I repeated the quiz, which did not give me the same 25 questions (though some did repeat). Analysis was close to the same as before. I suspect it has to do with the small size of my hometown in Washington State compared to the central/southern California towns it places my dialect.
David ________________________________ From: David Bruggeman <[email protected]> To: "[email protected]" <[email protected]> Sent: Sunday, December 22, 2013 12:34 PM Subject: Re: [TV orNotTV] TV orNotTV] NOTTV: Harvard Dialect Survey in NYT It gave me 25 questions, and placed me in or near Southern California cities not named LA. However, these cities were just slightly darker red than the parts of the Pacific NW where I spent nearly three decades (I've been in the DC area since 1999). I was not logged in, but I can't be sure there weren't residual tracking markers. I would also note that the most distinctive answers for each of the cities (Fresno, Bakersfield & Long Beach) was some variation of "no special word for _________" so I am skeptical of how precisely those answers can be pinpointed. Especially since I've only been to Long Beach of the 3. David Sent from my iPad On Dec 22, 2013, at 11:45 AM, PGage <[email protected]> wrote: Many here will have seen that the NYT has published today an interactive version of a sample of questions from the "Harvard Dialect Survey". The entire survey has 122 questions (you can see all of them at a link at the end of the survey), the NYT has selected around 10 or so. > > >I am suspicious that they may have cheated a bit using location data from my >sign-in - two of my three most similar cities are within 100 miles of where I >have lived the last 25 years, and one is the closest city to me with more than >100,000 people in it. None of the cities are within 400 miles of where I grew >up prior to going to college (southern California), which would seem to be a >big influence on speech patterns. > > > >If anyone has taken or decides to take it, I would be interested in a quick >report on how close it got to identifying your city, and if it was closer to >where you grew up or currently live (if different): > > >http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/12/20/sunday-review/dialect-quiz-map.html?nl=todaysheadlines&emc=edit_th_20131222 > > > >TV tie-in: Television is one of the main culprits for the break-down in >regional dialects in the United States. I grew up in Los Angeles with a family >of recently transplanted New Yorkers, who all had strong regional accents and >speech patterns, and who were very aware of how differently Californians >talked. SNL has a recurring sketch about The Californians that seems to >self-consciously make fun of the assumption that everyone in SoCal has >internalized the affluent Anglo subculture. The larger truth is probably that >we are all Californians these days, or at least the flat California sound is >what gets repeated in most mass media. Of course if you walk the streets of >Los Angeles (well, few people actually do that, but if you walk the shopping >malls or beaches of Southern California) the accents and dialects you will >hear are anything but flat. -- > -- -- TV or Not TV .... The Smartest (TV) People! You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TV or Not TV" group. To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/tvornottv?hl=en --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "TVorNotTV" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/groups/opt_out.
