Y'all May Enjoy This Quiz

You may be an English speaker. You may be in (or from) the United States¹. Even if both are true, there are lots of other English speakers from the United States who don't sound anything like you. And that's pretty neat – because you can use those regional variances to narrow down where you're from.

One such quiz can be found at New York Times. It's from 2013, but it came to my attention thanks to some discussion about a similar viral quiz making the rounds.

I thought more about how I speak after the handful of minutes it took me to participate in this quiz than I have in many moons. (How do I pronounce "caramel"?) Also, I'm pretty sure there are actually more than the 25 questions in the quiz, so if you take it multiple times, you'll probably get some different options each time.

Interestingly enough in my case, the pinpointing wasn't very accurate; it thought I was from Wisconsin or Nevada – places I've only ever been to in passing. Still if I needed to blame my language skills on anything, it'd be a steady afternoon diet of syndicated sitcoms and the cadence of Hollywood dialog.

Better yet, this experience gave me some ideas for how to quickly differentiate characters in my GURPS games. Plus, I found it a diverting way to spend a few minutes before supper – by which I mean "dinner."

-- Steven Marsh

¹ Of course, we have many amazing fans across the globe . . . and quite possibly realms beyond. If you know of any cool similar quizzes about your linguistic neck of the woods, I'd love to hear about them . . .