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Now, I am a bit skeptical of it. Being a 4th generation Texan of Deep South ancestry, I was not the least surprised to see mine labeled "Southern United States."
However, my fiance did it, and it gave the same result. She was born and grew up in Colorado, joined the Navy at 18 and lived mostly in California for those four years, then in Michigan for about 11 years when married to her former husband, and then in Nevada for about 9 before moving to Texas six years ago. Point being, relatively speaking, she has not been in the state all that long and definitely doesn't have what I would call a Texas/Southern accent. However, the test identified her that way.
Now, the real kicker is -- because I was skeptical at this point -- was when I had her 17 year old son do it. His dad his the guy she was married to when in Michigan and that is where he (the son) has spent his whole life. He is just staying with us for the summer. While I can understand -- perhaps --that SHE might have developed a few "Southern" characteristics to her speech, NO way has her son. He sounds purely northern. BUT yet? Yep, it identified him as "Southern United States" as well! LOL
What I am wondering is if this "technology" just somehow is able to "trace" to where the computer is located and identify THAT way? Or perhaps, because my microphone had an "echo" it might have affected the results...?
Oh well, y'all try it. And I am really curious to see if someone from New England gets a "Southern" result. Then I will KNOW it is all bogus...or at least faulty! LOL
I call bulls--t. I think it just finds your IP address and determines it from there. For example, it said I have an Australian accent. While I do live in Australia, I'm not Australian and I do not have an Australian accent.
For example, here is a sample I made for this forum some time back and unless my accent has completely changed in the past nine months it's wrong:
I guess the lesson learned here from Texasreb and Frank is that you don't have to live in a place all your life to develop the local speech patterns that can be recognized by technology.
Thats very interesting. Goes to show, despite our technologically connected world, we still have geographic differences in the way we speak that are going to disappear anytime soon.
I did it three times and recieved "Sorry, we couldn't fully identify your accent. We're going to take a guess of American Midland". Changed the mic because of the echo and still got the same result.... FWIW I'm sitting in the heart of New Orleans right now.
I got the same thing as WestbankNOLA, with couldn't fully identify but we guess American Midland. That sounds pretty accurate to me. I'm located in Austin TX.
Now, I am a bit skeptical of it. Being a 4th generation Texan of Deep South ancestry, I was not the least surprised to see mine labeled "Southern United States."
However, my fiance did it, and it gave the same result. She was born and grew up in Colorado, joined the Navy at 18 and lived mostly in California for those four years, then in Michigan for about 11 years when married to her former husband, and then in Nevada for about 9 before moving to Texas six years ago. Point being, relatively speaking, she has not been in the state all that long and definitely doesn't have what I would call a Texas/Southern accent. However, the test identified her that way.
Now, the real kicker is -- because I was skeptical at this point -- was when I had her 17 year old son do it. His dad his the guy she was married to when in Michigan and that is where he (the son) has spent his whole life. He is just staying with us for the summer. While I can understand -- perhaps --that SHE might have developed a few "Southern" characteristics to her speech, NO way has her son. He sounds purely northern. BUT yet? Yep, it identified him as "Southern United States" as well! LOL
What I am wondering is if this "technology" just somehow is able to "trace" to where the computer is located and identify THAT way? Or perhaps, because my microphone had an "echo" it might have affected the results...?
Oh well, y'all try it. And I am really curious to see if someone from New England gets a "Southern" result. Then I will KNOW it is all bogus...or at least faulty! LOL
Michigan speaks mostly with a upper midwestern accent as you would expect, but metro Detroit is a little different. It is possible to find southern speech characteristics in southeast Michigan. The reason for this is the large numbers of people who moved north for auto jobs in the first part of the 20th century. Even decendents of these people sometimes say things that sound southern. There are whole towns or suburbs that have these traits. In fact in metro Detroit there is a suburb called Taylor that is refered to as "taylortucky" because of these southern traits in its residents who largley moved to that area from Kentucky and other points further south. I am not saying that southern speech is common in metro Detroit, but it is possible to find it in certain places where people from the south concentrated after they moved north 50-80 years ago. If you leave the metro Detroit area and drive out into the rest of the state you will not find it at all, just the common midwestern accent that you would expect. Just a thought on how this program may have pegged a Michigan resident as having a southern accent.
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