It's official: Maryland is a NORTHEASTERN state! (Baltimore, Frederick: how much, versus)

[Tezcatlipoca]

Originally Posted by ialmostforgot

I know on YouTube somewhere there is a video taking about hurricane Sandy and there were some good Crisfield accents in there.

Rock Newman has a good example of VA Piedmont (He's from the area around Brandywine, MD), and is part of an old triracial family from SoMD. Don't know how they missed those...

Aschmann used to take suggestions and contributions. I don't know if he's very active on his dialect site anymore but if you can find the videos for Brandywine and Crisfield, it might be worth a shot e-mailing him about it.

Help! For many places I haven’t found an audio sample yet. If you know of an audio or video sample on the Internet that features a speaker who was raised in a particular place, and whose dialect clearly represents that place, please let me know, whether that place is currently listed or not! Although many of the people in these samples are prominent people, I actually prefer ordinary local people, but anyone at all will do, as long as their pronunciation represents the local dialect. (The ones I especially need, and cannot find, are those with an orange-yellow center.) Also, if you think that one of the audio examples does not truly represent the local dialect, please let me know in the same way. (Oh, but please keep the samples clean. I have a policy of not using a sample if it uses a word you can’t say on TV in the U.S.!) I will normally list your name as the contributor, to make this more of a community project, unless you’d rather I didn’t, in which case I will use initials. However, I will not publish anyone’s e-mail address.

contact Map@Aschmann.net

[sniffablecow]

Originally Posted by ialmostforgot

I have an accent that only black people have, but I don't speak BEV. The questions of the quiz wouldn't have indicated that, anyway.

I'm wondering which words I use other than "y'all" and "yard sale" would make those places further south so red. Is it "tennis shoes"? "Crawfish"?

It would be interesting if there is a quiz that is about pronunciation instead of words.

Tennis shoes are more of a general thing across the nation, and crawfish is southern.

[ialmostforgot]

Originally Posted by westsideboy

Sorry for my ineloquence. You're right, the test doesn't ask about specific grammatical features that would indicate a BEV speaker. My gumshoe hypothesis is that the test would be less accurate for many black folks because features of their dialects would be interpreted as generalized Southern by the quiz.

There are a few pronunciation questions, but the test is more like what Kurath did in 1949, looking for regional word usage. So, yes, I think tennis shoes (my term too) and crawfish (I say crayfish) probably did skew your map into the south. Yard sale too, which is kinda cool as I never thought it was a regional term.

I agree. Black people say "y'all" everywhere. However, even if I choose "other" for that question, it is red in the South, and not really so up North. I think you would still be able to tell that a black person wasn't from one of the more distinct cities like NYC, New Orleans or Philly from this quiz and have a general idea of where he/she is from. Though some southern terms might remain in the cities where there were few blacks before WWI, blacks (especially in my generation - the millennials) usually share local terms with the other ethnicities of those cities, and the southern accents of their grandparents or great-grandparents would be diluted heavily (more so in the Northeast than in the Midwest or West).

[sniffablecow]

This girl says she is from southern MD. What do you guys think of this?


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0lpjroLnpGI

[sniffablecow]

Originally Posted by ialmostforgot

Took this quiz
Results: What American accent do you have?
It's not professional, but I thought it would be interesting to share the results.

The issue with this one is that the questions were mostly about the caught/cot merger. I think I got "Inland North" because I said that the second vowel in "about" and the vowel in "loud" are different. I don't say "aboat" like Tez does; The two words are "abah-oot" and a compressed form of "layoud" to me. Either way, I don't think they realized that Canadian raising happens in the tidewater.

I took that quiz, it said I was most like midland also, but the second one was philadelphia.

[ialmostforgot]

Originally Posted by sniffablecow

This girl says she is from southern MD. What do you guys think of this?


https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0lpjroLnpGI

The way she pronounced a few words was rather uncharacteristic of the MD accent. Don't know if she is from there, or what she means by "southern MD" (one accent tag said Frederick was southern MD!).

[Infinite_heights77]

A PROVERBIAL Northerner, with Southern sympathy!

Originally Posted by Highpointer

Question to people living in Maryland:

Do you prefer to be considered a Northerner or a Southerner? Do you prefer classifying Maryland as a Northern state, or a Southern state?

In my opinion, I would expect that the majority of Marylanders would prefer that Maryland be considered a "Northern" state, since Southern states are viewed as being backwards and less sophisticated, and offer a lower quality than states in other regions of the USA, and Southerners are commonly viewed as being less intelligent and less progressive than people in other regions in the USA. For example, there is an article titled "Study Proves Southern States Have Lowest Life Expectancy." In addition, according to this study, the states with the lowest quality of life are all Southern states.

[sniffablecow]

Originally Posted by ialmostforgot

The way she pronounced a few words was rather uncharacteristic of the MD accent. Don't know if she is from there, or what she means by "southern MD" (one accent tag said Frederick was southern MD!).

Another accent tag said Frederick was between DC and baltimore.

[sniffablecow]

Originally Posted by infinite_heights77

a proverbial northerner, with southern sympathy!

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[Infinite_heights77]

I want to commend individuals posting, who are using maps and geographical structure that help explain the reasons therefore.