Linguist Forum

General Linguistics => Linguist's Lounge => Topic started by: Corybobory on June 09, 2014, 01:47:36 AM

Title: Which English?
Post by: Corybobory on June 09, 2014, 01:47:36 AM

http://www.gameswithwords.org/WhichEnglish/

Here's a fun little quiz that guesses where your dialect is from - it recognised that I'm Canadian!  It didn't pick up on the British influence though (though I've only been here for 5 years).

What did you get?

Title: Re: Which English?
Post by: freknu on June 09, 2014, 06:14:33 AM

Our top three guesses for your English dialect:
1. US Black Vernacular / Ebonics
2. American (Standard)
3. Singaporean

Our top three guesses for your native (first) language:
1. Norwegian
2. English
3. Dutch

The "Norwegian" guess was pretty damn spot on! :D "Ebonics" has me dumbfounded, though.

Title: Re: Which English?
Post by: Daniel on June 09, 2014, 04:18:41 PM

Quote

The "Norwegian" guess was pretty damn spot on! :D "Ebonics" has me dumbfounded, though.

That was second most likely for me as well (after American). My guess is that their test items for AAE are limited and otherwise it is identical to AmE, in contrast to BrE etc.

It knew my first language was English and I'm American. But that's not very hard to check. I'd be more impressed if it could guess state also :)

Title: Re: Which English?
Post by: lauramarjukka on June 17, 2014, 05:51:58 PM

The quiz's suggestions for my English were 1. Singaporean, 2. American (Standard), 3. South African. I was also very impressed when it guessed my native language being Finnish!

What I found especially interesting was that most of my Finnish friends got Singaporean English as their first or second suggestion too. It made me wonder what it is in our way of speaking English that's so similar to Singaporean English! My friends and I talked about it but we never came into any conclusion. (Except that by now, probably, the program already recognizes Finns mainly because of the Singaporean English in their results... :D)

Title: Re: Which English?
Post by: ibarrere on June 18, 2014, 12:18:37 AM

I got Singaporean for my second option as well, maybe Finnish English is rubbing off on me. First option was appropriate as Standard American.

Title: Re: Which English?
Post by: nalyd on June 29, 2014, 12:02:26 PM

It guessed the following for my dialect:

1. Canadian
2. American (Standard)
3. US Black Vernacular / Ebonics

It guessed Canadian correctly. Standard American seems reasonable, since I am exposed to a lot of american speech in Canada. I'm not sure why it guessed ebonics as the third option.

For my native language it guessed English, which is correct.