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« Dance of the mountain-bike fairies | Main | How taxes affect career choice » Thursday, November 30, 2006Do you have an accent after all?Another interesting use of online surveys and instant interactivity: A Web site dedicated to determining what variety of American accent the user has -- ranked in order of likelihood. It's a short quiz that asks you to compare the way you pronounce various homonyms or near-homonyms, such as "don" and "dawn." (The same, differently, or a hair differently?) Very simple to answer, although you might find yourself speaking aloud (the same as "allowed"?) to determine if there's any difference. After the first few questions I was smugly thinking I clearly had no accent at all, as one always thinks is the case. (Despite my Boston origins, I don't have that twang, where "car" seems to have no "r," perhaps because of Midwestern parentage.) And in fact, I turned out to have a "Midland" accent, about which the quiz-maker says, "'You have a Midland accent' is just another way of saying 'you don't have an accent.'" Victory to me and my provincialism, I guess. Posted by Evan Hughes at 10:44 AM
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