Where in the US do you come from (or sound as though you do)?

[Sean of the Shed]

Seriously, how can you become so shit at speaking proper in just 250 years?

[ursus arctos]

Ah, yes.

The immutable concept of "proper English".

As embodied by George III.

[Sean of the Shed]

Well nobody's perfect, but some of yinz aren't even trying.

[ursus arctos]

Neither did the Hanoverians

[Logan Mountstuart]

San José, Honolulu, and er, Minneapolis/ St. Paul.

[pebblethefish]

Neither did the Hanoverians

But then we learned em

[WOM]

Tacoma / Spokane / Minn. St Paul

[caja-dglh]

Did you get the kitty-corner question? That is what probably puts you at St. Paul.

[Sean of the Shed]

The kitty corner is where the cat's scratchbox goes where I come from.

[ursus arctos]

My friends from the Twin Cities insisted that they could tell which one people for from, but I never was convinced of this.

[caja-dglh]

The kitty corner is where the cat's scratchbox goes where I come from.

WOM has used kitty corner on here countless times. The first time was just being Ontario, ever since it has been to get a rise.

[Logan Mountstuart]

Apparently they say pop in Minneapolis for soft drinks.

[San Bernardhinault]

It isn't much of a thing here, either, despite their being multiple examples on most every block.

People here will recognise "kitty korner" but it is much too cute to be adopted.

Bizarrely, I got some directions the other day that used "kitty corner" as if it was a totally normal way to describe something.

The "rain and sun" thing, I almost answered "Monkey's wedding" because that's what TWWSPUWM uses. But that comes from a Zulu phrase and she learned it in SA. I felt wrong claiming it for myself, and also can't imagine it's much help in pinning down where in the US I am from.

[San Bernardhinault]

Is Minneapolis kitty corner from St Paul?

[sw2borshch]

Cal, do you use "bubbler" for drinking fountain?

That has always been the Uber Wisconsin term for me.

It's Australian, I think. I heard it in a podcast the other week.

[Sits]

It's Australian, I think. I heard it in a podcast the other week.

Yes, bubbler is the only word used over here for Drinking Fountains.

[Sits]

Weird. Got Rockford, Madison, Aurora. We moved all over the USA and overseas growing up, but spent only a short time in the midwest..

I also clicked a few "no answer for that word"

I flew the flag for New Mexico, which was my hottest state despite containing none of my named cities (see OP).

[Various Artist]

The kitty corner is where the cat's scratchbox goes where I come from.

This sentence is itself fascinating to me. Are you using "scratchbox" (a term I've never encountered before) to mean what I'd call a litter tray – or something else, i.e. a box for use like a scratching post, say?

[Various Artist]

My results came up as the genuinely extraordinary trio of New York, Chattanooga and Atlanta:

HrU1O9c.png

Given that nobody else has gone near the latter two, especially not in tandem with NY, I can only assume that I either speak really weirdly, or a couple of my specific answers (or "I have no word for that" non-answers) belong to some particularly unusual Venn diagrams.

[Femme Folle]

Be interesting to know where Femme Folle and other real Americans get.

I'm all over the country.

[Femme Folle]

Obviously, when you mix Louisiana and Boston (with a pinch of NY/NJ) you get Jacksonville. Makes perfect sense to me.

[Various Artist]

Is there one of these for the UK, I wonder? [edit: yes! https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/...lect-quiz.html ]
[edit 2: it thinks I'm from Portsmouth. I've lived in Hertfordshire and Devon, so... hmmm.]

I ran into the paywall when I tried to open either your link, AB, or ursus's link, no matter in what browser I tried – even with private windows.

However, I just tried plugging "british irish dialect quiz" into a search engine in Waterfox (it came up with Bing by default), and by clicking on the link that came up in the results (even though it's the same link as above) it let me in. Just tried the same with Firefox however (using my default search engine Ecosia, which I think piggybacks on Bing) and it didn't work. Curious.

Amused to find I got Oxford and Cambridge, plus Dover, randomly. I've never even been to any of the three; none of the areas I was raised in or have lived in even fall inside the 'hotter' regions of the map for me. I do however speak pretty 'standard' RP in most respects.

RwOyKxq.png

Was fascinated to find that the name of the playground game I'd call "tag" (at least, I think so – it's obviously a long time since I last played it, and you start to doubt your own instincts a bit when filling in some of these answers*) is one of the most divisive and I imagine likely most indicative questions. I would honestly have thought that tag was the most 'generic' name for it, yet according to the heat map generated for that answer its 'hot' region is very specific to an area not much more extensive than roughly Gloucestershire and Monmouthshire.

Had I taken the same quiz while I was in school here in Wales, I might've ended up with a slightly different outcome as I could have answered some things differently at the time – for instance I would, I feel, have truthfully been able to say that I used "mitch" to mean 'play truant' then, to fit in with what was the standard terminology among my peers, but I wouldn't have used it at any point since I left so went with "skive off".

Meanwhile, I was glad that I could submit multiple answers to many questions. I'm conscious that my own vocabulary is clearly influenced (through TV, books, etc) by that of areas that have nothing to do with either where I grew up or where my family came from – like I would happily use "parky" as well as "chilly", "freezing" etc. to describe cold weather, even though I recognise it is presumably a 'northern' term (Yorkshire?) in theory. It doesn't seem to have done much to shift my overall heat map north of the Watford Gap (to reference another recent thread discussion), at any rate.

(*Now I'm wondering if, in fact, I used to call it "it" at the time, or something else again...)

[Cal Alamein]

I flew the flag for New Mexico, which was my hottest state despite containing none of my named cities (see OP).

Indeed.

I redid the survey (there was about 5-6 different questions) and still got Rockford, but slowly moved southwest to Omaha and Wichita.

[Hot Pepsi]

And you don't use "yinz"

I had a few teachers from Pittsburgh, and they sort of sounded like it, but they didn’t say yinz as far as I recall.

My first exposure to that dialect in its pure form was Myron Kope, who was the color commentator for the Steelers on the radio.

[Sean of the Shed]

This sentence is itself fascinating to me. Are you using "scratchbox" (a term I've never encountered before) to mean what I'd call a litter tray – or something else, i.e. a box for use like a scratching post, say?

This is her scratchbox. It's made of corrugated cardboard. She prefers a horizontal one that she also sits on as well over the upright scratching post with the sisal coating.

20220515_065703.jpg