Hello friends, today I would like to introduce you to the New York Times Dialect Quiz. This is a quiz where you get asked 25 different questions, and based off your answers the New York Times tells you what region of the United States you are most likely from. I first took this quiz back in high school and they pretty much nailed where I'm from, and I've had friends take it over the years too and it's pretty accurate from what I've found.
However, I've noticed that some of the answers that they provide are just straight up weird. So I've decided to take a look today to see where someone is from that gives the most insane responses for each question. Unfortunately, this only covers the United States so I can't make any jokes about the British, but just know that y'all absolutely do not get a pass here. And if you think I'm making fun of you if you legitimately say one of these responses, I absolutely am. Oh and the only rule is that I can't pick "other" for any of the questions, because that's too easy to just make up some shit.
Definitely going with "yinz" here. I'm actually familiar with this one being from Pennsylvania. "Yinz" is a Pittsburgh thing, specifically something that older Pittsbughers say from my experience. I'm definitely biased here because I'm from the eastern half (and better half) of the state but come on. Yinz? Apparently it's short for "you 'uns" which is listed right above it. It simply does not make sense to me when "you all" or "y'all" are right there.
This is one I've never heard before taking this quiz. Tbh a peenie wallie sounds like what you would call one of those dildos that can stick to the wall, not a bug. Easy one to pick.
For this one the last three are all a little bit silly. Cocola sounds like what you would say if you accidentally skipped a syllable in "Coca-Cola" and "fizzy drink" sounds like what you would say if you forgot the name of whatever you normally call it. But I'm going with "dope" here because I've only heard that used to call someone stupid or as slang for certain drugs. And I'd say you probably have to be stupid and/or on drugs to call soda "dope," so there we go.
Pick a side, coward.
The first five are actually ones that I've all heard used pretty interchangeably. Catamount doesn't seem that weird either. Painter is certainly a choice but I'm going with "mountain screamer" here. I think those are just yodelers, not big cats.
I have no idea what you could possibly call this if it's neither frosting nor icing, so this "takes the cake" so to speak. Hardy har har.
Bubbler by itself is already weird enough, but specifying that it's a water bubbler makes me think there are other types of bublers. And honestly if there are? I don't want to know.
Neither of these are thaaaat weird to me, but pa-JAM-as sounds funnier than pa-JAH-mas, so that's the one I'm going with. It should be noted that this is the first response where the map lit up red anywhere (which means a high percentage of people use it, as opposed to blue, where it means pretty much no one uses it).
Okay apparently there's a lot to think about when it comes to this one. Aunt/ant is a debate I've heard my whole life. Aunt/Ain't is not. So this is the correct response and you aunt going to convince me otherwise.
Lots of silly things to choose from here. I'll admit that the thing I call it ("roly poly") is pretty silly. And I'm not going to fault someone for not knowing what this particular bug is. But, with all these options, if you know what the bug is and don't have a name for it, that just seems kind of... ignorant? Lazy? Like just do a Google search and pick one.
This is one that I'm having a hard time even trying to conceptualize. Breakfast is in the morning. Lunch is around noon. Dinner/supper (which are the same thing to me) are in the evening. This response makes it sound like you're eating two evening meals. So not only does this response mean they're saying something different than me, this response means that these people have a completely different lifestyle than I do, living off a completely different daily schedule. I can't even imagine.
While these are all a little silly (and I was tempted to go with "no word" again) crowfish is the silliest, because this thing neither looks like a crow or a fish. But stick 'em together and you get... a lobster? Beats me.
All of these words are words that I have heard before. Except "berm." I have no idea what a "berm" could even be. The other ones I could kind of see but "berm" is uniquely a this question thing. "Berm." Huh.
For the love of god please just keep "crown" as its own word, who are we to infringe upon it?
This has nothing to do with cars nor does it have anything to do with boots. Next question, please.
Break out the trained elephants and the sword swallowers, we have a real traffic circus on our hands with this one.
I- What the fuck? This one has so many insane responses that trump everything else we've seen so far. But the devil beating his wife is the only one that's a crime as far as I'm aware of, and the only one that's on a spiritual level as well, so we're going with that response here.
So fun fact, these don't actually exists where I live. I wish they did because "brew thru" would be an awesome name for them, but I think "bootlegger" is the odd one out, because what I call a bootlegger is one of those tiny bottles of whiskey/whatever that you can buy at certain places. A tiny bottle, not a whole business.
I can't imagine what geese have to do with playing pranks on people, but maybe that's because I never played Untitled Goose Game.
Caramel is caramel. What could the other thing even possibly be???
I don't know if you've caught on yet, but I don't enjoy homophones when it comes to this quiz. This is the second one where there was actually a lot of red on the map though so who am I to judge?
What is this, the DMZ? I'd like to imagine North Korea and South Korea on the opposite side of the same street, just kind of giving each other nasty looks but not setting foot on the neutral ground in the middle of the road.
Beans. Beans are what we're looking for here.
All of these are pretty stupid tbh (other than "Italian sandwich" which is a bit too literal for my tastes). Poor boy almost won out here but I've actually heard of that before, as opposed to sarney, which is a little less silly but a little more obscure. Feel free to disagree with me and say poor boy but I think one question out of 25 won't make too much of a difference.
I about had a stroke with this one trying to come up with the correct response and now I can't get this trifecta of words out of my head, but I thiiiink this is the weirdest one? Honestly it's hard to say because with my own response I go back and forth between all three of them being the same and all three being different lol.
Thanks for sticking with me for so long (or just skipping ahead to the results lol). The place with the weirdest dialect in the United States is...
New Orleans, Louisiana! Realistically, I think this kind of makes sense because I feel like there's a much higher French influence here than pretty much anywhere else in the rest of the United States, so that probably has affected the dialect over time and made it into what it is today. Alternatively, people from there could just be weird, idk. Runner-ups were Salt Lake City, Utah, and Boise, Idaho, and there's no real French influence there as far as I know. So maybe it just picked three random cities lol.
This has been another Effortpost brought to you by phoopes. Hope you enjoyed, and be sure to leave your own dialect maps, real or fake, in the replies below.
However, I've noticed that some of the answers that they provide are just straight up weird. So I've decided to take a look today to see where someone is from that gives the most insane responses for each question. Unfortunately, this only covers the United States so I can't make any jokes about the British, but just know that y'all absolutely do not get a pass here. And if you think I'm making fun of you if you legitimately say one of these responses, I absolutely am. Oh and the only rule is that I can't pick "other" for any of the questions, because that's too easy to just make up some shit.
Definitely going with "yinz" here. I'm actually familiar with this one being from Pennsylvania. "Yinz" is a Pittsburgh thing, specifically something that older Pittsbughers say from my experience. I'm definitely biased here because I'm from the eastern half (and better half) of the state but come on. Yinz? Apparently it's short for "you 'uns" which is listed right above it. It simply does not make sense to me when "you all" or "y'all" are right there.
This is one I've never heard before taking this quiz. Tbh a peenie wallie sounds like what you would call one of those dildos that can stick to the wall, not a bug. Easy one to pick.
For this one the last three are all a little bit silly. Cocola sounds like what you would say if you accidentally skipped a syllable in "Coca-Cola" and "fizzy drink" sounds like what you would say if you forgot the name of whatever you normally call it. But I'm going with "dope" here because I've only heard that used to call someone stupid or as slang for certain drugs. And I'd say you probably have to be stupid and/or on drugs to call soda "dope," so there we go.
Pick a side, coward.
The first five are actually ones that I've all heard used pretty interchangeably. Catamount doesn't seem that weird either. Painter is certainly a choice but I'm going with "mountain screamer" here. I think those are just yodelers, not big cats.
I have no idea what you could possibly call this if it's neither frosting nor icing, so this "takes the cake" so to speak. Hardy har har.
Bubbler by itself is already weird enough, but specifying that it's a water bubbler makes me think there are other types of bublers. And honestly if there are? I don't want to know.
Neither of these are thaaaat weird to me, but pa-JAM-as sounds funnier than pa-JAH-mas, so that's the one I'm going with. It should be noted that this is the first response where the map lit up red anywhere (which means a high percentage of people use it, as opposed to blue, where it means pretty much no one uses it).
Okay apparently there's a lot to think about when it comes to this one. Aunt/ant is a debate I've heard my whole life. Aunt/Ain't is not. So this is the correct response and you aunt going to convince me otherwise.
Lots of silly things to choose from here. I'll admit that the thing I call it ("roly poly") is pretty silly. And I'm not going to fault someone for not knowing what this particular bug is. But, with all these options, if you know what the bug is and don't have a name for it, that just seems kind of... ignorant? Lazy? Like just do a Google search and pick one.
This is one that I'm having a hard time even trying to conceptualize. Breakfast is in the morning. Lunch is around noon. Dinner/supper (which are the same thing to me) are in the evening. This response makes it sound like you're eating two evening meals. So not only does this response mean they're saying something different than me, this response means that these people have a completely different lifestyle than I do, living off a completely different daily schedule. I can't even imagine.
While these are all a little silly (and I was tempted to go with "no word" again) crowfish is the silliest, because this thing neither looks like a crow or a fish. But stick 'em together and you get... a lobster? Beats me.
All of these words are words that I have heard before. Except "berm." I have no idea what a "berm" could even be. The other ones I could kind of see but "berm" is uniquely a this question thing. "Berm." Huh.
For the love of god please just keep "crown" as its own word, who are we to infringe upon it?
This has nothing to do with cars nor does it have anything to do with boots. Next question, please.
Break out the trained elephants and the sword swallowers, we have a real traffic circus on our hands with this one.
I- What the fuck? This one has so many insane responses that trump everything else we've seen so far. But the devil beating his wife is the only one that's a crime as far as I'm aware of, and the only one that's on a spiritual level as well, so we're going with that response here.
So fun fact, these don't actually exists where I live. I wish they did because "brew thru" would be an awesome name for them, but I think "bootlegger" is the odd one out, because what I call a bootlegger is one of those tiny bottles of whiskey/whatever that you can buy at certain places. A tiny bottle, not a whole business.
I can't imagine what geese have to do with playing pranks on people, but maybe that's because I never played Untitled Goose Game.
Caramel is caramel. What could the other thing even possibly be???
I don't know if you've caught on yet, but I don't enjoy homophones when it comes to this quiz. This is the second one where there was actually a lot of red on the map though so who am I to judge?
What is this, the DMZ? I'd like to imagine North Korea and South Korea on the opposite side of the same street, just kind of giving each other nasty looks but not setting foot on the neutral ground in the middle of the road.
Beans. Beans are what we're looking for here.
All of these are pretty stupid tbh (other than "Italian sandwich" which is a bit too literal for my tastes). Poor boy almost won out here but I've actually heard of that before, as opposed to sarney, which is a little less silly but a little more obscure. Feel free to disagree with me and say poor boy but I think one question out of 25 won't make too much of a difference.
I about had a stroke with this one trying to come up with the correct response and now I can't get this trifecta of words out of my head, but I thiiiink this is the weirdest one? Honestly it's hard to say because with my own response I go back and forth between all three of them being the same and all three being different lol.
Thanks for sticking with me for so long (or just skipping ahead to the results lol). The place with the weirdest dialect in the United States is...
New Orleans, Louisiana! Realistically, I think this kind of makes sense because I feel like there's a much higher French influence here than pretty much anywhere else in the rest of the United States, so that probably has affected the dialect over time and made it into what it is today. Alternatively, people from there could just be weird, idk. Runner-ups were Salt Lake City, Utah, and Boise, Idaho, and there's no real French influence there as far as I know. So maybe it just picked three random cities lol.
This has been another Effortpost brought to you by phoopes. Hope you enjoyed, and be sure to leave your own dialect maps, real or fake, in the replies below.
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