‘Where you are from based on your dialect’ quiz in the New York Times

[ChesterGreySideboard]

Really interesting little quiz.
Doesn’t ask for any details so no data harvesting.

It got me down to about 15 miles from where I grew up.

www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/02/15/upshot/british-irish-dialect-quiz.html?smid=tw-share

It got me bang on. I thought we could trick it with DH who moved every 6-12 months throughout his childhood and then went to boarding school when he was 11. His map looked like a scattergun approach but the 5 bright red hot spots were all towns he'd lived in at least once during his childhood. Freaky!

@meow1989 re door and poor it’s funny because I can’t understand how they sound the same!

For me-
Door has an “oh” sound and rhymes with pour, roar, core.

Poor has an “oo” sound and rhymes with lure, your, tour.

Not bad for me, considering where I grew up / where my parents are from / where I've lived in the rest of the UK / living abroad for five years

Spot on for me, I think nithered and nesh probably nailed it.

Got me spot on as well. I have lived in different countries and am currently a long way from home, but I have very strong “home roots”, on both sides of my family for at least three generations. Even though I don’t particularly have that accent (south west) there are words for things I used as child and at school that stay with you.

Spot on, I even tried to confuse it with wrong answers

Very accurate for me, as an itinerant I got 5 hotspots that correspond to different parts of GB I have lived in over the years.

It named Bangor (down to Aberystwyth) for me. I grew up 20 miles from Bangor.
I gave it to DH to do. It named Cambridge and surrounding areas for him - he spent first 11 years of his life living 14 miles away from Cambridge.

We do not live anywhere near to either of those places now.

I only got one West Country city and it was where I was born and lived until 3 years ago. The local dialect where I live now obviously hasn't rubbed off on me yet. Neither of my parents are from that city so they didn't have an influence either.

I only did the first 25 questions but agree that singer and finger don't sound the same.

Spot on for me (Nottingham) I think we have a really distinct dialect.

They "narrowed" it down to anywhere from Cambridge to Brighton for me

It got me spot on. And I moved away from my hometown 23 years ago so I'd have thought some Lancashire expressions/accent would have crept in since then. Apparently not!

mine gave me a pretty broad region, but the school I went to and the place I sent the years 11-18 were in the middle of it, so not bad.

This is especially good as I spent my first 9 years in London, then spent 4 years in a school in Liverpool, before moving to the last place.

Since I left school I have loved all over UK and the world, so it is surprising how much my accent holds on the those formative years

It got the place my mum was born and lived until she was about 8 but not where she has live since.

Mine was correct to within 8 miles (nearest city) and my husband's was spot on (not the same place).

Mine was spot on. Darkest spot in Plymouth where I am now. Paler spot Penzance where I grew up. Also darker patches in the midlands because o lived in Leicester a while. Amazing!

The first round of questions placed me in Scotland but nowhere near where I grew up, after the second lot they got within 30 miles.

It gave me Oxford. I grew up in Watford.

well, I had another go, out of interest

1. did you realise you can choose more than one option for many of the questions?

This really confused it, and I basically came form the whole of southern England!

1. I ad a look at the maps that show each word, they are fascinating so for "What do you call your Grandmother" I was amazed at that map.

We use Granny, I called mine Granny and ,my kids call theirs Granny, but aparently Granny is not English! It is Scots and NI. My Dad's family were originally from Scotland, and it was his mother who was my Granny. I had no idea that it was so unusual. It explains why Granny is so rarely foudn on cards etc!

and for some words, I use the Liverpool/NW word (where dad is from) and for some I use the SE word (where Mum is from).

I tried it again, firstly turning off my location. Some of the questions were different and I purposely didn't pick the Welsh words mamgu and twp and it still gave the same answer as Swansea. I believe it was the playground game that clinched it as it appears it's only called touch in South Wales.

I think touch is pretty specific to Swansea too rather than the whole of South Wales. DH and DD both said tag though they both grew up in Swansea and it still got them.

The location on your phone doesn't make any difference as I didn't grow up where I live now. Also, when I did the quiz with DH there were a couple of different questions and some of the choices within questions were in a different order.

I did the quiz where I am and it’s thousands of miles from my home town. It’s not ip location

DD lived in a northern city for 20 years and although she picked up some local words it still pinpointed the area she grew up in.