Which English?

http://www.gameswithwords.org/WhichEnglish/



I'm curious as to the results that y'all get from this.

My Results:

Our top three guesses for your English dialect:
1. US Black Vernacular / Ebonics
2. South African
3. American (Standard)

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

N...Norwegian? AAVE at least makes sense, but Norwegian?! I'm deeply curious how they got that.

EDIT:
"Canadians, Irish, and Scottish accept 'I'm finished my homework' instead of 'with my homework.' "
But that's fine either way! Add Americans to that list, guys!

Also, all the mention of "the algorithm" makes me think of xkcd.
^{We did not invent the algorithm. The algorithm consistently finds Jesus. The algorithm killed Jeeves.
The algorithm is banned in China. The algorithm is from Jersey. The algorithm constantly finds Jesus.
This is not the algorithm. This is close.}

Our top three guesses for your English dialect:
1. Canadian
2. American (Standard)
3. Singaporean

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

...eh?

PIE! wrote:"Canadians, Irish, and Scottish accept 'I'm finished my homework' instead of 'with my homework.' "
But that's fine either way! Add Americans to that list, guys!

Uuhhhhh nooooo? I've never met any Americans who accept that as good grammar... kids don't count, obviously.

Can't do the test from work so will have to get it when I get home.

I almost have to wonder if a bunch of Anonymous people have tampered with the results by fudging a lot of answers.




Seriously, why the hell was I spotted as South African?

I wouldn't be surprised.

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

Singaporean? Okay.

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

Swedish and Dutch actually make sense, given who I was raised by.

Oblivion wrote:

PIE! wrote:"Canadians, Irish, and Scottish accept 'I'm finished my homework' instead of 'with my homework.' "
But that's fine either way! Add Americans to that list, guys!

Uuhhhhh nooooo? I've never met any Americans who accept that as good grammar... kids don't count, obviously.

Can't do the test from work so will have to get it when I get home.

I read that as "I've" every. single. time. I complained on the comments that my mind was auto-correcting things. No wonder the first response wasn't English.

Hahah yeah I figured that was what was happening =)

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

Eh? Haven't met enough Canadians to know how accurate that 2nd is, but Ebonics? Either the other options are really off from American Standard or I watch more movies with black leads than I realized.... huh, might be true at that. Even so, I only understand it. I'm too vanilla to jive with the hep cats.

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

Actually makes some sense. My Dad's folks were Norwegian/Swedish and they babysat me some times when I was really young. I suppose something may have took root in terms of sentence structure. Not that I know anything of either language.

Our top three guesses for your English dialect:

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

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

1. English
2. Norwegian
3. Dutch

Our top three guesses for your English dialect:
1. American (Standard)
2. Canadian
3. US Black Vernacular / Ebonics
Our top three guesses for your native (first) language:
1. English
2. Norwegian
3. Dutch

So how did almost all of you get American (Standard) as the first guess, but Pie, Lady and I didn't?

What quantifies answers as Canadian, and how come I didn't get any marks to that?



And why the heck does it think I'm South African?

I'm guessing at least on Lady's part that she, being an English teacher, got some of the answers correct in a more formal sense, which bumped her up away from American English, which by and large is a somewhat lax dialect (especially in certain locations) compared to British English. I imagine Canadian might be somewhere between the two. So she's more strict with the language than most Americans, but lacks most of the stricter parlance of British English (as well as some of their wording/verbiage/idioms/etc.).

You and Pie, no friggin' clue.

I read lots of non-US-english english books, so things like, "He's in hospital" sound fine to me now. Plus watching a handful of BBC stuff. I'm guessing AAVE came up from mental corrections like what was discussed earlier.
*linguistic shrug*

I've run into a few South Africans when traveling. The whole "British colony" vibe still came through pretty strong in the way they speak, so that actually might not be far off from "English" english.