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