How Y’all, Youse and You Guys Talk

The other day while looking to distract myself for a moment, I decided to take one of the many quizzes floating around Facebook. I decided it was time to find out where my dialect is from.

Apparently, there were these two guys, Bert Vaux and Scott Golder, who were really curious and bored, so together they started a linguistics project back in 2002. This project resulted in the Harvard Dialect Survey and from that material comes this fun little time killer. After answering 25 questions about the specific word you use to describe common items and how you pronounce these words you get a personal dialect map. Oh boy, a free and personal dialect map - sign me up!

 

 

Sometimes I found myself trying to decide how do I pronounce that word? But mostly I was busy asking myself Why on earth would someone call it that? What on earth does that even mean? So ridicious. That second question is really rather silly of me to even ask myself, because the definition is right there. But really? I have never heard of rubbernecking being called a gawk block. Although I might have to start using this new found terminology of mine.

 

Well, on to the results. After carefully and honestly answering all 25 questions I have finally found the source of my dialect.

 



It is a bit hard to see, but my dialect comes from Salt Lake City, Reno, and Spokane. SHUT THE FRONT DOOR. How did they know? Here is the thing, I was born in Salt Lake City, but I only lived there until I was five years old. I grew up in Lynden, which is in the same state (although in opposite corner) as Spokane. And here is the kicker friends, I love Las Vegas which is almost the same thing as Reno, but better. IMHO since I have never actually been to Reno.

I was honestly a bit suprised by the results. So go check it out and be sure to report back with the results. I would love to hear how y'all, youse, and you guys talk!

XOJO