British-Irish dialect quiz

[John Dunlop]

A British-Irish dialect quiz:

<https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/02/15/upshot/british-irish-dialect-quiz.html>

https://tinyurl.com/y4zrv7nj

It was pretty accurate for me. How did it do for you?

--
John

[Athel Cornish-Bowden]

Badly. It insisted that I was from southeast England, where I've never lived.


--
athel

[Peter Duncanson [BrE]]

On Tue, 19 Feb 2019 16:59:35 +0000, John Dunlop <dunlo...@ymail.com>
wrote:

I haven't tried it. However I read an article about it in The Times (of
London) on Saturday.
It is titled "Class system leaves dialect-matching project tongue tied".

Extract:

Responses on Twitter showed that most were impressed by the accuracy
of the system, ... Glaswegians, Dubliners, Mancunians, Geordies and
people from Cardiff all reported correct results. However, the
system was foiled when it came to speakers of received pronunciation
(RP), incorrectly suggesting that they were most likely to come from
Portsmouth, Tunbridge Wells or Norwich.

Experts said the quiz was struggling to match the accuracy of the
newspaper’s other quiz on American dialect because of the British
class system.

Fiona Douglas, lecturer in English language at the University of
Leeds, said that some of the questions, especially those about sofas
and the name of the evening meal, were as much about class as
geography. “I think class muddied it a bit, and age muddies it a
bit,” she said.
...but the 2 per cent of the population with RP would be harder to
place because of the uniformity of their speech.

I'm not sure about this comment:

Jonnie Robinson, lead curator of spoken English at the British
Library, said that it would be difficult for many Americans to
comprehend the variety of British dialects, which can change
radically between places 20 miles apart.
Fair enough, but:
“American English has only had three or four hundred years to evolve
whereas British English has been spoken for a thousand years.”

English was taken to America by BrE speakers. No doubt they spoke a wide
variety of dialects and any given geographical area became populated by
settlers with different BrE accents. The "evolution" of local AmE
accents would have involved the merging of the various accents of the
English speakers in an area.

--
Peter Duncanson, UK
(in alt.usage.english)

[Peter T. Daniels]

Four, to be precise. See David Hackett Fisher, *Albion's Seed*, who
correlates some 25 "folkways," one of them being dialect, with the
particular corner of England its original settlers came from. Fisher
is a historian, not an anthropologist or sociologist, and seems to
have had a large team of assistants (graduate students?) to do the
legwork. Several followup volumes were promised but none appeared;
his next work was a massive biography of Paul Revere.

> The "evolution" of local AmE
> accents would have involved the merging of the various accents of the
> English speakers in an area.

_Beyond_ an area. The four regions can be quite clearly demarcated east
of the Appalachians, but as settlers headed west, they began to mingle.

[Tony Cooper]

On Tue, 19 Feb 2019 16:59:35 +0000, John Dunlop
<dunlo...@ymail.com> wrote:

I took it as a guest. It verified that I'm not British or Irish. It
says I might pass in Birmingham or Killarney, though. I've been to
both. I didn't.


The problem in taking it was that many of the terms were terms that I
knew, but would not normally use. I had to restrict myself to terms
that I would use in normal conversation.

--
Tony Cooper - Orlando, Florida

[spuorg...@gowanhill.com]

On Tuesday, 19 February 2019 16:59:38 UTC, John Dunlop wrote:
> A British-Irish dialect quiz:

> It was pretty accurate for me. How did it do for you?

Fairly accurate for general area, but not down to the county.

However neither of my parents grew up where I grew up, and I've moved around, so the dialects I used with my peers in childhood, in my teens and in my adult life are all different from the register I used with my parents.

I suppose I'm closer to variably rhotic RP. It was interesting to spot what words are clearly Welsh, Scottish, etc.

Owain

[Athel Cornish-Bowden]

On 2019-02-19 18:17:45 +0000, Peter Duncanson [BrE] said:

> On Tue, 19 Feb 2019 16:59:35 +0000, John Dunlop <dunlo...@ymail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> A British-Irish dialect quiz:
>>
>> <https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/02/15/upshot/british-irish-dialect-quiz.html>
>>
>>
>> https://tinyurl.com/y4zrv7nj
>>
>> It was pretty accurate for me. How did it do for you?
>
> I haven't tried it. However I read an article about it in The Times (of
> London) on Saturday.
> It is titled "Class system leaves dialect-matching project tongue tied".
>
> Extract:
>
> Responses on Twitter showed that most were impressed by the accuracy
> of the system, ... Glaswegians, Dubliners, Mancunians, Geordies and
> people from Cardiff all reported correct results. However, the
> system was foiled when it came to speakers of received pronunciation
> (RP), incorrectly suggesting that they were most likely to come from
> Portsmouth, Tunbridge Wells or Norwich.

That might explain why it was hopeless with me. Not all RP speakers
sound exactly the same, but the variations are not, in general, based
on locality.

> Experts said the quiz was struggling to match the accuracy of the
> newspaper’s other quiz on American dialect because of the British
> class system.
> Fiona Douglas, lecturer in English language at the University of
> Leeds, said that some of the questions, especially those about sofas
> and the name of the evening meal, were as much about class as
> geography. “I think class muddied it a bit, and age muddies it a
> bit,” she said.
> ...but the 2 per cent of the population with RP would be harder to
> place because of the uniformity of their speech.
>
> I'm not sure about this comment:
>
> Jonnie Robinson, lead curator of spoken English at the British
> Library, said that it would be difficult for many Americans to
> comprehend the variety of British dialects, which can change
> radically between places 20 miles apart.
> Fair enough, but:
> “American English has only had three or four hundred years to evolve
> whereas British English has been spoken for a thousand years.”
>
> English was taken to America by BrE speakers. No doubt they spoke a wide
> variety of dialects and any given geographical area became populated by
> settlers with different BrE accents. The "evolution" of local AmE
> accents would have involved the merging of the various accents of the
> English speakers in an area.


--

athel

[John Varela]

It said I'm not from Britain or Ireland. They are correct.

--
John Varela

[Jerry Friedman]

Did you tell them that at the start?

The American one got me right (Cleveland, Akron, or... Fresno?).

--
Jerry Friedman

[Anders D. Nygaard]

"Definitely not from around here are you?"
With a slight coloration around London and SE England.

But I *did* state at the outset that I was not born in the
British Isles.

/Anders, Denmark.

[Anders D. Nygaard]

The American one
(<https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/upshot/dialect-quiz-map.html>)
seems fairly certain I'm from New York,
(or upstate, Yonkers or Jersey City) with Hawaii a distant second.

/Anders, Denmark

[Peter Moylan]

On 21/02/19 08:20, Anders D. Nygaard wrote:
> Den 19-02-2019 kl. 23:18 skrev Jerry Friedman:
>> On Tuesday, February 19, 2019 at 1:53:36 PM UTC-7, John Varela wrote:
>>> On Tue, 19 Feb 2019 16:59:35 UTC, John Dunlop
>>> <dunlo...@ymail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> A British-Irish dialect quiz:
>>>>
>>>> <https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/02/15/upshot/british-irish-dialect-quiz.html>
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> https://tinyurl.com/y4zrv7nj
>>>>
>>>> It was pretty accurate for me. How did it do for you?
>>> It said I'm not from Britain or Ireland. They are correct.

Same for me.

>> Did you tell them that at the start?

That's the catch. They might have used that information.

>> The American one got me right (Cleveland, Akron, or... Fresno?).
>
> The American one
> (<https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/upshot/dialect-quiz-map.html>) seems
> fairly certain I'm from New York,
> (or upstate, Yonkers or Jersey City) with Hawaii a distant second.

That one said I'm from Baton Rouge, or possibly Providence or New York.
I would immediately be picked as a foreigner in any of those three places.

One question had me puzzled. "What do you call the night before
Hallowe'en?" I call Hallowe'en All Hallows Eve, but I don't know anyone
who has a name for the night before.

--
Peter Moylan http://www.pmoylan.org
Newcastle, NSW, Australia

[Janet]

In article <gd2svj...@mid.individual.net>, athe...@gmail.com
says...

Badly. It says i'm from Edinburgh, Bath, or Oxford, where i've never
lived.

Janet.

[Jerry Friedman]

On Wednesday, February 20, 2019 at 4:10:39 PM UTC-7, Peter Moylan wrote:
> On 21/02/19 08:20, Anders D. Nygaard wrote:
> > Den 19-02-2019 kl. 23:18 skrev Jerry Friedman:

...

> >> The American one got me right (Cleveland, Akron, or... Fresno?).
> >
> > The American one
> > (<https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/upshot/dialect-quiz-map.html>) seems
> > fairly certain I'm from New York,
> > (or upstate, Yonkers or Jersey City) with Hawaii a distant second.
>
> That one said I'm from Baton Rouge, or possibly Providence or New York.
> I would immediately be picked as a foreigner in any of those three places.
>
> One question had me puzzled. "What do you call the night before
> Hallowe'en?" I call Hallowe'en All Hallows Eve, but I don't know anyone
> who has a name for the night before.

"I don't have a name for it" was one of the options, but I guess there
are people who do. In some places it seems to be a traditional time
for pranks such as soaping people's windows.

I don't have a name for rain while the sun shines either. That didn't
happen a lot in Cleveland, largely because it involves sunshine.

--
Jerry Friedman

[Quinn C]

* Peter Moylan:

Even most Americans don't, but when they do, it's helpful for placing
them.

<https://io9.gizmodo.com/whats-the-night-before-halloween-called-it-depends-on-1652219297>

--
The only BS around here is butternut squash, one of the dozens of
varieties of squash I grow. I hope you like squash.
-- Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt, S01E10

[Peter Moylan]

On 21/02/19 10:15, Jerry Friedman wrote:

> I don't have a name for rain while the sun shines either. That
> didn't happen a lot in Cleveland, largely because it involves
> sunshine.

It used to be common enough here. Less common now that we get less rain [1].

The best rainbow I ever saw was while driving through the Burren in the
west of Ireland. The combination of the shape of the land and the angle
of the sun made the rainbow appear to be really close. I almost got out
of the car to grab the pot of gold, but the rocks looked like real
ankle-breakers.

[1] We got some rain today, thanks to a tropical cyclone that's sitting
off the coast. My car is in for servicing right now, so it will probably
start raining again when it's time to walk down (about 2 km) to pick it up.

[Percival P. Cassidy]

I had to think a while about some of the questions because I've lived in
too many places, but when I answered according to what I recalled from
living in the UK 50+ years ago, it picked "London area" correctly. But
when I did the optional extras it moved me a fair way down toward the
South Coast.

It did better than the US one I did a few years ago, which placed me in
Utah (where I had spent two or three days a few decades previously) or
Portland, Oregon (where I had never set foot at the time I did the quiz).

Perce

[John Varela]

On Tue, 19 Feb 2019 22:18:59 UTC, Jerry Friedman
<jerry_f...@yahoo.com> wrote:

> On Tuesday, February 19, 2019 at 1:53:36 PM UTC-7, John Varela wrote:
> > On Tue, 19 Feb 2019 16:59:35 UTC, John Dunlop
> > <dunlo...@ymail.com> wrote:
> >
> > > A British-Irish dialect quiz:
> > >
> > > <https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/02/15/upshot/british-irish-dialect-quiz.html>
> > >
> > > https://tinyurl.com/y4zrv7nj
> > >
> > > It was pretty accurate for me. How did it do for you?
> >
> > It said I'm not from Britain or Ireland. They are correct.
>
> Did you tell them that at the start?

Of course, but they analyze the data anyway, or at least claim to.

> The American one got me right (Cleveland, Akron, or... Fresno?).
>


--

John Varela

[Tony Cooper]

On Wed, 20 Feb 2019 22:20:48 +0100, "Anders D. Nygaard"
<news2...@gmail.com> wrote:

>Den 19-02-2019 kl. 23:18 skrev Jerry Friedman:
>> On Tuesday, February 19, 2019 at 1:53:36 PM UTC-7, John Varela wrote:
>>> On Tue, 19 Feb 2019 16:59:35 UTC, John Dunlop
>>> <dunlo...@ymail.com> wrote:
>>>
>>>> A British-Irish dialect quiz:
>>>>
>>>> <https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/02/15/upshot/british-irish-dialect-quiz.html>
>>>>
>>>> https://tinyurl.com/y4zrv7nj
>>>>
>>>> It was pretty accurate for me. How did it do for you?
>>>
>>> It said I'm not from Britain or Ireland. They are correct.
>>
>> Did you tell them that at the start?
>>
>> The American one got me right (Cleveland, Akron, or... Fresno?).
>
>The American one
>(<https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/upshot/dialect-quiz-map.html>

That link blocks me because I've read more than my limit of free
articles in the NYTimes this month. They want me to pay $1.00 a week
to continue.

[Peter Moylan]

I had also reached my limit, but I just dismissed the reminder window
and continued on. Somehow that increased my credit by 1.

[Lewis]

In the US there are various isolated pockets around the country that
have a name for the night of October 30th. I've never run across it in
the real world, but I've seen in mentioned in various movies and.or TV
shows over the years. The only one I remember off-hand is Devil's
Night, I think it is, which came from Detroit and was "celebrated" with
various acts of arson.

--
'Witches just aren't like that,' said Magrat. 'We live in harmony with
the great cycles of Nature, and do no harm to anyone, and it's wicked of
them to say we don't. We ought to fill their bones with hot lead.'

[Lewis]

When that happens to me, albeit rarely, I just open the link in a
different browser. I have several, and I can always get some more.

Or I delete the cookie litter from the various NYTimes domains.

Or I open a private browsing window.

--
Nine-tenths of the universe is the knowledge of the position and
direction of everything in the other tenth. Every atom has its
biography, every star its file, every chemical exchange its equivalent
of the inspector with a clipboard. It is unaccounted for because it is
doing the accounting for the rest of it. Nine-tenths of the universe, in
fact, is the paperwork. --The Thief of Time

[Athel Cornish-Bowden]

You can pay PTD a visit when he gets back from Haifa.

> ) with Hawaii a distant second.
>
> /Anders, Denmark

--
athel

[RH Draney]

On 2/20/2019 1:51 PM, Anders D. Nygaard wrote:
>
> "Definitely not from around here are you?"
> With a slight coloration around London and SE England.
>
> But I *did* state at the outset that I was not born in the
> British Isles.

I got the same message with the coloration centered about Bath...guess
that's the difference between California and Denmark....r

[John Dunlop]

Peter Duncanson [BrE]:

> On Tue, 19 Feb 2019 16:59:35 +0000, John Dunlop <dunlo...@ymail.com>
> wrote:
>
>> A British-Irish dialect quiz:
>>
>> <https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/02/15/upshot/british-irish-dialect-quiz.html>
>>
>> https://tinyurl.com/y4zrv7nj
>>
>> It was pretty accurate for me. How did it do for you?
>
> I haven't tried it. However I read an article about it in The Times (of
> London) on Saturday.
> It is titled "Class system leaves dialect-matching project tongue tied".
>

> Extract: [...]

Interesting, thanks!

--
John

[John Varela]

It pegged me right to New Orleans. I'm sure that was because I call
the grassy area between the two sides of a divided road the "neutral
ground". Actually I don't use that term because no one else around
here knows it (and I have no replacement term), but as it happens
the wife and I went out to lunch today and on the way home I pointed
out something about the "neutral ground" of a crossing avenue, and
wife called my attention to it.

Now, if they had asked if I call a sidewalk a "banquette" I would
have failed that one because I no longer do. In this case I do have
an alternative term.

--
John Varela

[Jerry Friedman]

...
I had no idea that "median" wasn't the universal American term for that.

--
Jerry Friedman

[Dingbat]

On Tuesday, February 19, 2019 at 10:29:38 PM UTC+5:30, John Dunlop wrote:
> A British-Irish dialect quiz:
>
> <https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/02/15/upshot/british-irish-dialect-quiz.html>
>
> https://tinyurl.com/y4zrv7nj
>
> It was pretty accurate for me. How did it do for you?
>

> --

Accurate:

Definitely not from around here are you? Your answers were closer to the
average person outside of Ireland and Britain than anywhere inside it.

[Quinn C]

* Dingbat:

> On Tuesday, February 19, 2019 at 10:29:38 PM UTC+5:30, John Dunlop wrote:
>> A British-Irish dialect quiz:
>>
>> <https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/02/15/upshot/british-irish-dialect-quiz.html>
>>
>> https://tinyurl.com/y4zrv7nj
>>
>> It was pretty accurate for me. How did it do for you?
>

> Accurate:
>
> Definitely not from around here are you? Your answers were closer to the
> average person outside of Ireland and Britain than anywhere inside it.

The accent of the "average person outside of Ireland and Britain" must
be interesting. I think "average" is misplaced here.

--
Certain writers assert very decidedly that no pronouns are
needed beyond those we already possess, but this is simply a
dogmatic opinion, unsupported by the facts.
-- Findlay (OH) Jeffersonian (1875)

[Madrigal Gurneyhalt]

On Friday, 22 February 2019 13:31:37 UTC, Quinn C wrote:
> * Dingbat:
>
> > On Tuesday, February 19, 2019 at 10:29:38 PM UTC+5:30, John Dunlop wrote:
> >> A British-Irish dialect quiz:
> >>
> >> <https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/02/15/upshot/british-irish-dialect-quiz.html>
> >>
> >> https://tinyurl.com/y4zrv7nj
> >>
> >> It was pretty accurate for me. How did it do for you?
> >
> > Accurate:
> >
> > Definitely not from around here are you? Your answers were closer to the
> > average person outside of Ireland and Britain than anywhere inside it.
>
> The accent of the "average person outside of Ireland and Britain" must
> be interesting. I think "average" is misplaced here.
>

It doesn't say 'accent' it says 'answers'. The average Non-Brit person
gives answers similar or identical to those you gave. There's absolutely
no suggestion that this means there is such a thing as an average
non-Brit accent.

[Quinn C]

* Madrigal Gurneyhalt:

Strictly speaking, yes, but they construct an "average person" from the
average answers, and that's where it gets weird already.

Given the nature of the questions, it is to be expected that people
from outside Ireland and Britain are all over the place in their
answers, not grouped around some average.

--
... she didn't exactly approve of the military. She didn't
exactly disapprove, either; she just made it plain that she
thought there were better things for intelligent human beings
to do with their lives. -- L. McMaster Bujold, Memory

[John Varela]

"Neutral ground" is, I think, unique to New Orleans. It includes
not only the median but traffic islands, that is, any place where it
is safe for a pedestrian to stand between flows of traffic.

--
John Varela

[Anders D. Nygaard]

Den 22-02-2019 kl. 20:32 skrev Quinn C:
> * Madrigal Gurneyhalt:
>
>> On Friday, 22 February 2019 13:31:37 UTC, Quinn C wrote:
>>> * Dingbat:
>>>
>>>> On Tuesday, February 19, 2019 at 10:29:38 PM UTC+5:30, John Dunlop wrote:
>>>>> A British-Irish dialect quiz:
>>>>>
>>>>> <https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2019/02/15/upshot/british-irish-dialect-quiz.html>
>>>>>
>>>>> https://tinyurl.com/y4zrv7nj
>>>>>
>>>>> It was pretty accurate for me. How did it do for you?
>>>>
>>>> Accurate:
>>>>
>>>> Definitely not from around here are you? Your answers were closer to the
>>>> average person outside of Ireland and Britain than anywhere inside it.
>>>
>>> The accent of the "average person outside of Ireland and Britain" must
>>> be interesting. I think "average" is misplaced here.
>>>
>>
>> It doesn't say 'accent' it says 'answers'. The average Non-Brit person
>> gives answers similar or identical to those you gave. There's absolutely
>> no suggestion that this means there is such a thing as an average
>> non-Brit accent.
>
> Strictly speaking, yes, but they construct an "average person" from the
> average answers, and that's where it gets weird already.
>
> Given the nature of the questions, it is to be expected that people
> from outside Ireland and Britain are all over the place in their
> answers, not grouped around some average.

I would say that "the nature of the questions" is to point out various
regionalisms, and people from outside Ireland and Britain tend not to
have any of them. I saw many strange terms I had never heard before.

/Anders, Denmark.