What are your region's linguistic fingerprints?

A complete lack of the letter ‘R’.

Lots of swearing.

Hostile rhetorical questions.

example
“What are you, a fucking moron?! Pahking your cah like that!”

“Bennies” is the Jersey Shore’s collective noun for summer tourists.

“Subs” are the Jersey word for hoagie sandwiches.

Always “soda” never “pop.”

From North Jersey you go “Down the shore” but those of us who live here go “to the beach.”

And please never tell me I’m from “Joisey.”

I’m from Oakland, so I guess our best known word from there is Hella.

Holler for living up a hollow. “Go down 4 mile holler about 2 miles and turn left at the old Dunlap farm.” Dunlap has been dead for 50 years and the farm has been in 3 different families since then. But it will always be known as the Dunlap’s farm.
We say pop here.
We eat slaw on our hot dogs.
Ya’ll. As in ya’ll coming?
I live in WV.

I live in southern NY. I was born in the city and I grew up right outside the city so I have a pretty strong Bronx accent. A long sandwich is a wedge, not a hero, a sub or a hoagie. We drink soda, not pop.

I pronounce the word “with” as “wit,” as in, “I’ll have a ham and cheese wedge wit lettuce and tomato.”

Words like “coffee” and “water” are pronounced “cawfee” and “wawter” and we go to the “mawl” not the “moll.

Lots of people where I live say things like “it’s ridiculous” or start sentences with “honestly” or “I gotta be honest with ya.”

Anyone within a 3 hour drive of Chicago calls it “the city”. It’s not ‘we are going to Chicago”. It’s “we are going into the city”. Also if you live even that close to the city, you are “from Chicago”.
We say pop here.
And don’t you dare say Illinoise

@jca2 My sister lived in Brooklyn for 40 years. She did start sentences with “honestly” a lot.

I live in Southern California. People tend to use initials for places prefaced by the word the. Inland Empire is called The IE and Orange County is The OC. A lot of people start sentences with “trust me” or “oh my God” and some hipsters still start or end a sentence with “dude”. We say soda.

Try this test: https://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/upshot/dialect-quiz-map.html

My own outcome was eerie. The results showed that I’d grown up somewhere between Providence and Boston, which is exactly right.

@Love_my_doggie I remember taking that test when it came out (I think i may have posted it in the Jelly FB group too) and it was very accurate for me!

This reminds me of when I visited Ecuador. At dinner I asked for Coke. The water wanted me to distinguish between Coke the soda pop and coca tea (with cocaine).

Just took the quiz above and it said I’m from Boston, which I am. Spot on.

Worcester, MA and Providence, RI were the other options, which are nearby.

The test wouldn’t operate for me. Growing up, I think I said, “you guys”. Where I lived, I don’t remember calling it a soda or a pop. We called those things by their names: Seven-Up, Coke, a drink, etc. I remember being told that farmers in southern Utah could tell which town each one was from just by listening to each other talk.

Was in a bar in Connecticut 40 years ago. Listening this guy a couple stools down talk, I said “I bet you are from Chillicothe, Ohio.” I looked over at me and replied, “No I’m from Jackson, Ohio 15 miles from Chillicothe.” He got laugh out of that and processed to do a Texas drawl, Told it sounded like Austin, he said yes. Everybody at the bar is starting watch us, I did a Western North Carolina and he said Charlotte, NC. The crowd was laughing now ! We did that for a couple for southern accents and I did a Aussie accent and broke him up., “Crodile Dundee!” The bartender gave us another round free.

Where I went to high school the phrase was “Wicked Cool”, Southern New England.

I just took the above quiz. It pinpointed where I’m from perfectly.

From Montana where they warshed clothes. And had a person ask if I came from Canada by the way I pronounced the word “out”.

Quiz results:
– San Francisco
– Sacramento
– Santa Rosa

Interesting. I currently live in the Bay Area. But would have guessed where I grew up would have had a bigger impact on my language.

I took the quiz, and although I’ve lived in the midwest, northeast, southeast, south central, and west coast, the quiz was accurate for my current city (plus a couple of others close by). But I figure if it correctly guesses where you are now, that the IP address plays a part in it.

@smudges: Even though I took the quiz once before, I took it again today to see if the results would be different. I got New York (state, correct), and the city I grew up in (which is about 45 minutes from where I live now so nothing to do with my IP address) and Patterson NJ. I’m not sure how far Patterson NJ is from my house but probably about an hour and a half ride. I live north of the city (NYC) and Patterson is in the opposite direction.

The word “wedge” for a sandwich is a word that is rare for people to use, but the city that I grew up in is one of the few places that refer to that as a wedge. There are other things that the quiz uses, of course, like pronunciation of the words “crayon,” “aunt,” “pajama,” etc.

@Tropical_Willie Wicked good!

They sell t-shirts around Boston that say “Wicked Pissah”

Ope, let me just squeeze right pass ya there

@anniereborn ”Also if you live even that close to the city, you are “from Chicago”.

I live in a county next to Milwaukee, and I am a 45 min drive away from the city of Milwaukee. If I travel to a different state and get asked where I am from, I just say I am from Milwaukee otherwise no one will know where it is. And it isn’t like completely unknown of a county, there are some notable people that come from here. But everyone around here just tells others we are from Milwaukee because know one will know otherwise. That or Madison. I am pretty much right in between both cities.

According to that test I’m closest to St. Louis. Which is, I guess, reasonably close to the mark. I grew up 2 and a half hours southeast of St. Louis, along the IL-KY border. Also, my own result is probably somewhat skewed by the fact that I’ve made much effort over the years to improve my diction after having somewhat of a speech impediment when I was a child.

(Though I still find the sound of my own voice grating when I hear it recorded.)

@SergeantQueen

Yeah, pretty much I just tell people that I live in Chicago, though I’m about an hour and a half outside of the city proper. It’s really kinda the area where the suburbs meet the boonies.

Ooooh I took the quiz too and it said I was closest to Milwaukee/Madison Which is right where I am lol! Fun quiz

I found a test that didn’t want to harvest my information like the Times quiz did, and it says I’m from the West, which is where I grew up. But actually many of the questions I could have answered several ways. I’ve lived all over and picked up all sorts of ways of saying things. https://www.purewow.com/entertainment/american-dialect-quiz for example, I’m just as likely to say “semi” as “18-wheeler”, etc.

I am ten miles from Canada so we turn our statements into questions?
Eh?

@snowberry Says I am from the Midwest

hahaha I just took 2 more dialect quizzes – now I apparently live in the west and NYC! Not!

@snowberry. Just took your quiz and says I’m from the West just like the previous quiz. Both got me right.