Which English

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Tillumadoguenirurm
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Which English

Postby Tillumadoguenirurm » Fri Jan 19, 2018 2:04 pm

Has anyone tried this game? It's supposed to be able to figure out what kind of English you speak and also your native language.

http://archive.gameswithwords.org/WhichEnglish/

For English I got:

Singaporean
New Zealandish
US Black Vernacular / Ebonics


As native language I got:

Portuguese
Spanish
Chinese

My native language is in reality Norwegian. :D



Any one else tried?
Last edited by Tillumadoguenirurm on Fri Jan 19, 2018 5:51 pm, edited 3 times in total.
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Ogrim
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Re: Which English

Postby Ogrim » Fri Jan 19, 2018 2:42 pm

I have some doubts about the scientific validity of the test, but still fun to do. My result was:

For English:
Welsh
English (England)
Australian

Native language:
English
Finnish
German

Seems the five years I lived in London paid off. :)
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tiia
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Re: Which English

Postby tiia » Fri Jan 19, 2018 3:14 pm

Our top three guesses for your English dialect:
1. US Black Vernacular / Ebonics
2. New Zealandish
3. South African

Our top three guesses for your native (first) language:
1. German
2. Finnish
3. Swedish


I don't get the English dialect guesses. They're describing reasons for picking those, but in two cases I cannot even remember that I accepted the sentences they mention, which would lead to the result.

But the one for my native language is indeed pretty good as five years ago I've been told to have a "Finnish" or "clearly Scandinavian" accent in English, but I'm quite certain that it's not that strong anymore.
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Re: Which English

Postby DaveBee » Fri Jan 19, 2018 3:31 pm

Our top three guesses for your English dialect:?

1. Scottish (UK)
2. English (England)
3. North Irish (UK)

Our top three guesses for your native (first) language:
1. English
2. Hungarian
3. Swedish
I'm from southern england.

EDIT
Clearly I need to start looking into Hungarian! :-)
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Re: Which English

Postby rdearman » Fri Jan 19, 2018 3:45 pm

hummm....

Our top three guesses for your English dialect:?
1. Welsh (UK)
2. English (England)
3. South African

Our top three guesses for your native (first) language:?
1. English
2. Norwegian
3. Hungarian


Do they just default to Norwegian and Hungarian?
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Re: Which English

Postby zenmonkey » Fri Jan 19, 2018 4:19 pm

Interesting... I got.

Dialect:
1. US Black Vernacular / Ebonics
2. American (Standard)
3. Canadian

Native:
1. English sort of (started at 6?)
2. Dutch
3. Swedish

Not bad given I have native level English of the NorCal American Standard ... surf's up, dude! But Spanish is really my first language (that test can't guess that...)
Last edited by zenmonkey on Fri Jan 19, 2018 5:38 pm, edited 1 time in total.
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Re: Which English

Postby iguanamon » Fri Jan 19, 2018 4:40 pm

My test results
Our top three guesses for your English dialect:
1. American (Standard)
2. US Black Vernacular / Ebonics
3. Canadian

Our top three guesses for your native (first) language:
1. English
2. Dutch
3. German

So, correct on the first choices. Even though I have lived in England and Australia, and currently live in the Caribbean, I don't say "in hospital" or consider a collective noun like "committee" to require a plural verb agreement. I could have fooled the test easily, had I wanted to. I have no idea how this test would be able to distinguish a South African from an Australian or an American from a Canadian, or a Welsh from a Scot for that matter. I could have probably fooled it into thinking I was English.

The thing about English is that the variety of dialects is large within the English-speaking world, especially within the US and Britain. When I was living in Yorkshire, people told me they could tell the difference in accent between Leeds and Sheffield, and after a while, I even started to notice it too. There is even a difference between the US and British Virgin Islands that I can only tell when I hear them say the word "vex", which tends to be pronounced more like "wex" in the BVI. "Vex" is not a common word to express anger/irritation/frustration in standard English but it is here. It's usually used in the phrase "a vexing (problematic) situation". Also, here in the Caribbean, when we say "Good night", it means "Good evening". When we say "I'd like a next one?" it means "I'd like another one".

Whenever I travel to the US, I have to be aware of not saying "good night" to people in the evening because in standard English it is said before retiring to sleep for the night. People look at me funny if I ask for a "next" drink up there.
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Re: Which English

Postby jeff_lindqvist » Fri Jan 19, 2018 5:07 pm

Hmm...

Our top three guesses for your English dialect:

1. US Black Vernacular / Ebonics
2. Singaporean
3. Australian

Our top three guesses for your native (first) language:

1. German
2. Italian
3. Dutch
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Re: Which English

Postby LinguaPony » Fri Jan 19, 2018 6:17 pm

Our top three guesses for your English dialect:
1. Welsh (UK)
2. English (England)
3. Singaporean

Our top three guesses for your native (first) language:
1. Polish
2. Russian
3. Hungarian

How on Earth do they do it?
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Re: Which English

Postby Chung » Fri Jan 19, 2018 6:47 pm

Our top three guesses for your English dialect:
1. English (England)
2. Welsh (UK)
3. Irish (Republic of)

---

Wrong, but my descriptivist bias tripped things up. I consider British and American conventions equally grammatical and marked them accordingly when allowed to choose more than one variant.

***

Our top three guesses for your native (first) language:
1. English
2. Norwegian
3. Swedish

---

Well, at least it got this one right.
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