{"id":35499,"date":"2026-09-04T20:23:57","date_gmt":"2026-09-05T01:23:57","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/?p=35499"},"modified":"2026-09-08T12:19:10","modified_gmt":"2026-09-08T17:19:10","slug":"how-do-i-sound","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/?p=35499","title":{"rendered":"How Do I Sound?"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

A fun little quiz circulated on BlueSky yesterday evening, a quiz that maps one’s dialect to a specific region of the United States<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My results were not surprising!<\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"A<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I talk like someone from Maryland, with about 54% of my answers to this 60 question quiz being consistant with a Marylander. I was born in Baltimore, lived in Maryland for a decade, and worked in Maryland for almost twenty years, that seems accurate. But the fact that 46% of my answers were not<\/i> Maryland shows that I have other influences.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Like New Mexico! I’m not sure how or why I speak like someone from Albuquerque, as I’ve never been there, nor have I ever taken a wrong left turn somewhere near there.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My other heat area makes more sense — the Tidewater region of Virginia and North Carolina. I went to college there (Richmond), I worked there after college (Raleigh).<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I’m intrigued that two of my top three cities are Charlotte and Washington. Both are slightly less warm, but that feels consistent.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I police my accent, and over the years I’ve found myself picking up Maryland vowel shifts that I do not like<\/i>, which I stamp out like the Spanish Inquisition. I said “Worshington” one day, and I was like, “What the fuck<\/i> did my mouth just do?”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

My friends, that<\/em> vowel shift died a painful death in a fire.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All but the three years of my Chicago life are in the three darkest shades of red. Where I live in Pennsylvania, and have for over a decade, is two steps down from the darkest red, which intrigues me. It’s like I’m steadfastly refusing to pick up the local pronunciation.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It’s interesting. I always think of myself as having a flat accent that says no place in particular, and yet, this little quiz managed to locate me fairly well.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\n\n\n\n

This is me, a few days later.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

A friend shared the link to the full quiz<\/a> on Facebook — I’d taken the shorter test on my phone — and I decided, “Why not?”<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n

\n
\"The<\/figure>\n<\/div>\n\n\n

A few differences in the map. New Mexico, out! South Texas, in! More dark red between the Mason-Dixon Line and the border between the two Carolinas.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The full text bumped my Maryland-ness up to 55%, and my top three cities were, in order, Washington, Baltimore, and Philadelphia, all at 53%.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In short, I sound like someone from the Chesapeake Bay region, and as someone who was born and has lived in the Chesapeake Bay basin for a lot of his life, that sounds accurate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Or, as I’ve sometimes thought of it, I’ve lived and worked within about an hour of I-95 between Philly and Raleigh (which isn’t on 95 but is less than an hour), the last thirty years.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

I still<\/em> think I sound like no place in particular, which is true of I-95. I’ve been in enough hours-long traffic jams to know that it’s not a place<\/em> so much as it’s a state of mind<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That sums it up, really.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

A fun little quiz circulated on BlueSky yesterday evening, a quiz that maps one’s dialect to a specific region of the United States. My results were not surprising! I talk like someone from Maryland, with about 54% of my answers to this 60 question quiz being consistant with a Marylander. I was born in Baltimore,Continue reading “How Do I Sound?”<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[52],"tags":[580,4450,4758,5479,213],"class_list":["post-35499","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-life","tag-accent","tag-maryland","tag-north-carolina-2","tag-speech","tag-virginia","entry"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35499","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=35499"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/35499\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=35499"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=35499"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.allyngibson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=35499"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}