Say it like THIS

Your Linguistic Profile:

55% General American English 25% Dixie 10% Upper Midwestern 5% Yankee 0% Midwestern

What Kind of American English Do You Speak?

If you take the test, a lot of it is how you pronounce certain words, or what word you use for a particular object. I'm not sure how I got 5% Yankee..., but the rest kinda makes sense. My dad grew up in Minnesota, that explains the Upper Midwestern, I live in NC so that's the 25% dixie... at any rate, I'm 75% not dixie. I reckon (haha) 25% is just enough to be charming once in a while, but not smothering or annoying. Some people have Southern accents that just irritate me to death... like the president (Bush) to start with, but even more so, the NC Governor (Mike Easley) and more than that... presidential hopeful and ex-senator from NC, John Edwards--his is the absolute worst. I grew up in the south and yet I have the worst opinion (of anyone I know) of southern accents. A little bit is fine, but these guys just overdo it... and they sound so dumb. Come on, how can you listen to Edwards (and he gets airtime because he's running for president and all) and not think "Ugh, what an uneducated backwards moron." Americans, I think, judge people a lot by how they speak. I'm guilty of it. I know most of the NC Legislature talks like that, coming from backwoods towns all over the state... it's embarrassing to listen to them, sadly.

But other accents I think are actually neat to listen to. Russian accents, for instance, I think are fascinating. (Not Borat... more like Boris & Natasha). Some British accents are interesting, I think, but others really put me off though I can't explain why. New Zealand is funny. Among Muslims, you get the Southeast Asian kind of English from Urdu or Punjabi (aka "Indian") which is kind of abrupt. Arab accents really vary. Moroccans for example sound more like French accents than Arabic ones (which you'd expect, almost). Egyptians are funny though. My favorite...

Some months ago I was riding in the car with a friend of mine whose dad is from Palestine. Out of nowhere... "You can bark anywhere you want" she says, "But you can't park here!"

I just remembered... and laughed... lalala.