What's your accent? Quiz may surprise you.

While training for a volunteer tutoring role, I came across a quiz that seemed like a fun break from sight words and writing prompts. Language learning site Babbel identifies where you’re from based on answers to 15 questions about pronunciation and word choices. 

It told me I’m from the Pacific Northwest. I’ve spent no more than a week there and all but four years in Illinois and Wisconsin.

Maybe I should have checked “bubbler,” as Milwaukeeans say, instead of “water fountain.” Maybe I didn’t understand all of the phonetic transcriptions and checked some wrong boxes. 

I took the quiz a few more times, changing some answers but getting the same result: Pacific Northwest. That my speech might not reflect my roots, of which I’m proud, seemed strange. 

But is there a single Midwest accent anyhow? I remember that when my brother brought his fiancée to meet the family, we noticed that Jeannine, who’s from a small town in south-central Illinois, spoke differently from us. She had a hint of a drawl. 

There are actually three Midwest accents, Chicago magazine’s Edward Robert McClelland wrote in an article in December 2023: the lower Great Lakes’ Inland North; the prairies’ Midland; and the North Woods’ North Central.

Everywhere I’ve lived — Rochester, New York; Madison, Wisconsin; and the Chicago area — is in Inland North territory. The Inland North accent is characterized by a series of shifts in the pronunciation of certain vowels. For instance, the short a of “bat” may sound like the vowels of “yeah,” “block” may sound like “black,” and a short e moves toward a short u. Then there are subregional differences, like the stereotypical Chicago tendency to pronounce “th” as “d” (“da Bears”).

German and Scandinavian immigrants influenced the North Central speech of the Dakotas, Minnesota, and much of Wisconsin. These speakers pronounce “late” like “let,” “boat” like “but,” and “bag” like “beg.” 

Linguists consider the Midland accent, spoken where Jeannine grew up, the most neutral, although it has distinctive features, like pronouncing an r even when there isn’t one (“warsh” for “wash”) and merging the sounds of “cot” and “caught.” Residents of the lower half of the Midland region are influenced by Southern speech, perhaps explaining why we noticed a slight drawl in Jeannine’s speech. 

I wasn’t able to pinpoint why the Babbel quiz kept identifying me as from the Pacific Northwest. I pronounce “egg” as Pacific Northwesterners do (“ayg”), but, unlike them, I don’t merge the sounds of “pin” and “pen” or “don” and “down.” Some linguists say that American English is becoming more homogenized through media influence, migration, higher education, and professional careers. Pacific Northwest English, Babbel notes, “sounds pretty close to General American,” the neutral speech against which regional accents are compared. If my speech sounds nearly accentless, why complain? Many people object to being told they have an accent.

McClelland noted that regional accents are fading and are most noticeable in older generations. Regional terms show more resiliency. A quiz at howstuffworks is mostly about terms, not pronunciation. Noting that I say pop, lightning bugs, garage sale, tennis shoes, water fountain, traffic circle, garbage can, and couch, I was placed in the Midwest.