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I Speak So Regionally

I have a very interesting relationship with language. I speak at least two of them (and bits and pieces of a few others), so my brain is already going to be wired differently than a native speaker's. Moreover, I tend to prefer using very simple language and I'm curious enough to follow links that lead me to new vocabulary. The end result is a mish-mash of all sorts of language, from the fancy words to the old-timey sayings that I've read or heard (one of my favorites is "tweren't nothin', ma'am" in an aw-shucks type drawl from an old Western movie). Mix in some Spanglish or Chinglish, and ... you get the idea.

So, when a friend of ours mentioned the New York Times Speech Quiz, the Mild Wife (yes, we got married. There will be blog posts) and I were both very curious to see what we would get. If you've never heard of it, it's a series of twenty five questions that tries to pinpoint where you grew up based on words you use. At the end, it spits out three cities close to where it thinks you grew up. It makes sense if you think about it: there is a natural slang that you learn based on where you grow up. If the quiz can suss out a few of the more specific items, it can tell where you grew up.

Now, the Mild Wife has also been around a lot of language, and she even lived overseas for a while. So, there were fairly decent odds that she might get some interesting results. However, when she took the test, it more or less told her she'd grown up in the Bay Area (Oakland, San Francisco, or Fremont). That's not exactly right, but it's pretty darn close.

Then I took the test.

For the record, I wasn't trying to mess with the results. I really wasn't. I just happen to say things like "y'all" to describe a group of people. I also know what "kitty-corner" means, although I'm still undecided on whether or not I want to use it consistently. Regardless, I answered the questions as truthfully as possible. Some were hard because they posed several answers that I would deem correct. Still, I tried to be as accurate as I could.

For my results, it suggested three widely disparate cities: Montgomery, Alabama; Augusta-Richmond, Virginia; and Glendale, CA. I have never even been to the first two, with the closest I've ever come being a brief trip through Washington, D.C. to visit some of the monuments. I have spent all of about two days in Glendale, and I don't exactly take lots of trip to southern California.

Yet, somehow, I convinced this quiz that I grew up there. Remember, this test was accurate enough to pick out the Mild Wife's linguistic lineage, and our friends had sworn by the accuracy of this, as well. This was not just a case of a poorly constructed test. Essentially, this thing was telling me that I talk funny.

The Mild Wife laughed her head off when she saw this, and even sent a text message to said friend with a screenshot of my results. Like I said, she was very amused by this. There's just enough mix in my speech patterns to cause hilarity.

The best part, however, was that I took the test again weeks later, on a whim. I didn't change my answers, as far as I could remember. Yet I must have, because the second time, my results showed roughly the same as the Mild Wife's. That is much more accurate for me, and neither of us would have batted an eye had that been my result the first time.

So, not only do I speak funny, but I speak just funny enough that I can revert back to what I grew up with. It's like I've managed to pick up enough linguistic quirks to confuse someone, and depending on the day, I can use more or less quirks in my diction. The Mild Wife may have been amused by the original results, but I was just as amused by the change in my results the second time.

All in all, my take away from all of this is: careful how you talk, y'all. It might lead to confusion.

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