Can our algorithm guess which English you speak?

[Games With Words]

Hi Folks,

Is Throw me down the stairs my shoes a good English sentence? It depends on where you live. Many people in Newfoundland or New Zealand find that sentence perfectly grammatical.

I've posted a new grammar quiz. By taking this quiz, you will be helping train a machine algorithm that is mapping out the differences in English grammar around the world. At the end, the algorithm will try to guess your native language (English, Spanish, Mandarin, ...) and what dialect of English you speak (American, Canadian, Irish, ...). Then you can help train the algorithm by telling it a few things about your language background.

Through this study, we hope to learn more about the Englishes of the world and also better understand how people learn new languages (how is your English affected by the age at which you start learning English and the languages you already know?). 

You can see some of our results so far in graphical form here.

In other new, mark your calendars. Tuesday, June 10, will be our first double-points day at VerbCorner.

Josh Hartshorne

GamesWithWords.org &

The Computational Cognitive Science Group @ MIT