Sunday, May 15, 2005

waddya want honey?

Here is a really cool website that will tell you what kind of English you speak.

I clocked in with 65% General American English, 30% Dixie and 5% Upper Midwestern. How did I get any Upper Midwestern? Must have been the Minnesota people who worked in our Seattle office. Polluting my speech patterns!

Anyway, just recently I was having a conversation with a friend. They had a potluck volunteer appreciation meal at the kids' school on Friday. I am a potluck junkie. I love them, and I was telling this to my table mate. We also talked about how cafeterias (Luby's, and Furr's) are like potlucks, with the salad lady saying "waddya want honey?' over and over. Then I told everyone that I made a big discovery during my decade in Seattle. They don't have cafeterias up there! In fact, when I asked about where to locate one, my friends looked at me like I was crazy. Someone said that I could go to the hospital, that they had a cafeteria there.

No, no, no. I explained what I meant, Luby's or Furr's, the lady with the hairnet and "waddya want honey" and my coworkers still looked at me like I was crazy and making a story up about cafeterias. I must have just remembered this after taking the English quiz, because they also said "soda" instead of "coke" when referring to a 7-up or Dr.Pepper. They had weird pronunciations of common words, a-DULT instead of how I say AD-ult. I started off saying re-con-ize and ended up leaving Seattle saying re-cog-nize. David thinks the "adult" and "recognize" were always mispronunciations on my part, but he grew up in Austin, and they don't even drawl much down here. Of course, "ya'll", "fixin' to" and saying "hey" for "hi" made my Seattle friends comment as well.

My friend at Friday's potluck grew up in New York. She said there aren't any cafeterias up there either.

Beyond the time I've spent thinking about cafeterias, it was a pretty busy weekend. Baseball game for Max, dance recital for Emma. This week will be insane, lots of end of the year activities crammed in the last full week of the school year. I'm counting down the days......

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

hmmm, I say a-dult instead of ad-ult. This kind of reminds me of a member of the family that says I-taly instead of It-aly. Anyway we also say "pop" instead of coke because you know, they aren't all cokes.

Anonymous said...

Interesting quiz. I found out that I have 0% Midwestern speech pattern dispite having grown up in St. Louis.

From some of the other tests on that site I also found out my Japanese name is Kaito Nakayama, that I act 27 years old and that I'll die at 79. That's good, I guess...

Oddly, the only cafeteria-style restaurant I've seen on the east coast was a Japanese place. It was a bit strange hearing the little asian women saying "waddya want honey?"

Julie said...

Well, I'm 65% General American, 25% Dixie and 10% Yankee. Jim is convinced that I say CEE-ment (as in pond), but that's just his wishful thinking that I'm more hillbilly than I actually am.

Anonymous said...

Well, better late than never on this one. I'm 75% General American, 25% Dixie and 5% Yankee (anything over 0% Yankee is TOO much).