the chutry experiment

Oh, my. I spend most of my adolescence and young adult life trying not to sound like a Memphian, and I still score "94% Dixie" and am asked, "Is General Lee your father?" Y'all got some coke in that ice box? Watch out you don't step on them crawdad holes when you go looking for roly-polies. My grandparents would be proud.

I'm not sure if this is a signal of my origin in Delaware, a border state (sort of), or of my immersion in a mediatized society, but I'm just barely a Yankee. Although I have family who might ask if you'ns were goin' down to the crick to do the warsh. My shift from saying "crayfish" to "crawfish" is most likely the influence of a subscription to Bon Appetit, rather than any kind of local dialect.

89% (Dixie). Did you have any Confederate ancestors?

The quiz does weird things when you click on the wrong thing and change your answer, so I dunno. First time I ran through, it said I was Yankee, but durn me if that ain't a lie. When I went through and reinserted the same answers (but without changing any), it gave me the 89%.

I must admit that I've moved away from saying "Coke" and more towards "Soda" ... but that's influenced by my association with those northern types (bless their heart).

I think I was around 89%, too. One of the weird things about the quiz is *its* bias. It sets things up as a north vs. south binary when the dialect survey reflects a series of different national dialects, so even when I took the quiz consciously trying to answer as "Yankee" as possible, I still wound up with something like 37% Dixie.

66% (Dixie). A definitive Southern score! I had no idea. Well, I'm fixin' ta go. Later.

77% Dixie. And I *still* get berated by relatives for letting all the South rub off.

Further conversations with people who are more astute than I am about quantitative analysis of lingusitics: the Harvard survey is pretty flawed in that it requires people to self-report, and often people will answer questions in ways they believe to be more "correct."

Okay, should I be embarrassed that I am 100% Dixie? It's weird, isn't it, since I was born in NY, still say sneakers and soda, and still pronounce things in a more "northeastern" dialect. But I do say ya'll. Weird.

Born in Seattle. Lived in the South until age 10, or so. Moved to Pennsylvania, then Belgium, then California, then Italy, then Georgia, then Maryland, now Kansas City.

79% Dixie.

Now, y'all know we don't order Cokes. We order co-colas.

As someone from Texas who tends to have students comment on my accent every semester since I've been up around DC, I had to take the quiz. Somewhat surprisingly I'm only 62% Dixie. I did have a linguist once think I was from the midwest. Growing up in Dallas/Ft.Worth, we didn't have the thicker rural accents. I'll say ya'll for the rest of my life though.

B.

Yee-hah! 96% Dixie, y'all--even though people constantly tell me they had no idea I was a Southerner. It's kinda fun, actually--when people start talking crap about the South in front of me, I suddenly open up a can of whoop-ass, and they never see it coming. I'm the Stealth Southerner.

Can someone tell me the link to the quiz ya'll are referring to?

thanks

So, is *anyone* testing out as strongly Yankee? Anyone at all?

Here's the link to the quiz, or just click on the "Yankee or Dixie quiz" link above:

http://www.chuckchamblee.com/dom/fun/yankee_dixie_quiz.htm

I found a comment (which I'm too lazy to link) on Matt Yglesias's blog by the author of the Harvard Dialect Survey on which teh test is based, and he has suggested the quiz is based on a bad misinterpretation of the data. Interesting stuff.