or Maine."

I grew up in Boston with two parents from NYC and among my Boston friends, none would say I have a real accent. People from the Northeast generally agree with that judgement, but folks from the South or Midwest are actually quicker to pick up on where I'm from...

Posted by Dan K | November 28, 2006 10:12 AM

I just posted the same thing -- only I got a perfect score -- almost 100% Minnesota accent. And I'm actually proud of that.

How else would you say vague? To me, it rhymes with bag. Is it vAUgue?

Posted by Chris | November 28, 2006 10:23 AM

Canadians from the Maritimes, Newfoundland, and the backwoods of Ontario rhyme Bag and Vague. Americanized Torontonians usually don't.

Posted by Anon | November 28, 2006 10:27 AM

I don't get it. Do you mean they pronounce "bag" as "bayg" or that they pronounce "vague" as "vag"? Both are weird, although there are plenty of people who pronounce "vague" as "vegg" - nothing weird about that.

In New Zealand, "bag" would be "beeg."

Posted by JP | November 28, 2006 10:44 AM

"Vague" rhymes with "Hague," "bag" with "sag" and "hag."

Posted by Alex | November 28, 2006 10:45 AM

Midlands here, I'm from Florida but the result explenation nailed it, "Your accent is the lowest common denominator of American speech. Unless you're a SoCal surfer, no one thinks you have an accent. And really, you may not even be from the West at all, you could easily be from Florida or one of those big Southern cities like Dallas or Atlanta."

Southern people in big cities have western accents, interesting.

Posted by miguel | November 28, 2006 10:48 AM

Chris -

If you've got a Minnesota accent, then for the rest of us it's not "how else would you say vague?" - that's fine (best as I can recall from the kids I knew from the Twin Cities). It's "how else would you say bag?", and...I'm trying to think of words I've heard Minnesotans say that I know have the same vowel sound. Does the first syllable of "magazine" rhyme with "vague" to you? If not, that's how you say "bag".

Test told me I had a Boston accent, which is wrong in that I don't have the Boston accent (or any variant of "the" New England accent, and where I grew up had a different shading from Boston) but I did grow up in the area and it pegged me because of some of the vowel stuff, but outside of people who know and pick up on those subtleties, people don't know where I'm from from my voice. I don't think this test, as I posted at Pandagon, could tell the difference between a kid from Southie and a Boston Brahmin - so it might be relatively accurate at indicating where you're from, but not what you sound like.

Posted by Quarterican | November 28, 2006 10:52 AM

Oops, I meant The West, not Midlands.

Posted by miguel | November 28, 2006 10:53 AM

Got a definite Boston, which is good because that's where I spent my first 18 years. And in a working class, dialect-rich part of town to boot. I'll have to stand by the quiz, at least for picking out Northeast and Boston accents. I've lived outside Boston for over 10 years and people refuse to believe I'm from there because they expect to hear a "cah" or "pahk" when I talk, but I do, in fact, pronounce my Rs. It's the vowels that give me away, I tell people, not the Rs. And this quiz picked almost all the telltale vowels.

Posted by keith m | November 28, 2006 11:06 AM

RSA,

I have a Midland accent (no accent, they say), which apparently can be achieved by spending one's childhood in San Francisco

When I was in theatre school studying accents, I was surprised to be told that I had a "Midwest" (Midlands in this test) accent, since I grew up in S.F. as you did. My dialect coach explained that most Californians spoke with a Midwest accent, due to the fact that most of the population was descended from Midwestern immigrants.

Posted by Samba00 | November 28, 2006 11:31 AM

Quarterican-

Yep, to me vague is the same sound as magazine.

Posted by Chris | November 28, 2006 11:34 AM

Chris -

Alex got there before me, and with better examples. Of course, maybe "Vague," "Hague," "sag," and "hag" all sound the same to you as well. In any case, I endorse Alex's suggestions ("Vague" rhymes with "Hague", "Bag" with "Sag", and the two definitely don't rhyme with each other.) Not distinguishing those two sounds is the most distinctive, to me, trait of the Minnesota accent - you probably could've gotten all the other questions "wrong" for your accent, and that one answer would've pegged you.

Posted by Quarterican | November 28, 2006 11:40 AM

New York, New Jersey raised. I got exactly the same results as Matthew.

Posted by Hisownfool | November 28, 2006 11:42 AM

Inland North.

Hmm, English is not my native language. I was taught mainly British English in school, Hollywood from films, spent one year in Michigan at 19, have lived in SF Bay Area for the last eight years.

Posted by kvenlander | November 28, 2006 11:43 AM

New York born, New Jersey raised. I got exactly the same results as Matthew.

Posted by Hisownfool | November 28, 2006 11:43 AM

it said i have equal parts North, Midlands and South. that makes some sense, since i grew up in northern PA/southern-tier-NY - a little PA, a little New England, a little Great Lakes.

Posted by cleek | November 28, 2006 11:46 AM

Well I got The West. I'm from Minnesota, currently living in Iowa and when I went home for thanksgiving people said my vowels had shortened. Plus I speak Spanish and multiple languages generally decrease accents.

So yeah. I don't have an accent.

Posted by SSJPabs | November 28, 2006 11:55 AM

It falsely said I was from the Midland but the more accurate Boston was second.

Posted by James Kabala | November 28, 2006 12:17 PM

I got Midland, with South coming in a close second. Although it did concede I might be from a large metropolitan area in the south like Dallas. Which it turns out, is where I am.

Posted by DRR | November 28, 2006 12:25 PM

Boston. Of course I was born there and lived the first 25 years of my life there. Til this day it never occurred to me that I was pronouncing bag with a long 'a' sound. Weird. But then its barely noticable you really need to be looking for it. I'm surprised they didn't have a question about how bath is pronounced. In Boston it doesn't rhyme with math, unless you pronounce math as mahth.

Posted by jg | November 28, 2006 12:38 PM

Scarily accurate for me. I got Inland North, and grew up in upstate NY -- which any native will tell you is much more the Great Lakes than the Northeast.

Posted by MQ | November 28, 2006 1:20 PM

That's weird. I've lived in Northern California and Southern California, but never anywhere else, and it said I have a Midlands accent. I have no idea what a Midlands accent sounds like, but I don't think I have one. Anybody get a similar result?

Posted by too many steves | November 28, 2006 1:30 PM

Tells me the Midland, with the West second. I have lived my whole life on the Pacific Coast.

Posted by tiparillo | November 28, 2006 1:32 PM

I'm originally from New England but have lived in the Midwest and Rocky Mountain states. The quiz tells me I speak like someone from Philadelphia (or close to the city). That's funny, because I've only driven through Philadelphia.

Posted by Danton | November 28, 2006 1:36 PM

Canadians say "about with an uh+oo dipthongs, Americans say ah+oh, but they imitate each other with "aboot" and "aboat".

Bag = vague seems to be the least common of the North Central features. I got 90%. I was away for 40 years, though.

West of the Mississippi is sort of generic, with a mix of various eastern accents, some more than others.

Posted by John Emerson | November 28, 2006 1:39 PM

Rhyming "bag" and "vague" is, as far as I can tell, only very common in Minnesota. But there are occasional people who do rhyme them scattered across a large area of western Canada and the northwestern and north-central US (from Wisconsin to Washington).

JP: In New Zealand, "bag" would sound like "beg".

Al: Let me put it this way: no scientific study has found there to be accent variation between different parts of New York—or, as far as I know, any large city—that can't be more easily explained as the result of class and ethnicity. There's lots of anecdotal claims made, but not much in the way of evidence. However, the New York accent falls off pretty quickly once you leave the city, so someone from Long Island or North Jersey or maybe even Westchester might indeed have a different geographical accent than someone from the city.

Posted by AJD | November 28, 2006 2:02 PM

It's my position that New Zealanders have only one vowel sound in their lexicon, the "ee" sound.

Posted by JP | November 28, 2006 2:53 PM

Matt, I've listened to a couple of your diavlogs, and you don't sound like you have an accent to me. Then again, I got the same results as you.

By the way, when you are recording video, look at the camera steadily, and for the love of god talk slower. It makes it less likely that your mouth runs ahead of your thoughts with the resulting ums, ahs, you knows, and the dreaded likes. If you have nothing to say, don't use verbal fillers. Just listen to Uma Thurman in Pulp Fiction. I'd rather hear nothing than hear someone fill the silence with nonsense syllables just so there is sound. As others have pointed out, how well someone in the public eye performs on TV is a critical factor to their success and importance (though that is very, very unfortunate.) Please, Matt, if you are ever going to fill the void created by the ignorance of Tom Friedman, you have to improve your performance in front of the camera (or webcam). Just listen to how much slower than you Robert Wright or Dan Drezner talks. Don't believe me? You can listen to the diavlogs at 1.1x, 1.2x, 1.3x, etc. speeds. To save time, the last time I listened at 1.3x. Drenzer was easily understandable at the higher speed and you were not. So slow down, and maybe I won't have to see Friedman's face at the gym, like I did this morning, which immediately angered me (and there was no sound even!)

Oh, where was I before I got sidetracked? The people in the Northeast speak properly (with or without an accent, I don't care about the classification.) Everyone else is wrong. Our pronunciations match the dictionary pronunciations. You don't see www.m-w.com indicating that bag rhymes with vague. What the hell is that? Cot does not sound like caught, don and dawn are different, ditto stock and stalk. I don't even know how there is even a debate about these things. Look up the pronunciations. (Check that, I looked some up on m-w.com and they are pronounced the bizarre ways also. I hate this fucking world.)

And what's the deal with the mary/merry/marry question? My answer is not a choice. I pronounce mary and marry the same and merry differently. A is a different sound then E in most cases. I know, call me crazy.

Posted by Mitch Schindler | November 28, 2006 3:49 PM

OK, I give. What's the pronounciation difference between "cot" and "caught"? I can't even imagine how they would sound different. "Don" and "dawn" sound the same to me, but at least I can imagine how they might be different, if pronounced super-meticulously.

Posted by too many steves | November 28, 2006 4:05 PM

Bag = vague seems to be the least common of the North Central features. I got 90%. I was away for 40 years, though.

Agreed. It would never occur to me that those words rhyme, and my accent is as Minnesotan as they come (the correct test for which is "do people from other parts of the country make fun of you when you pronounce any word featuring a long 'O'?").

OK, I give. What's the pronounciation difference between "cot" and "caught"?

To my ear, "cot" sounds like "caht," whereas "caught" sounds like "cawt." This is kind of hard to hash out with letters that everyone pronunces differently, though.

Does anybody out there pronounce "wash" like "warsh"? My grandmother does this (she's from southern Illinois). As far as I can tell, this pronunciation quirk extends only to the words "wash" and "Washington."

Posted by Chilly | November 28, 2006 4:21 PM

"Don" and "dawn" sound the same to me

my wife's name is Dawn. she's from Cleveland, and i'm from upstate NY. nobody mixes "Don" and "Dawn" up there. ten years ago, we moved to NC - nobody who was born down here can tell the difference. people always think my wife's name is "Don".

on the other hand, i pronounce 'frog' like 'frahhg', which i guess is some kind of crazy New England thing. it's the only word i can think of that i put that kind of spin on...

Posted by cleek | November 28, 2006 4:31 PM

OK, I give. What's the pronounciation difference between "cot" and "caught"? I can't even imagine how they would sound different.

"Cot" rhymes with "dot."

"Caught" rhymes with "ought."

Posted by blah | November 28, 2006 4:43 PM

Southerners who do not wish to be thought stupid generally adopt the Midland accent, because it's so accessible (from television and movies). I'm one, but since I can't demonstrate, I'll point to Stephen Colbert, who is from South Carolina.

One tell for such metamorphs is a slight overemphasis of the trailing "g" in words ending in "ing," since nothing marks you as a redneck faster than lyin' about winnin' the spittin' contest.

Posted by James Killus | November 28, 2006 4:57 PM

That didn't help. "Dot" and "ought" rhyme with each other, if you're a normal American.

Posted by too many steves | November 28, 2006 5:07 PM

What kind of freaking New England accent does Senator Susan Collins have?

Posted by Hedley Lamarr | November 28, 2006 5:11 PM

Right on. Says I have a Boston accent and that I could be from New Hampshire or Maine. I grew up in New Hampshire.

Posted by kd | November 28, 2006 5:42 PM

Maybe this page will help:

http://www.ling.upenn.edu/courses/Summer_2004/ling001/lecture2.html

Note the following:

Many Americans do not distinguish the vowels [a] and [:], pronouncing cot and caught the same way. That's just one of many variations in pronunciation for different regional dialects.

Do you also pronounce the vowel sounds in "law" and "saw" the same as "dot" and "cot"?

Posted by blah | November 28, 2006 5:46 PM

'"Don" and "dawn" sound the same to me, but at least I can imagine how they might be different, if pronounced super-meticulously.
'

Or if my college roommate from Lone Gisland (Long Island to the rest of us) was talking. I could definately picture him pronouncing Dawn as Dorn to match the way he said corl as in 'you got a phone corl'.

Posted by jg | November 28, 2006 6:21 PM

I think that possibly Senator Collins, who is from Caribou in far northern Maine, has an accent influenced by that of maritime Canada. The president of the college I attended as an undergraduate was from Prince Edward Island and he sounded a lot like her.

Posted by James Kabala | November 28, 2006 6:32 PM

James Killus: Although really, g-dropping is a feature of nearly all American dialects to an extent. Southerners probably do it the most, but I've known very few people, unfortunately, who enunciated their -ings properly 100% of the time.

Posted by James Kabala | November 28, 2006 6:37 PM

Assuming it can be trusted (but it seems accurate), the "Phonology" section of the Wikipedia article on American English has a good rundown of where different variety vowel pronunciations predominate. The domain of cot=caught is supposedly "in eastern New England, in Pittsburgh and surrounding areas, and from the Great Plains westward."

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_English

Posted by James Kabala | November 28, 2006 6:46 PM

Typo alert: it should say "different varieties of vowel pronunciations," not the garbled "different variety vowel pronunciations."

Posted by James Kabala | November 28, 2006 6:47 PM

James: That's about right as a summary of where cot=caught, except "eastern New England" should be "northern New England". They're the same in Vermont, different in Rhode Island.

Posted by AJD | November 28, 2006 7:00 PM

Mitch Shindler needs to come down off his high horse -- I'm from the Northeast, from Boston, to be precise, and we most certainly pronounce "dawn" and "don", "caught" and "cot" as rhymes. And, just to remind Mitch, we're Americans too, being responsible for, you know, that whole American Revolution thing....

Mary/merry/marry are clearly distinguishable by their vowel sounds: for New Englanders, they come out as something like "mairy"/"mehrry"/"maahry".

Just because you see Friedman in the gym (out of touch Beltway elitist?) does not give you a right to label other Americans' accents, or to speak for the entirety of the Northeast. Seems like a clear example of NYC-DC imperialism.

Posted by Ben Cronin | November 28, 2006 7:14 PM

For what it's worth, I am from southern Central Massachusetts, roughly where northern, southern, eastern, and western New England all meet, and they sound alike to me.

Posted by James Kabala | November 28, 2006 7:15 PM

Ben Cronin's descriptions of New England vowel sounds strike me as accurate.

Posted by James Kabala | November 28, 2006 7:16 PM

More specifically, "cot" and "caught" rhyme in ME, NH, VT, and eastern MA, and are different in RI, CT, and western MA—saying "northern" and "southern" New England is roughly accurate, but within Massachusetts the border does become between east and west instead.

Posted by AJD | November 28, 2006 7:31 PM

That's interesting about central Mass., James, and reasonable, too, when you think about it. I think, too, AJD, that in certain ways -- actually in most ways -- Massachusetts from a point just west of Worcester, and with the possible exception of certain Connecticut Valley enclaves, is more accurately thought of as northern rather than southern New England. At least from my experience living there.

Posted by Ben Cronin | November 28, 2006 8:13 PM

I'd also add that among certain classes in Eastern New England -- which is often defined by the town in which one lives -- the "r" sound is defined more by a kind of soft ellision, a whispering of the sound rather than its total absence. I'm thinking here mostly of outer suburbs here, Manchester-by-the-Sea, Dover, Duxbury, those kind of places. It's not pronounced in that twangy way with which the rest of the country, to our ears, seems to say its "r" sounds, but nor is it pronounced like it would be in Dorchester or Somerville or East Boston, or one of the inner suburbs of the Braintree-Dedham-Danvers sort, where it would be almost entirely gone.

Posted by Ben Cronin | November 28, 2006 8:21 PM

Re: "Dot" and "ought" rhyme with each other, if you're a normal American.

The "cot" vowel is more or less like saying "ahhh" at the doctor's (mouth is spread laterally open). The "caught" vowel like saying "awe..." (lips are somewhat rounded instead.)

Not sure how valid this test is. I grew up in Michigan near Detroit but it pegged me as Midlander-- a section of the country to which I have no connections not even ancestrally.

Posted by JonF | November 28, 2006 9:07 PM

"That didn't help. "Dot" and "ought" rhyme with each other, if you're a normal American."

No way are you a normal American, buddy. Get your ass off the coast and out into flyover country if you want to be a normal American.

Posted by MQ | November 28, 2006 11:53 PM

Tell me Ben Cronin has not gone from pedantic tirades in the Williams Record to pedantic tirades in the Yglesias comments section. Please tell me you have no idea what I'm talking about, Ben Cronin, and that you're not that Ben Cronin.

This thread is hilarious. Somebody who pronounces "caught" like "cot" would, of course, be familiar with the universal pronunciation of "ought."

Posted by Mike Chaberski | November 29, 2006 1:12 AM

MQ,
Just because you live in "flyover country" doesn't make you any more of a "normal American". Grow up.

Posted by Jenn | November 29, 2006 1:18 AM

Ummm, Jenn, it was a joke. But admittedly I probably should grow up.

Posted by MQ | November 29, 2006 1:56 AM

Ummm. How clever is this quiz? I'm a middle class accent-neutral southern Brit, and I've come up with North East American like Matt, though less so. North East sounds more Irish than British to me. [All the questions' examples would be distinguishable to my ear.]

Posted by jp | November 29, 2006 6:00 AM

My accent is supposedly Inland North (around the Great Lakes, apparently). I grew up (from the age of 5) in New York City (Manhattan).

This quiz tests vowels, not consonants. When I'm conversing with someone who has a New York City accent, I'm likely to slip into using NYC consonants and intonations, but my vowels don't change at all.

Posted by Swift Loris | November 29, 2006 12:47 PM

I'm from Michigan originally, and I got Midlands as my result, which I guess is close-but-not-quite-right. I wonder what the differences are between myself and how a Michigander is "supposed" to talk.

I personally think there's a clear difference between caught and cot, although those who say "caught rhymes with ought" are ignoring that "ought" itself has an alternative pronunciation, as in "Why, I otta..."

Posted by Steve | November 29, 2006 12:49 PM

I'm from Michigan and got a straight inland north, I think (did it yesterday). As a kid, I learned that you could place someone by how they pronounced "Mary, marry, merry," but it made no sense because they all sounded the same. I also couldn't figure out the short "o" marking, as in "hot," in dictionaries (hot is pronounced "haht" where I come from, not "hawt" the way she says it -- suppose it's the "don"-"dawn" couplet from the test, which I say differently). Marrying a woman from Maine explained a lot of this to me, when she laughed at my funny accent.

Posted by David in NY | November 29, 2006 2:43 PM

A cot/caught map:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Image:Cot-caught_merger.png

Posted by James Kabala | November 29, 2006 2:48 PM

When I was a little kid, raised by a Chicagoan mother and Bronx father in northern New Jersey, I insisted that the singer Barry Manilow's name was pronounced "Berry" Manilow.

Bizarrely, I'd internalized from my midwestern mother's accent that Barry, berry, and bury (like Mary, marry and merry) were all supposed to be pronounced the same, but instead of using the midwestern vowel sounds (a sharp "ee" sound), I'd latched onto one my father's Northeast vowel sounds (a long "eh" sound). So, I was following her rules and using his sounds, and the result was confusion.

I outgrew it, but settled into a "midlands" accent where I differentiate mary, marry, and merry, but not terribly strongly. But I also say forest with a long "four-est" sound and not a short "fahrest" sound, which my mother insists is a good and proper Chicago thing.

New Yorkers are generally surprised to learn I grew up in the area, and usually say, "oh, that's funny, I thought you were from or Connecticut." Heartland" people all think I'm from California.

Posted by anonymous | November 29, 2006 4:07 PM

Re: I also couldn't figure out the short "o" marking, as in "hot," in dictionaries (hot is pronounced "haht" where I come from, not "hawt" the way she says it -- suppose it's the "don"-"dawn" couplet from the test, which I say differently).

Short "o" and "u", in theory, exist in both rounded and unrounded versions. "Cot" has the unrounded one, "caught" is rounded. Similarly with "u" we have unrounded short "u" in "putt" and rounded in "put". But this distinction is easily lost in many dialects. In mine at least the unrounded short o and u have moved forwards and downwards so my "putt" sounds like the unstressed "schwa" vowel (A-bout, le-mOn, etc.) and my unrounded o sounds like a in "father".

Posted by Jonf | November 29, 2006 10:14 PM

The "mary, merry, marry" question kind of threw me. I pronounce "mary" and "marry" almost identically, but "merry" quite a bit differently - but that's not a choice. Wonder if that's a typo.

Seems to me that "Midlands" is basically just the way almost every white person in Los Angeles or San Francisco speaks. It's interesting that gender is one of the questions. I would have thought that race would be much more predictive - for example in many cities someone who grew up in a predominantly black community would be quite likely to speak rather differently than someone who grew up in the same city but in a predominantly white area.

Posted by EJ | November 29, 2006 11:11 PM

There is no ongoing homogenization. In fact there is good evidence that regional accents are getting stronger:

"Sociolinguistic research on linguistic change in progress has found rapid development of sound changes in most urbanized areas of North America, leading to increased dialect diversity. It appears that the dialects of New York, Philadelphia, Detroit, Chicago, Saint Louis, Dallas and Los Angeles are now more different from each other than they were 50 or 100 years ago."

http://www.ling.upenn.edu/phono_atlas/ICSLP4.html

Posted by daveh | November 30, 2006 2:22 PM

I don't say Pop(I got that standard english BS)! I've never heard anyone say pop. This test is too small to analyze variations in accents. My homestate has multiple accents. People think I'm from Boston in the south, but I'm from CT. The way we pronounce my birth place is unique to that city and we have some other fucked up shit from the french and italians/sicilians that settled. New breh en(from polish settlement)! I'd love to see a longer test with more accents.

Posted by somone | January 29, 2007 3:19 PM