Some Thoughts on Dialect

I was intending to write something else today, but after visiting Crazy Dave's blog and seeing the result of an internet quiz he took about American dialects, I decided to do the same and post my results here. Surprisingly enough, my results were quite accurate:

Your Linguistic Profile:

50% Yankee

40% General American English

10% Dixie

0% Midwestern

0% Upper Midwestern

What Kind of American English Do You Speak?

I was born in Rhode Island and spent the first nine years of my life in New England. When we moved to the Philadelphia area in 1967, I didn't want to go and leave my familiar home and friends behind. So, when we moved to our new home, I was of the mindset to reject anything that was different from what I'd known.

One of those differences was the dialect. Though we'd only moved three hundred miles, the accent was markedly different, as were many common expressions. At the ripe old age of nine, I was adamant that I would not pick up the local accent, which seemed to me to be heavily laden with rrrrrrrrrrrrrr sounds. This was a natural enough conclusion for someone who'd spent his entire life in an r-dropping state.

And I didn't. Here I am, thirty some odd years later, and I still pretty much have that New England sound to my voice. This quiz had me as fifty percent "Yankee", which is the same thing as New England.

But even though I retained the New England accent, I have lived in five states and have picked up expressions from the places I've lived, hence the forty percent "General American".

And after spending a decade in a southern police department, I can "talk the talk" of Dixie when it suits me, though that was rather sparingly during my years on the force. Hence, the ten percent Dixie.

I'll be curious to see how my readers score on this quiz.