I will not be categorized

Your Linguistic Profile:

60% General American English
20% Yankee
10% Dixie
10% Upper Midwestern
0% Midwestern

15. “Y’all”…
Just rolls off your tongue [+5%]
Is not sometihng (sic) you say [-5%]

I have a quarrel with all surveys. I’ve never taken ONE that didn’t put me in a bind with its choices. I grew up in Northern Virginia (accent on Northern), a few miles from Washington, DC. My parents were from Kentucky and Tennessee. “Y’all” is something I *almost* never say; “you guys,” “you two,” are more common in my speech, but I do need a collective/plural you — as most languages provide.

In Virginia, we drove on Root 1, but I take a particular rOUTe to get somewhere.

A cellar is an unfinished basement. My house has a crawlspace.

I grew up accenting “impotent” differently if it was figurative or literal. I struggled to identify the difference in meaning implied by Ecomomic vs EHconomic. I wondered how BEfriend could be so different from BEhead (why isn’t it dehead?). That’s called an ideolect; I’m the only native speaker of mine. mjh

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