Eric on The Road

Journeys into the offbeat, off the beaten path, overlooked and forgotten - by Eric Model

Thursday, June 22, 2006

"Are You a Yankee or a Rebel" Quiz

From NPR News - Morning Edition, June 20, 2006:

If you say "pa-JAM-uzz" instead of "pa-JAHM-zz" or "yooz guys" instead of "ya'll," chances are, you're a Yankee. If you call a bag a sack or pronounce route as "rout" instead of "root," you're probably a rebel.

You can figure out just how much of Southerner you are by taking an online quiz called "Are you a Yankee or a Rebel?" It asks questions about how you pronounce certain words and phrases and then calculates the amount of Dixie in your speech.

The test was co-developed by Robert Beard. He has a Ph.D. in linguistics and is president of AlphaDictionary.com.

For example, if you pronounce the word "aunt" like "ain't," the quiz determines you're from the "deep, deep South; you should come up for air."

Beard says pronunciations are "nothing but regional dialects. It doesn't reflect intelligence or anything like that -- simply the area in which you grew up in."

To See Samples of the Quiz go to NPR at:
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=5496546
OR
for more from the Glossary of Quaint Southernisms & to take the quiz go to: http://www.alphadictionary.com/articles/yankeetest.html

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