Some of the questions were un-answerable for me, in that I use more than one answer choice interchangeably. I tried to answer with the answers I'd have been most likely to use as a youngster, figuring that those might be most "accurate", but I'll try taking it a few more times with the other (equally valid, IMO) answers to see what difference it makes.
Already, though, the results are interesting:
Looking at the maps after each question, some were quite interesting, including two that were centered on the area where I was born (but moved away from as a toddler... I probably absorbed those from family over the following few years) and several that reflected where I lived for a few years after that. There did not seem to be any real pattern, nor any obvious overlap to the areas, though.
The real clincher came with the final three cities, though: two of the three were cities where I lived for significant time: 12 years in Phoenix and 5-6 years in Los Angeles. (The third one seemed irrelevant, as I only visited there once for 1-3 days as a kid.)
I think two factors might help explain this: (1) both of these are cities with a high percentage of people (like myself) who moved there from somewhere else; they are "melting pot" cities where one might pick up usages that originated elsewhere; and (2) I may have biased the results a bit by how I narrowed my choices, to reflect what I would have said when younger and living in those cities. Some of them might not be my most common usages/pronunciation today.
Anyway, it seems like a fairly accurate tool for general purposes, although not perfect. Fun! I'll try it again with my alternative (but equally true) answers and see if it can pick up the other places I've lived. Obviously, having spent more than half my life outside of the US (Europe and the Far East) will NOT be picked up in this survey, so I have to try to eliminate habits picked up in those areas from my answers.
] as I put-in over thirty years in each of the UK and Canada - before returning to 'Darkest' Birmingham [UK] four years ago.
