a brief thought, apropos of nothing in particular

One annoying thing about Homestuck chatlogs is that it is next to impossible to figure out one's wordcount -- there is too much coding non-text wrapped symbiotically around the actual text.

One non-annoying thing about chatlogs is that they are very easy to write. :-)

*returns to work on her Ladystuck assignment*

personal dialect maps

Here is a neat thing!

How Y’all, Youse and You Guys Talk: What does the way you speak say about where you’re from? Answer all the questions below to see your personal dialect map.

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The quiz determined that my dialect is most characteristic of Newark/Paterson, Yonkers, and Jersey City... which is completely reasonable, seeing that I grew up in northern New Jersey, and specifically the greater New York metro area. (My hometown is on the Midtown Direct train line, for instance.) Apparently this is shown most obviously by my use of 'mischief night' for the night before Halloween, and my use of 'sneakers' for a certain type of shoe. And probably also by the way I pronounce 'caught' -- I have, on occasion, been told that my slight Jersey accent comes out most strongly on words like dog, sorry, and caught, where my vowels have a distinct 'awww' sound to them.

Then again, a bunch of my other answers were more characteristic for Minnesota -- which I know because you get a little map for each answer as you go; very cool! -- and that is also completely reasonable, since my parents are from the Twin Cities and I picked up some idioms and pronunciations from them. :-)

(I speak least similarly to people in Texas, or so the quiz claims. This is based most strongly on my answer to a single question: that I had never heard of a drive-through liquor store. Which is not completely true, but since the only place I have ever encountered that concept is in previous dialect quizzes, I think it is functionally true enough to be getting on with. *wry*)