Since many of you enjoyed that American accent quiz, we wanted to share another online linguistic tool that’s been getting attention — and with good reason: it’s quite accurate. This version comes from the New York Times and is based in part on linguistic data from Harvard, so the results feel well grounded.
Like the previous quiz, it asks how you pronounce certain words and which terms you use. For example: do you say firefly or lightning bug? Semi-truck or tractor trailer? Yard sale or garage sale? Those choices help locate the regional patterns of your speech.
The quiz produces a dialect “heat map” of the United States and identifies the three cities where your speech is most similar — and least similar. We found the results surprisingly precise. I grew up just outside Washington, D.C., near Arlington, Virginia, and my map reflected that area. Sherry, who grew up in northern New Jersey, saw her map light up around the New York City/New Jersey region.
One interesting observation: my map appeared “warmer” over a broader area, which suggests my dialect is more generalized across regions. Sherry’s map was more localized and intense, showing a stronger regional signature tied to NYC/NJ speech patterns.
If you want to try it yourself, you can find the New York Times dialect quiz and see how it maps your speech. The quiz can vary slightly each time you take it, so running it more than once might give different — but still informative — results. In one run, my results even highlighted Richmond.