The New York Times quiz can tell you where you’re from based on how you pronounce certain words.
The New York Times has a dialect quiz which predicts that it can tell where you are from in the UK or Ireland based on the phrases you use and how you pronounce certain words.
Every county in Ireland has its own little bit of individual bit of slang that defines the culture of the place.
Hell, every village in Ireland has its own little idiosyncrasies that nowhere else does, and that’s what makes every different place so special and unique.
New York Times quiz can determine where in Ireland you come from
The New York Times believes that it can determine exactly (ish) where you are from, purely by asking you what words you use in certain instances, and how you pronounce certain words.
Depending on your answers, the quiz will determine a place in Ireland or the UK where it thinks you are from, and then it’s up to you to see whether or not it is an accurate quiz.
“The way that people speak — the particular words they use and how they sound — is deeply tied to their sense of identity,” Josh Katz writes for the New York Times in the prelude to the quiz.
“And it’s not just about geography. Education, gender, age, ethnicity and other social variables influence speech patterns, too.”
“These dialect markers are so ingrained into people’s sense of self that they tend to persist well after they move away from home. “Identity is what underlies most people’s retention of at least some of their local features,” said Clive Upton, professor emeritus of English language at the University of Leeds, “because ultimately what we say is who we are.”
“In Ireland and Britain, the local dialect can change wildly just 10 or 20 miles down the road. There’s a vast amount of variation over a small area, especially when compared with a place like the United States.
New York Times Irish dialect quiz.
“Language differentiation takes time, so the longer a language has to simmer in one location, the more diverse it becomes, said Raymond Hickey, a professor of linguistics at the University of Duisburg-Essen. English speakers first settled in Ireland in the late 12th century, and Old English has its beginnings in, no surprise, England, almost 1,600 years ago. So it has had plenty of time to diversify.”
You can take the quiz on The New York Times website by clicking here. Make sure to let us know how you got on.
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(First published on February 15, 2019).
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