Language runs deep

This quiz, designed to estimate overlap between your speech and the dialects common to other areas of the country, showed up in IRC a couple days ago. I had to wait a while before I could actually get it to load (keep refreshing and try later if it keeps saying the server is overloaded), but I’m glad I persisted.

The results are neat, the heatmap overlaps nicely with where my parents and extended family are all from. I’m a bit surprised at how strong the association is, given I’ve never myself lived in the Midwest and certainly have had considerable exposure to other influences on my speech. It’s a shame the data used to determine the overlap doesn’t include Alaska (or Hawaii), I’d be interested to know if the general dialect for Alaska matches up with the Midwest, or if it just carried over that strongly from my parents.