Lois & Clark Forums Forums General Discussion Off Topic If You Speak American English...

I confess to skimming the thread, but I don't think anyone mentioned this...

For a two-syllable pronunciation of "caramel", listen to Clark in GGGoH - I think it's in the car with Lois before they arrive in Smallville. It took a while for me to work out what "Carmel apples" were supposed to be!

Mere

I tried to do it, but there was just too many with no options open to me. I thought it was just me, but I asked others and I'm not alone

I couldn't take part

EDIT -
I didn't know it would accept blank ones so I tried:
Your Linguistic Profile:
50% General American English
20% Yankee
5% Dixie
0% Midwestern
0% Upper Midwestern

I skipped: 2,3,5,10,14.

The whole caramel thing. Car-mul sounds so odd to me. My mum-in-law says it that way and it is so weird to me.
I say it Car-a-mel.
I've never said/used caramel corn or caramel apple...I've said candy apple, but I guess that's the hard cady coat.
...Hmm...<thinkin> I saw some caramel apples on sale at Rocky Mountain Chocolate Factory at Christmas and I called them car-a-mel.

They had that here. I never saw it though. Very odd 'eh?

My mum uses that, but I have never. It just doesn't occur to me. I use Diagonal.

Me --> runners

People don't say that here, but I like to say it b/c it sounds ... dare I say cute, I use it once in a while.

I'm not 100% positive the differences between the types. I can sort of visualize it, but I'm not sure down right to the line.

I wonder if there is one for the different Canadian types. eg. Atlantic, rural, North....
I don't know the proper ways of describing them.

I always thought pop was short for popular, as Wendy clarified.

With that said, where on earth did soft drink come from!

I got curious, so I had to try

70% General American English
15% Yankee
10% Dixie
5% Upper Midwestern
0% Midwestern

This thread is probably long-dead, but I saw it and wanted to try the quiz. I'm
75% Standard American English (of course, in Linguistics we learned that there *is* no "Standard American English," but I won't go into that...)
20% Dixie
5% Yankee
0% everything else.

Seems reasonable to me. Got a Yankee father (Pennsylvania), live nominally in Dixie (Maryland is south of the Mason-Dixon line, but isn't usually considered to be part of the "South" nowadays), and a grandmother with a strong Bal'more accent.

I've always said "Coke," but I am conscious, in general, of who I'm talking to. In a restaurant I'd try to find out on the menu whether it's a Pepsi or Coke place, because I actually do prefer Coke to Pepsi and will order another drink if it's not a Coke place. If I want to be clear that I mean any sort of carbonated beverage, I generally say soft drink or soda.

Have you heard the joke about the person who wanted to make it clear they didn't care which side of the Coke/Pepsi wars a place was on, they just wanted whatever the place had, so they ordered a "dark, carbonated beverage," and the waitress laughed and asked if they wanted a long cylindrical plastic drinking object to go with it?

Re the pop music discussion. Yes, I suppose it is short for popular too. But MTV uses it also to mean the teenage set that drinks pop. Maybe that's where I got the notion from.

Artemis

Being a military brat with a Southern mom and a Yankee dad (and I say 'care-a-mel' corn), I've moved all around. What could it be but:

35% General American English
35% Yankee
25% Dixie
5% Upper Midwestern
0% Midwestern

Great quiz!

60% General American English
25% Yankee
10% Dixie
5% Upper Midwestern
0% Midwestern

I'm brazilian, so of course, my mother language is portuguese, lol, but most of my english comes from american tv shows, I also take english classes but they change out teachers every semester so we don't get a teacher's accent and stuff

50% General American English
30% Yankee
15% Dixie
0% Midwestern
0% Upper Midwestern