Comments on: You talk funny

You talk funny

camcgee — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 10:50:58 -0800

Can you guess where my accent is from? A flash game from the Language Trainers' Group -- listen to lines of poetry recited by people from different countries and try to guess their origin.

By: Ambrosia Voyeur

Ambrosia Voyeur — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 11:03:16 -0800

Wow, good thing there was an "about" in that Canadian's piece or it would have been impossible!

By: Solon and Thanks

Solon and Thanks — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 11:08:35 -0800

24 points. The woman from Chicago didn't sound at all like it to me. The girl from Miami almost had an Australian inflection over the valley-girl one.

By: Reverend Robbie

Reverend Robbie — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 11:10:06 -0800

31 points - my knowledge of northern European accents is obviously sadly lacking...

By: empath

empath — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 11:14:03 -0800

The samples are too short to say, and some of those people seem not to have native accents for the place they're recorded.

By: supermedusa

supermedusa — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 11:15:16 -0800

that was really hard! I did get the hungarian guy, though, for which I feel impressed :) also, lots of tricky ones, I guessed the guy from Cheshire to be Welsh, that barely qualifies as a mistake!!! right?

By: carsonb

carsonb — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 11:17:08 -0800

good thing there was an "about" in that Canadian's piece or it would have been impossible! Same for the Spanish fellow; if he hadn't said 'axthent' I might never have guessed.

By: dydecker

dydecker — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 11:21:01 -0800

Luthuanian accent is cool

By: Durn Bronzefist

Durn Bronzefist — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 11:31:45 -0800

39. Man, Lithuanian threw me for a loop.

By: Tube

Tube — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 11:31:57 -0800

I've been to Europe a number of times, and fancy that I can differentiate these things, but I only scored 29 points. I'm not too embarrassed to have missed Portugal vs. Spain, as I've never been there, but I'm shocked to have missed Ireland vs. Scotland. Of course, being video, it's possible to glean clues from the people's physiognomy, the background architecture, and foliage. I thought the gal from Miami was from Southern California, but given the alternative cities, I made the right guess.

By: oaf

oaf — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 11:41:04 -0800

Two lines of a poem doesn't really provide a sufficient sample, especially when they're using, for example, people from Miami who don't have a representative accent of the area at all.

By: Epenthesis

Epenthesis — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 11:57:29 -0800

13. And I've taught a course on English phonology that included accents.

By: Karmakaze

Karmakaze — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 12:00:58 -0800

I identified the girl from Miami, so she wasn't too far off the standard.

By: oaf

oaf — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 12:04:33 -0800

she wasn't too far off the standard Except for the part where she read the first line like she was from southern California, and the second like she was from Australia. Really—she doesn't sound like any of the couple dozen people I know from Miami.

By: Pendragon

Pendragon — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 12:24:12 -0800

29 points. I also thought Miami Girl was from Australia.

By: greytape

greytape — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 12:28:03 -0800

32 points, I'm pretty chuffed with that given that I'm usually fairly rubbish at recognising accents. I am once more impressed with the ability of foreigners to speak English, that Lithuanian girl was amazing.

By: milestogo

milestogo — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 12:33:13 -0800

24. I thought the Miami girl was Canadian, though I got the canadian guy right.

By: motorcycles are jets

motorcycles are jets — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 12:36:24 -0800

13 pts. I'm from Miami, and i thought she was from Australia. They're playing tricks on us.

By: Justinian

Justinian — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 12:37:03 -0800

35 baby. That dude was not from Chicago.

By: jimmythefish

jimmythefish — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 12:54:51 -0800

24...and I'm usually pretty good with accents having half my family in England, having gone to an international school and having lived in Spain for a while. I too thought the guy from Cheshire was from Wales. But then, I thought the South African woman with the posh accent was from England, and I thought the Kiwi was South African. Not great examples...

By: xchmp

xchmp — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 12:55:13 -0800

35 here as well. Got none of the US cities right, which is OK since I'm from the UK. Got none of the UK cities right either, though, which is shameful. None of them was anywhere I've lived, which makes it slightly better. My father's from one of them, though, which makes it even worse.

By: bjrn

bjrn — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 13:01:06 -0800

30pts. There were a few tricky ones there, I don't think I'd have gotten the one from New Zealand even with a longer piece for instance. Same with the Spanish guy who could just as well have been from Argentina or Chile (to my untrained ears).

By: crapmatic

crapmatic — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 13:01:49 -0800

I would pay $20 to play on a site that had hundreds of these. But only if it's well done, of course (this isn't bad, though the editing is a bit choppy and the sound is not very even).

By: Weebot

Weebot — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 13:11:02 -0800

Don't know why Miami girl was so hard. I IDed her, though few else (22 points).

By: Armitage Shanks

Armitage Shanks — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 13:15:00 -0800

Uh, Ontario isn't a city in Canada.

By: scody

scody — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 13:32:47 -0800

43, and it would have been higher if I hadn't stupidly said Ireland for the Glaswegian.

By: monocultured

monocultured — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 13:40:06 -0800

I'm rather poor at this stuff, but 29 points place me as average on mefi, so it can't be all bad.

By: ClarissaWAM

ClarissaWAM — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 13:59:57 -0800

the background architecture, and foliage. Yeah this threw me too at times. I'm pretty sure most if not all of the "outdoors" videos were shot in Brighton, UK. Tho I may be biased, living in Brighton. But I'm pretty sure I'm right.

By: bjork24

bjork24 — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 14:04:12 -0800

Is Michael Caine Lithuanian, because that girl sounded just like him.

By: emelenjr

emelenjr — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 14:05:05 -0800

23 points. I'm bad with eastern Europeans. And Indiana, apparently. I thought she was from the south.

By: benzo8

benzo8 — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 14:07:19 -0800

A poor 18 points - and I thought Miami was Australia too, gaming us she was!

By: shoebox

shoebox — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 14:26:58 -0800

24, and thats all from North America and a few Brit....Thought all the New Zealanders were Australians and the Australians were something else. Would have had 26, but apparently Ontario counts as a city for the Canadian guy (I thought it was there to throw off silly foreigners).

By: orthogonality

orthogonality — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 14:59:08 -0800

29 points. They really ought to identify "from" be where someone grew up, or where their parents are from, not where they are now. I mean, nobody is from Miami.

By: dydecker

dydecker — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 15:05:31 -0800

32. Miami/Brisbane woman undermined my confidence

By: flibbertigibbet

flibbertigibbet — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 15:10:45 -0800

I went into this thinking 'I am going to do very, very badly', and lo! I did.

By: dydecker

dydecker — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 15:11:12 -0800

For Crapmatic. Maybe pay the 20 to someone to randomly click the links while you guess them?

By: katillathehun

katillathehun — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 15:12:58 -0800

20 points and gosh dang it, is NOBODY from Wales?!

By: pinkbuttonanus

pinkbuttonanus — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 15:21:27 -0800

Did the bloke from Glasgow only move there a month ago?

By: maudlin

maudlin — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 16:01:03 -0800

Yeah, that was Glaswegian Lite, but I guessed right anyway. I keep forgetting, though, that a lot of real-life Scots accents are lighter than you expect from what you hear in the media. The dead giveaway for me every time is the subtle-to-overt lengthening of the "o" sound: "That's not it" gets closer to "That's note it." Special added bonus: New Zealanders, like Canadians, have tighter, perter dipthongs than their brasher, more charismatic neighbours. The Aussie I work with says that the single word "pen" is invariably pronounced "pin" by Kiwis, but that may be the American version of claiming that all Canadians say "aboot" or "aboat". Sadly, the classic Canadian Raising site at York University seems to be gone, so I can't link to sound files, so -- Wiki.

By: Blackadder

Blackadder — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 16:12:10 -0800

I thought I'd do well on this, but only 29 points. But the Glaswegian was easy, they don't all sound like Rab C Nesbitt...

By: zardoz

zardoz — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 16:13:03 -0800

Wow, and usually I'm so good at telling a Ukrainian accent from a Lithuanian accent. *rolls eyes* I guess part of the challenge is the brevity of the poem, but a bit longer poem would make it better.

By: Cool Papa Bell

Cool Papa Bell — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 17:02:58 -0800

32, but I blew all the Eastern Europeans. I got two of the bonus American cities, though.

By: Cool Papa Bell

Cool Papa Bell — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 17:03:31 -0800

Oh, and thank god they threw "about" in with the Canadian.

By: stargell

stargell — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 17:27:18 -0800

30. Got the Miami gal (generic Valley Girl, but the other options were mostly Deep South) and, amazingly, pegged both Birmingham and Perth on educated guesses. But to my American ears, the South African woman's accent was not distinctive enough, nor was the Scotsman. The Chicago person had none of the many accents I recognize from the city, where I lived for 15 years, and the woman from Indianapolis had more of a southern tinge. She certainly sounded nothing like David Letterman. Fun, anyway.

By: DU

DU — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 17:28:13 -0800

35 and Miami and Indianapolis are both liars. (Indianapolis definitely US, but from the South.)

By: grapefruitmoon

grapefruitmoon — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 17:40:16 -0800

I didn't do too poorly, and I might have done better had my European boyfriend not stood over my shoulder and said "No way that guy's German" for the last one. I've even lived in Germany, and yet I trusted him! Oh well. He brought me a donut, which is more than I can say for the quiz.

By: infinitewindow

infinitewindow — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 17:41:47 -0800

Yay for accents.

By: Lou Stuells

Lou Stuells — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 17:45:16 -0800

Cool Papa Bell, you must be enormously popular in Eastern Europe. I was awful at this. And, Lithuania Girl sounds cockney to me.

By: Guy Smiley

Guy Smiley — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 17:53:14 -0800

I got 31, thanks in part to Flight of the Conchords (for New Zealand) and Lethal Weapon 2 (for South Africa).

By: dinty_moore

dinty_moore — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 18:53:13 -0800

32-guessed most of the English-as-a-First-Language ones (but didn't even think the Chicago woman was from the US-and I'm from there), but did horribly on guessing which Germanic country (in terms of language) the person with the kinda-German accent was from. About the Indianapolis woman-the difference between northern AAVE and southern AAVE is pretty tiny-I think it's in the pronunciation of the A's. All I know is that she sounded more like someone from the South Side of Chicago than someone who grew up in Louisiana.

By: smackfu

smackfu — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 19:29:00 -0800

The hard part on the Miami girl is that she says the "I'm" in "Can you guess where I'm from?" weirdly. And that's the last part you hear, so it overrules all the obvious American bits earlier, for some odd reason.

By: w0mbat

w0mbat — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 19:49:11 -0800

A lot of those accents weren't pure, ie they'd mostly picked up a lot of Southern English, and in one case quite a bit of Australian. That made it much harder. The weirdest thing about accents is that native speakers aren't always the best judge of authenticity. For example, Americans think that Bob Hoskins's American accent in "Who Framed Roger Rabbit" is perfectly acceptable, but to the English it sounds horribly fake, as we can hear his real London accent showing through.

By: Hildegarde

Hildegarde — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 20:12:29 -0800

I got the Americans, and the Canadian (too bad about them not fact checking to discover that Ontario isn't a city, sheesh), the Kiwi and the South African were pretty obvious to me, though for some reason the aussie threw me off. And one of my best friends is from Perth! I think the clips were just too short. I got Belgium and Lithuania by pure luck.

By: BrnP84

BrnP84 — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 20:34:22 -0800

An asian guy goes to the dentist, the dentist tells him "I'm sorry sir but you have cataracts." The asian guy responds, "No, I drive a Rincon Continental"

By: Paragon

Paragon — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 20:50:49 -0800

The NZ accent stands out because of the HRT (high rising terminal), the Aussie accent because of the tense high front vowels. I couldn't pick the Eastern European ones (except for the Hungarian), and I only picked the Belgian one because I thought she may be of Congolese origin. Thing seemed to stop playing video two-thirds of the way through - that happen to anyone else?

By: xchmp

xchmp — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 20:58:49 -0800

An asian guy goes to the dentist, the dentist tells him "I'm sorry sir but you have cataracts." So why was a dentist examining this guy's eyes?

By: Miko

Miko — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 21:04:26 -0800

I agree - Miami and Chicago were total ringers! They don't sound like people who were raised in those areas.

By: Miko

Miko — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 21:06:15 -0800

(Indianapolis definitely US, but from the South.) I spent 3 weeks in Indianapolis last fall, and a lot of people sounded like her, so I believe it. It is a kind of Southern accent, but is a result of the Great Migration in the early 20th century - people leaving Southern sharecropping to come work in the mills, stockyards, and railroad cities in the Midwest. I was surprised to hear similar accents in Chicago the first time I visited.

By: BrnP84

BrnP84 — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 21:06:56 -0800

So why was a dentist examining this guy's eyes? Eh... because he actually went to the optomotrist...

By: rmless

rmless — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 21:11:24 -0800

28. Time to start dating outside of my country again!

By: Harald74

Harald74 — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 21:58:28 -0800

Apparently I can't tell where anyone is from when they're speaking English. In real life I can usually spot a Norwegian speaking English from a mile away, sort of like the effect w0mbat describes, as I'm Norwegian myself.

By: mewithoutyou

mewithoutyou — Sun, 03 Aug 2008 22:12:17 -0800

28. Miami girl was easiest for me to guess because she sounds like I do (a Florida girl raised by a mother who was raised in Miami). I had three different people pegged as Welsh. I think I just really wanted someone to be from Wales.

By: The Esteemed Doctor Bunsen Honeydew

The Esteemed Doctor Bunsen Honeydew — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 02:14:08 -0800

If the Super Furry Animals live show is to be trusted, people from Wales can barely speak English in the first place.

By: DecemberBoy

DecemberBoy — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 03:03:03 -0800

I got 41, which is pretty good, I suppose. It seems a bit unfair to have both Germany and Austria as multiple choice answers for the woman from Austria, though. Is there that much of a discernible difference? She sure sounded German to me. None of the US cities were identifiable, I guessed on all of them. Especially the woman from Indiana, who sounded pretty southern to me. The Canadian guy was adorable. "I'm from CANA-DAAAAAA!"

By: jourman2

jourman2 — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 03:57:49 -0800

38. Wow, I totally guessed on the Latvian accent Can someone shed some light on it and why is sounds so completely different then the other Eastern European accents?

By: emelenjr

emelenjr — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 04:00:36 -0800

I surprised myself on some of the English ones, not being all that good at placing different regional accents. The guy who was from Birmingham, when I heard him speak I could just imagine him saying "Birming'm" and I was right.

By: fiercecupcake

fiercecupcake — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 07:06:53 -0800

36. That was fun!

By: ObscureReferenceMan

ObscureReferenceMan — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 09:32:14 -0800

29. I nailed the New Zealander because a NZ guy I met taught me a difference between NZ and Aussie... New Zealander's go to a "dahnce" and take a "chahnce", Australians go to a "deeance" and take a "cheeance".

By: sportbucket

sportbucket — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 11:42:19 -0800

64 points! The second time...

By: bookwo3107

bookwo3107 — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 12:04:28 -0800

12 points! Why, no, I've never traveled out of the south - why do you ask?

By: rusty

rusty — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 13:56:52 -0800

infinitewindow: I was really impressed with Amy Walker until she started doing American accents. And so now I assume the rest of them would only be acceptable for someone from somewhere else. Brooklyn was just awful. I got 34 on the quiz. I got Lithuania, by the expedient of guessing wildly. Is it just me or is a Lithuanian accent surprisingly hot? And the Kiwi said something that was a dead giveaway, like the Canadian's "aboot".

By: tehloki

tehloki — Tue, 05 Aug 2008 23:24:52 -0800

I honestly have no idea how you Americans and Brits can identify us Canadians so easily. Also, I assumed everyone who sounded vaguely british but not quite was from Wales, and NOBODY WAS FROM WALES. Oh, but I did get the New Zealander, due to watching Flight of the Conchords way too many times.

By: xorry

xorry — Sat, 09 Aug 2008 12:10:22 -0800

35 and Miami and Indianapolis are both liars. (Indianapolis definitely US, but from the South.) This is definitely an urban Indianapolis accent. A bit southern, a little Chicago. A suburban Indianapolis would be much closer to the 'neutral' midwestern, but faster and a shit ton of dropped g's.