30 October 2010 @ 04:36 pm
/lɪŋˈgwɪstɪks/ /ɪz/ /fʌn/  
So you may or may not know that I'm minoring in linguistics. A side-effect of this is that I find language variation really interesting and often wind up quizzing everyone I know when I discover a disagreement over the meaning of a word/phrase or its pronunciation etc.

The first two questions are just for demographics, you can skip them if they offend your sensibilities. A lot of the options are very binary and neither might be accurate for your accent, you can skip those as well. There is undoubtedly quite a North American/Canadian English slant in these questions, because that is the language I encounter daily, sorry if your accent/vernacular is not covered.

Poll #1638545 LINGUISTICS IS AWESOME
Open to: All, detailed results viewable to: All, participants: 113

Where are you from?

How old are you?

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<15
1 (0.9%)
15-25
77 (68.8%)
26-35
23 (20.5%)
36-45
9 (8.0%)
46-55
0 (0.0%)
56-65
0 (0.0%)
65+
2 (1.8%)

The word "shone", as in "the light shone down through the clouds", sounds like

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"Shawn", as in "that man's name is Shawn"
20 (19.0%)
"Shown", as in "Have I shown you where I keep the bodies?"
85 (81.0%)

The phrases "rice ales" and "rye sales" sound the same.

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True
47 (42.7%)
False
63 (57.3%)

"Buzzed", as in, "I was buzzed at the party last night", means

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Intoxicated, specifically alcohol
57 (50.9%)
Intoxicated, specifically marijuana
7 (6.2%)
Intoxicated, non-specific
48 (42.9%)

The first part of "hoodlum" sounds like

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"Hood", as in "the hood of my jacket is full of BEES"
94 (83.9%)
"Who'd", as in "Who'd want to put bees in my jacket?"
18 (16.1%)

Freshman year of high school is...

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Grade 9
19 (17.3%)
9th Grade
75 (68.2%)
My schooling sytsem does not use the word "grade", F YOUR AMERICAN PRIVILEGE
16 (14.5%)

If you do something accidentally, you've done it

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On accident
26 (23.6%)
By accident
84 (76.4%)

The "i" sound in "rider" and "writer" are

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The same
80 (72.1%)
Different
31 (27.9%)

The 3-letter word for mother is

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"Mum", spelled M U M
28 (25.0%)
"Mom", spelled M O M
74 (66.1%)
"Mum", spelled M O M
10 (8.9%)

The "w" sound in "witch" and the w sound in "which" are

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The same
91 (81.2%)
Different
21 (18.8%)
 
 
( Read 82 commentsLeave a comment )
Kali: dw :: doctordonna :: i like saturdays_thirty2flavors on October 30th, 2010 09:58 pm (UTC)
PRESCRIPTIVISMMM

1. IA,but I couldn't think of a better way to do it without homophones, since no one knows IPA. I say / ʃan / as well.

2. Same. Our prof brought this up while discussing raising and whether or not the raising carries beyond word boundaries. It doesn't for me.

3. Strange! I do the same but inversed -- / raiɾr / for "rider" but / rʌiɾr / for "writer".

4. Yeah when we talked about it in class most people didn't use it, just our prof.
aleph: i'm projecting some blood herelacunaz on October 30th, 2010 10:25 pm (UTC)
PRESCRIPTIVIST! PRESCRIPTIVIST! BRB WHILE I GET MY PEANUTS.

Raising really fascinates me. It's fairly widespread as a regional phenomenon, as in many Ontarians will have raised diphthongs when compared to other dialects of English, but it seems to be pretty individual when it comes to which sounds are raised, if only certain words are raised, and the degree to which it's raised. For example, I raise /ai/ to /ʌi/ but my sister raises it slightly higher -- not enough to be /ʊ/ or anything but noticeable to me.

I'm very ~sensitive~ about my raised vowels and I don't like it when people mock them or tell me it's wrong. Every time I hear someone exaggerating "about" as "aboot" I'm like "no don't do that. No really, don't." I just have all these feelings, okay.