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Bruce sent me a cool personal dialect quiz last week.
http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013 ... .html?_r=0

@kingsnake
I'm going to say you were at Bening or Stewart when you were in GA?

@big_load
Yes especially in education it's all Midwest and east coasters it seems..best personal plate I saw said Fromhere or something like that..an ode to the rarity of being born and raised in AZ I assumed and a message to transplants, like, myself lol

joe bartels wrote:I'm curious to know if anyone uses some of those phrases for rain when the sun is shining...

No. The only one I've heard used is sun shower.

@joe bartels
When I was growing up we never had a word or term for it but I mentioned this to my wife and kids just now and they looked at me like I was nuts "DAD!?!? That's a sunshower..." Soooo... I guess that's what I'm calling it from now on

Bradshaws wrote:@joe bartels
When I was growing up we never had a word or term for it but I mentioned this to my wife and kids just now and they looked at me like I was nuts "DAD!?!? That's a sunshower..." Soooo... I guess that's what I'm calling it from now on

I'd never heard of it either. I'm a native Californian, and two of the three places it says I could be from were Santa Rosa and Fresno, both in CA. But Salt Lake City was in there, too, for "kitty-corner." (Oh, my heck!) I wonder what it would have told me if I'd said "catty-corner" because I do say that occasionally. Maybe I'll take the test again and see.

I'd never heard of a drive through liquor joint. I say "Ant Rose." I sleep on a cot and I cot a cold last week. My dad was a loyer, not a LAWyer.

I have a friend who has lived in Queens, NY, his whole life. It is fun to talk to him on the phone. I love to hear him talk. Accents are fun. Various aspects of modern living (moving around, TV, etc.) are diluting American regional accents. It's kind of sad.

Did you know there was a pioneer dialect way back when? There are probably some people who still speak a version of it, somewhere back in the hills.

Jim_H wrote:That is odd, I took the test and it never told me where it thought I was from.

It only recognizes people from this planet. who speak English.

I did the long test, where you have to create an account. It just collects data.

It nailed my proximity with "mischief night".

friendofThundergod wrote:@kingsnakeI'm going to say you were at Bening or Stewart when you were in GA?

HaHa. For me it was Fort Stewart. Not much other reason to be in GA. Benning has two n's

I took this a few days ago and it pegged me correctly as being from southeastern Wisconsin...no doubt from that Milwaukee thing of calling drinking fountains bubblers.

A bubbler? Haha! I had never heard of that! And I had no idea there was a name for the night BEFORE Halloween!

joe bartels wrote:I'm curious to know if anyone uses some of those phrases for rain when the sun is shining...

Most interesting to me was a monkey's wedding because when I chose it, the map showed nowhere in the US was it likely to be used, which made sense to me because...

When I lived in South Africa in the 1950's it was called a monkey's wedding because on the days when it rained with the sun shining the monkeys would sit on highest branches of the trees or along fences and chatter away like people at a Zulu wedding.

CannondaleKid wrote:

joe bartels wrote:I'm curious to know if anyone uses some of those phrases for rain when the sun is shining...

Most interesting to me was a monkey's wedding because when I chose it, the map showed nowhere in the US was it likely to be used, which made sense to me because...

When I lived in South Africa in the 1950's it was called a monkey's wedding because on the days when it rained with the sun shining the monkeys would sit on highest branches of the trees or along fences and chatter away like people at a Zulu wedding.

Now, that's an interesting image!

azbackpackr wrote:And I had no idea there was a name for the night BEFORE Halloween!

That's because you're not from Michigan.

But at monkey weddings, instead of rice, they fling poo ...

I spent a month at Ft. Benning, but two six month stints at Ft. Gordon ...

It told me I was either from Rochester or Buffalo, NY. Pretty close, I am from Syracuse but I went to college in Buffalo. I guess calling the bugs under rocks a Potato Bug gave me away! Pretty neat!

Given that I've spent so many years in Arizona, it's not surprising that Scottsdale was one of three places I got pegged to. (I say Freeway now, though I was raised saying Highway). But I'm a unique case, having learned to speak from immigrant parents who never went to school in this country. So it's funny that Patterson/Newark, New Jersey and Rochester, NY show up as other locations for me. It's interesting because my parents learned english in Brooklyn, but then moved to the suburbs near northern New Jersey. And they have many good friends from upstate New York. All of which likely had an influence on me. What's strange is that despite having Norwegian as my first language, Minnesota is about as far from my language patterns as possible. Interesting study. http://nyti.ms/KiZZ6x

Learning in English in Brooklyn? Their mastery must have been poor, tenuous, at best. I didn't know people in Brooklyn spoke English. Well, to be fair, I could say the same thing for a large part of Texas, too. East Texas.

joe bartels wrote:I'm curious to know if anyone uses some of those phrases for rain when the sun is shining...

I usually call it "Only in AZ"

Wow! That quiz was dead-on.

big_load wrote:

joe bartels wrote:I'm curious to know if anyone uses some of those phrases for rain when the sun is shining...

No. The only one I've heard used is sun shower.

I love sun showers. But I've only seen them at beach houses on Cape Cod and Nantucket, and they're usually small and fenced in. Apparently they can be installed without fencing and aren't restricted to beach houses: