Take the The New York Times’ interactive regional dialect quiz.
Not surprisingly I confused the heck out of it. After all I have non-native speaking (but very very fluent) parents, married a Brit, grew up in NY & (mostly) DC, then spent seven years in New England, intermingled with five years in the UK and a year in Chicago and another in DC, followed by 20+ years in South Florida. It’s no wonder I talk a bit funny.
It did find some New England in my diction, and also did identify one apparently distinctive word I use as coming from Arlington, VA (which is pretty close to DC), so that’s something.
I took that test. It had me located in NYC, Yonkers, and/or Springfield, MA.
I’m a Chicagoan who grew up in a small Illinois town on the Indiana border, about half an hour from the Loop.
Well, OK, my mother was from North Carolina, I had friends in college from the East Coast, Chicago’s South Side, and Cuba, at one point spoke fluent German, and also studied Russian and classical Latin.
But — Yonkers?
i am from albany ny by birth and upbringing. i then went to school in CT and MN and lived in NYC for ten years and then northern ca for 35. it showed me as from eastern ny state, likely downstate rather than upstate. not bad