There are lots of internet quizzes, most of which I don’t take (although I did make an exception for “what kind of dog are you?“)
But this one on American Accents interested me because I’ve always loved accents and tend to pick them up by osmosis by simply being somewhere for an hour or so.
Just ask The Prof who sent me off to a meeting of ‘grad student wives’ one night years and years ago and asked me where on earth I’d been when I got home because I seemed to be channeling someone from Perth!
It was sitting next to Irene, I told him. She’d grown up right outside Perth.
When I go to see my daughter in Texas, I can fall right into that accent in a matter of minutes. My sons used to roll their eyes. But then the youngest came home from Brazil and told me he totally understood. He’d started speaking English with a Brazilian accent because so many of his friends did.
Anyway, I digress. This quiz tests what sort of “American accent” you have. And I answered it the way I grew up speaking, trying to remember my ‘native’ pronunciations. I think it turned out reasonably reflective of the way I talk when I’m not ‘influenced’ by whoever I’m talking to.
Here’s mine:
The “Western” doesn’t surprise me at all. I did the test twice and came up with the high western count every time. The two questions which I had to look twice at reversed my Boston/South accent depending on which way I answered them. While I went with the “Boston” answers in the first instance, I realized I hadn’t even acknowledged the third choice. When I did, my dad’s Southern roots definitely showed.
It’s an intriguing quiz. If you’re American, try it and see what accent you come up with — and let me know if you think it’s accurate. And if you’re not American, give it a try anyway and see who you might be if you spoke American English. And if you’re English, I’d really like to know what accent this test thinks you have.
And if you’re interested, there’s a terrific article in Wikipedia on American accents which you might enjoy.
Keep me posted!
