My American Accent

Randy at GeneaMusings suggested taking a quick quiz called What American Accent Do you Have?

I did and the quiz results were spot on for me. I was born in the city of Philadelphia. I thought the the quiz might find I had a Northeast or East Coast accent. Or I thought I might have picked up some of the accents from the different places I have lived in the country. Nope. The quiz had me pegged:

Your accent is as Philadelphian as a cheesesteak! ... If you've ever journeyed to some far off place where people don't know that Philly has an accent, someone may have thought you talked a little weird even though they didn't have a clue what accent it was they heard.

Now I find this really interesting. Randy at GeneaMusings notes that each child learns to speak in his first four years or so based on his parents and other close family members and friends. But only my mother and one grandparent were born in Philadelphia. My father and my other three grandparents were born in Europe and spoke their Philadelphia English with European accents.

Also, I have been away from Philadelphia for years and have lived in different parts of the country. Any accent I might have had, I thought was long gone. Mellowed out. Not true, apparently.

I was curious about which questions in the quiz showed that I had a Philadelphia accent. Wikipedia describes the Philadelphia accent and I found many of the word examples from the article that are questions in the quiz. And How the Accents Sound Different shows how the word examples in the quiz are pronounced in different part of the country, but don't read these articles until you have taken the quiz.

Go ahead and take the quiz. It's fun and interesting.