I had no idea before this that anywhere in the USA used "lorry", "roundabout", or generic "lemonade". The colors on the When I took this a few months ago it pegged me to the exact county in Michigan where I grew up, so I'm surprised to hear how off it was for some of the rest of you. Do you pronounce r's when they aren't followed by a vowel, as in car, cart, carton, and so on? The point of performing K-NN on a dataset like this is to predict whether the star, our new input, will fall into the yellow-circle category or the purple-circle category based on its proximity to the circles around it. most often pronounced with three syllables (carra-mel). Be ready to compare your results with those of your colleagues in the class. Golder. The first time through the test put me within 50 miles of my Bay Area home in San Rafael, CA. What is your *general* term for a big road that you drive relatively fast on? What do/did you call your maternal grandfather? . Actually I don't call it anything, since I never have had occasion to refer to itbut I know it as some sort of southern thing that I associate with southern words. The data for the quiz and maps shown here come from over 350,000 survey responses collected from August to October 2013 by Josh Katz, a graphics editor for the New York Times who developed this quiz. @richardelguru: I have heard you on the radio a fair number of times. A cute interactive feature: "How Yall, Youse and You Guys Talk" ("What does the way you speak say about where youre from? US dialect quiz asks 25 questions, tells you where you are from In DC, where I now live, the term for the strip of grass between the street and the sidewalk is "tree box" . Discover unique things to do, places to eat, and sights to see in the best destinations around the world with Bring Me! Since I am a visual learner, perhaps a doodle will be more edifying: Essentially, if you have parameters (i.e. That's not one of the choices, nor is "Devil's strip", which DARE says is common in Baltimore; and the thing itself is so rare in Manhattan, where I lived in my linguistically formative years, that the concept was without a term. What do you call a public railway system (normally underground)? Want to get your very own quizzes and posts featured on BuzzFeeds homepage and app? How Y'all, Youse and You Guys Talk - Dialect Quiz & Map There is one more thing we need to tackle before diving into the ideas and math behind K-NN. What do you call an artificial nipple, usually made of plastic, which an infant can suck or chew on? Does that say anything about where I'm from? Still, it was a little freaky in how accurate it was. Access it online or download it at https://open.byu.edu/understanding_language_acquisition/hw_1.6. It was the one that asked you things like What do you call something that is across both streets from you at an intersection? Answers you could choose included options like kitty-corner and catty-corner (the latter being the obvious right choice). According to the results of the dialect quiz based on the Harvard Dialect Survey, New York (New York), Anaheim (California), and Aurora (Colorado) were identified as the most probable regions of my residence. How do you pronounce the last vowel in the word "cinema"? What do you call food purchased at a restaurant to be eaten elsewhere? The original quiz resulted in about 50k observations, all of which were coded by zip code. WILSON ANDREWS license. Its foundation was the supervised machine learning algorithm K-Nearest Neighbors (K-NN), which is, as my graduate-school TA told us, a machine learning algorithm used to predict the class of a new datapoint based on the value of the points around it in parameter space. We will dive into the idea of machine learning and the ins and outs of the specific K-NN algorithm in a later post. What do you call the activity of driving around in circles in a car? For now, lets tackle some of the jargon in my TAs definition. The map very very clearly lit up the East Coast as red all of it from Louisiana to New England and put shades of blue pretty much everywhere else. The description: Most of the questions used in this quiz are based on those in the Harvard Dialect Survey, a linguistics project begun in 2002 by Bert Vaux and Scott Golder. Maybe the "y'all" and the "yard sale" thing pushed them over the edge? Selected legacy data from the previous Harvard dialect survey. pronounced car-ml by people in the Northeast only. The quiz is designed to pinpoint the quiz-taker's exact region, based on the words he or she uses. Even if only one percent of New Yorkers answer a question the same way we do, that could still be bright red on the map if the corresponding figure in Texas is one in a thousand. What do you call it when a driver changes over one or more lanes way too quickly? I haven't been able to find a description of the algorithm used to combine information from the various maps. But there seems to be a problem, either in the interpretation of the answers or in the method of combining them, as indicated by the fact that my final map has got a lot of orange and red below the Mason-Dixon line, despite the information that I'm not a y'all speaker. Then again I'm not from the U.S.. What about your paternal grandmother (is there a distinction?). when they walk their feet point outwards)? Certainly wrong would be a deep red spot in one spot with blue everywhere else. 1; HW 1.5: Select a Student to Study; HW 1.6: The Harvard Dialect Survey I grew up in and around Hamilton, Ontario, and when I was 23, I moved to Kingston, also in Ontario, where I've lived for the past decade or so. Important disclaimer: In reporting to you results of any IAT test that you take, we will mention possible interpretations that have a basis in research done (at the University of Washington, University of Virginia, Harvard University, and Yale University) with these tests. Let me back up NJ/NYC in saying that nobody in New Jersey talks like a Soprano. Each observation can be thought of as a realization of a categorical random variable with a particular parameter vector that is a function of locationour goal was to interpolate among these points in order to estimate these parameter vectors at a given location, making use of a combination of kernel density estimation and non-parametric smoothing techniques. Do you pass in homework or hand in homework? The colors on the large heat map correspond to the probability that a randomly selected person in that location would respond to a randomly selected survey question the same way that you did. What do you call food purchased at a restaurant to be eaten elsewhere? I'm switching over to crawdaddio right away. Though I obviously know about y'all, I'd never use it except as a joke or quotation or imitation, and similarly for you'uns and youse. H/T to the Harvard Dialect Survey and The New York Times for the data. It can't just be Sopranos, Southside Johnny and Bruce. The answer was always Boston-Worcester-Providence, which is accurate although in fact I sometimes find Rhode Islanders hard to understand. Charlottesville, VA 22908-0392 And my experience was not unique the quiz was the most popular thing the Times put out that year, despite its publication date of December 21. This Dialect Quiz Will Guess Where You Live - BuzzFeed (It basically tells you how likely people from a certain area are to respond . The earliest quiz of this type to be widely disseminated online was the Harvard Dialect Survey, conducted in the early 2000s by Bert Vaux and Scott Golder. In the crayon question, two of the options are: two syllables cray-ahn And, out of curiosity, what results are people for whom English is a second language getting? Question 1. The original questions and results for that survey can be found on Dr. Vaux's current website. We may earn a commission from links on this page. I took it twice, and each time two of the three cities it picked as representative were cities I'd lived in. Survey said Fremont, Oakland and SF, CA. Simone Giertz on Her Youtube/Design Career | Gizmodo Talks, Will Banning TikTok Solve Privacy Issues? "How Y'all, Youse & You Guys Talk", Take The NY Times Dialect Quiz Text Laboratory Caffeinate yourselfA whole array of Breville espresso machinesfrom manual to super-automaticare on sale for 20% off. Defining Needs and Strengths, LA 2.3: Getting to Know a Second Language Learner, LA 2.4: Providing Evidence / Collective Expertise, HW 2.3 Read the Definitions of Program Models, Session 3: Current Realities: ESL Programs and Practices, LA 3.2 Programs and Practices in My Local Setting, LA 3.4 Supports and Constraints for Makoto, LA 3.5 Communication, Pattern, & Variability, HW 3.4 Knowing My Second Language Learner, LA 4.1 Critical Research on Input: Jigsaw Reading, LA 4.2 Feedback About Knowing my Second Language Learner, HW 4.3 Promoting Oral Language in the Classroom, HW 4.5 Classroom Observation and Analysis, LA 5.1 Feedback About Knowing My EL Student, LA 5.2 Role of Interaction in English Language Development, LA 5.3 Negotiating Meaning Through Interaction: Gallery Walk, LA 5.4 Classroom Parables of Cultural Interaction Patterns, Session 6: Stages of Development and Errors and Feedback, LA 6.1 Video Segment 7.1 on Stages of Development: Pattern, LA 6.2 Charting Treasure: Mapping Stages of Development, HW 6.3 What does it Mean to Know a Language, HW 6.4 Variability in Learning a Language, Session 7: Proficiencies and Performances, LA 7.4 Getting to Know English Language Learners, Session 8: Displays of Professional Development, AVG 8.1 Classroom Strategies: Action as Advocacy, LA 8.1 Examining Displays of Professional Development, https://open.byu.edu/understanding_language_acquisition, https://open.byu.edu/understanding_language_acquisition/hw_1.6. Youll need your answers later! The map pinpointed me to Arlington, VA, which is off by about 5 miles from where I live. What do you call the night before Halloween? Maybe that means I'm especially well-behaved dialectally (or, more likely, that I haven't moved around much). Youre viewing another readers map. It gave me Anchorage and Miami. What is your *general* term for the rubber-soled shoes worn in gym class, for athletic activities, etc.? What do you a call a store that is devoted primarily to selling alcoholic beverages? freakishly accurate for us. I'm pretty sure I didn't get the "night before Halloween" question when I took it. There were a few others where I suspect my present-day usage might differ from my childhood usage but I find it difficult to be absolutely certain so many decades later. Dialect Quiz. So how did the quiz actually work? I suspect 'sneakers' is gaining ground. I am British born but spent most of my adult life in Toronto and thought I had some sort of hybrid speech and accent. As an Australian, I thought I'd be off the map completely, but instead I'm clustered closely on New York, Yonkers and Jersey City. I've never ever watched even any part of any episode of The Sopranos, not even on advertisements or discussions about the show. aunt; been; the first vowel in "Bowie knife" caramel; the vowel in the second syllable of "cauliflower" the last vowel in "centaur" coupon; Craig (the name) crayon; creek (a small body of running water) the first vowel in "Florida" flourish; the last vowel in . but if you go directly to the Harvard Dialect Survey Dialect Survey Maps and Results you can also get the specific answer breakdowns for each question asked. But now there's one that tells you what city your accent and dialect is from. What do you call the gooey or dry matter that collects in the corners of your eyes, especially while you are sleeping? What do you call the box you bury a dead person in? My map came up with Minneapolis/Saint Paul, Rochester and Providence. Which of these terms do you prefer for a sale of unwanted items on your porch, in your yard, etc.? In Kingston, I mostly consort with people from RMC and Queen's University, which see far more people from across the country and the world than from Kingston itself (though very few from the United States). Since the questions were random and I thought I might get some different ones, I took it again, and it once again put me in the deep South, triangulated between Mississippi, Birmingham and Columbus GA. What do you call the creepy crawly thing that often rolls into a ball when touched. What do you call the person who collects and removes rubbish from residential areas for further processing and disposal? When I later learned that you had lived in upstate New York, that seemed to match your American idioms a lot better. What do you call a narrow, pedestrian lane found in urban areas which usually runs between or behind buildings? This is as you described, but keep in mind the question listed is the one with the most weight for the likely areas, not the only question. about your participation, or report illness, injury or other problems, We hold major institutions accountable and expose wrongdoing. What do you call the insect that flies around in the summer and has a rear section that glows in the dark? Dialect Survey Maps and Results. The project is a slick visualization of Bert Vaux's dialect survey, and lets you look at maps of the results of 122 different dialect questions, either as a composite showing the variation across . When I was a kid in North Dakota we wore 'tennis shoes' in gym, but we pronounced them 'tenna shoes.' It'll take 40 questions, but I think I can do it oh, and don't forget: There are no right or wrong answers. I have no idea of the origins of this expression. Search, watch, and cook every single Tasty recipe and video ever - all in one place! Cathy ONeil, a.k.a. What do you call your fifth/smallest toe? I grew up in the latter two (they're about thirty miles apart). Let k be 5 and say theres a new customer named Monica. When you stand outside with a long line of people waiting to get in somewhere, are you standing "in line" or "on line" (as in, "I stood ___ in the cold for two hours before they opened the doors")? The dialect survey is an expansion of an initiative begun by Professor Bert Vaux at Harvard University. "It got me right! The survey doesn't tell us how much more the distinctive question factored in (they might not even know). What do you call the insect that looks like a large thin spider and skitters along the top of water? The only requirement is honesty. @Sally Thomason: I didn't see anything until I had run an (unrelated) Java update. What is your general, informal term for the rubber-soled shoes worn in gym class, for athletic activities, etc.? I found several of the questions hard to answer. Most of the questions used in this quiz are based on those in the Harvard Dialect Survey, a linguistics project begun in 2002 by Bert Vaux and Scott Golder. What do you say when you want to lay claim to the front seat of a car? [(myl) Yes, the 25 questions that you get are clearly a random selection from a larger set. Paul, Detroit, and Buffalo as the three most similar cities (I posted the picture of the map to my Twitter feed, which I used as my URI). What dialect do you speak? A map of American English Please update your browser to view this feature. Tried three times, both when logged in and not, and a map never came up. Josh Katz took the data and produced extended visualizations and, last month, a short form "quiz" that allows individual users to take answer the survey and see their own personal dialect map. What is your general term for the type of rubber-soled shoes that one typically wears for athletic activities or casual situations? my daughter, born in florida, was placed in orlando. mathbabe, gives a good example of instance-based learning with a grocery-store scenario: What you really want, of course, is a way of anticipating the category of a new user before theyve bought anything, based on what you know about them when they arrive, namely their attributes. The data for the quiz and maps shown here come from over 350,000 survey responses collected from August to October 2013 by . and Dialect Quiz | HMH Current Events After answering 25 questions aimed at teasing out your linguistic idiosyncrasies, you were classified as having grown up in a particular area of the US (technically, the quiz shows you the region where people are most likely to speak like you, so it could ostensibly show you where your parents grew up, rather than where you grew up, as Ryan Graff points out). What American Dialect Do You Speak? | The Andersen Library Blog You can read more about Josh Katz's project to determine "aggregate dialect difference" from Vaux and Golder's survey data on his website. Cot & caught = different What do you call this large aquatic bug that skims along the surface of water? large heat map correspond to the probability that a randomly selected person in that location would respond to a randomly selected survey question the same way that you did. I submitted a comment, but it's not showing up. Search, watch, and cook every single Tasty recipe and video ever - all in one place! Pretty interesting stuff. What, nobody else hears that? In that case, the regions which show up as "most like Australia" are probably just those with the highest proportion of Commonwealth immigrants in the population. I ran through the whole thing and got no final map. I think I broke the system I got through the whole survey, but no summing-up map appeared at the end. This content is provided to you freely by BYU Open Textbook Network. Some of my individual answers were extremely localized to where I grew up, others not so much. Another Brit sneaking in. Everyone I knew was impressed by its accuracy. For now, K-NN = a lazy algorithm = stores the data it needs to make a classification until its asked to make a classification. What do you call the game wherein the participants see who can throw a knife closest to the other person (or alternately, get a jackknife to stick into the ground or a piece of wood)? Alas, since I began writing this post last week the abililty to take the Dialect Quiz has gone away, however, . Again, not very surprising, given what I've read about Western American English. Teachers will compare their own usage and dialect with that of other across the nation and within their own colleague group within the class. Below are the dialect maps, displaying what terms and pronunciations are used, and where they are used. Most of my questions were about vocabulary, mind you. So whatever it's doing, it seems to be doing it consistently. New York Times Quiz Uses Idiomatic Phrases to Plot Linguistic There are lots of Canadians who spend their winters in Florida, though I'm not sure if this has anything to do with the similarities. Fascinating Dialect Quiz from NY Times based on Harvard Linguist (Please do not look up the word in a dictionary before answering this question.). Please update your browser to view this feature. So the fact that you don't say *y'all* doesn't that weigh against you that much for being from the South. The U.S. Dialect Quiz: How Y'all, Youse and You Guys Talk - The New Most of the questions used in this quiz are based on those in the Harvard Dialect Survey, a linguistics project begun in 2002 by Bert Vaux and Scott Golder. For research purposes, data without directly identifying information is made publicly available. Obsessed with travel? Allman, B., Teemant, A., Pinnegar, S. E., & Eckton, B (2019). To my surprise, every time I took the quiz, it classified me as being from some town or another never more than ~15 miles from where I actually grew up. The data for the quiz and maps come from over 350,000 survey responses collected from August . Do you say "expecially", or "especially"? Does the influx of Northerners (both American and Canadian) during the winter have an effect on Floridian speech? Similarly, I was torn between "traffic circle" and "rotary" since I rarely encounter these road features near my home in New York (where I think "traffic circle" is used) but often do when vacationing in Cape Cod (where they are called "rotaries"). What do you call the long sandwich that contains cold cuts, lettuce, and so on? What do you call this long green herb that is used as a garnish or in soups, salads and stir-fry dishes? The original questions and results for that survey can be found on Dr. Vaux's current website.