I wrote a couple of years ago about my bland, generic American accent. It seems to defy all attempts at classification; people who listen to me talk and then guess where I grew up virtually never get it right. So I couldn’t pass up an online quiz titled “What American accent do you have?” Here is the result I got:
| 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. |
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| Philadelphia |
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| The Inland North |
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| The Midland |
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| The South |
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| Boston |
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| The West |
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| North Central |
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| What American accent do you have? Quiz Created on GoToQuiz |
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The Northeast? That’s just bizarre. I never lived there or even visited that region for more than a few days, and neither have my parents. Notice also that the quiz gives me only a middling grade for being Southern, even though I have lived my entire life in the South. Either this quiz is highly inaccurate, or I am just weird.
Interesting. You’ve never sounded particularly Southern to me, but I wouldn’t have claimed you had an Northeastern accent, either.
It was pretty accurate for me — it placed me in squarely in the “Inland North” category, and told me the following:
‘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?” or “Are you from Chicago?” Chances are you call carbonated drinks “pop.”‘
So true. Drinking pop right now, as a matter of fact.