
Which English? - colinprince
http://www.gameswithwords.org/WhichEnglish/
======
bemmu
I find myself thinking of scenarios where most choices would be correct. I
play ____ the soccer team.

Pleased to meet you. I am an active sporty guy and 'I play in the soccer
team'.

Pleased to meet you. I am a tick, a playful little parasite. I like to jump
from person to person in small groups. Today, 'I play on the soccer team'.

Pleased to meet you. I am a playful infectious disease. 'I play inside the
soccer team'.

Pleased to meet you, I am Lot's son. As you may have learned in a famous bible
story, my mother turned into a salt statue while taking a casual glance at the
destruction of Sodom. Less known is that she belonged to a soccer team and the
whole team also turned to stone while in the middle of an important game.
Today, the team has become a famous landmark and the grounds for a soccer
school to which I belong. 'I play at the soccer team'.

~~~
gameswithwords
This has to be best best comment I've seen about the project yet! You mind if
I use this as an example for my students? (I mean, I will anyway. I just want
to know if you mind.)

~~~
aptwebapps
So if it doesn't list English in the top three native language guesses, does
that mean my English is very ungrammatical, or merely that it's ungrammatical
in a particular way? All three languages were Scandinavian but I have no
connection there.

The NY Times had a similar quiz that attempted to predict your region and,
IIRC, predicted mine fairly closely. I didn't get such accurate results this
time so I'm wondering if my grammar is slipping ...

~~~
borkabrak
The #1 guess for me was Norweigian, while English was #2. I've spent all my
life in the American South.

------
WaxProlix
What it's testing for:

1\. Passive alternation

2\. It-clefting (simply `clefting` in some circles)

3\. Another it-cleft?

4\. It-cleft + possible scope ambiguity

5\. Quantifier scope ambiguity (do you get quant raising, basically)

6\. More clefts? Don't recall, but maybe they're mixing it up with the overt
complementizer (`that`).

7\. Ditto above

8\. Passive construction again

9\. More quantifier scope stuff

10\. Lexicon inventory (modal shall is antiquated in most (all?) dialects)

11\. Idunno, phrasing. Not-quite-collocate decisions

12\. Aspect-tense interaction, I guess...

13\. 'Conjugation', or how do you express tense?

14\. Lexical selection/wh-feature spellout (does `+person` override the
'incorrect' case-marked `whom`?)

15\. Skipped this one due to a double-click, too much coffee

16\. Even more lexicon stuff

17\. Lexical selection, or 'what kind of thing needs a determiner?'

...okay this is tedious. My point was going to be that a lot of these,
especially the syntactic construction ones, seem very specific. I don't know
of any dialects of English for example that switch the assignment of roles (A
speech delivered Bill, eg) so freely as some of these questions suggest, and I
thought _all_ dialects had passive construction and it-clefting. Maybe I'll go
through again and answer all the wrong things and see where it thinks those
features are from.

Anyway, this was interesting. If this sort of thing also interests you, waste
the rest of your day on The World Atlas of Language Structures! [1] It's a ton
of fun.

[1] [http://wals.info/](http://wals.info/)

~~~
xmodem
> I don't know of any dialects of English for example that switch the
> assignment of roles (A speech delivered Bill, eg)

This is a complete guess, but perhaps this exists to identify english-as-a-
second-language speakers from languages where this form exists?

(English is my first and only language and I know very little about languages.
The test guessed correctly that I am Australian)

~~~
WaxProlix
Yeah, that's entirely possible.

------
nopinsight
Interesting case study here: I got very different results in my two attempts
at the quiz, based on how I use school grammar and generative grammar rules in
answering the questions.

In my first attempt, the algorithm guessed that my English dialect was 1.
Singaporean 2. US Black Vernacular 3. American (Standard), and it guessed that
my native language was 1. Vietnamese 2. Chinese 3. English.

Then I turned off my school grammar, including some generative grammar rules
(from linguistics) in my head, and just truly went with my guts. This
particularly affected the answers I gave to later questions. The second time
the algorithm guessed that my dialect was 1. American (Standard) 2. Canadian
3. US Black Vernacular and that my native language was 1. English 2. Norwegian
3. Dutch.

This second set of results was very much off the mark but conformed to what I
intended my answers to be.

My background: a native Thai speaker, born and raised in Thailand, started
learning a bit of 'real' English at about eleven, lived in the US for two
years when doing my Masters. I'm currently in Thailand but I mostly read and
write in English for about fourteen years. My everyday spoken language is
still Thai, but most of the movies, music, multimedia I consume are in
English.

Possible implications:

1\. Over-application of school grammar could result in unnatural use of
language.

2\. With enough exposure to proper language materials, non-natives can get
pretty close to the native speaker in grammatical knowledge, even fairly
subtle ones, at least according to the short and incomplete quiz here.

If any American English native speaker has time on their hands, I'd be
grateful if you can tell me the differences between my writings (you can click
on my username for more samples) and those of an educated native American
English speaker.

~~~
danielsju6
So in skimming your comment history, I'm no english teacher; your use of past
tense seems almost forced.

While as far I'm aware correct grammatically, your last paragraph gives plenty
of hints that you're non-native: "If any American English native SPEAKERS HAVE
[picky] time on their hands, I'd be grateful if you COULD tell me ("let me
know of" maybe) ANY differences between my WRITING [big one here] (you can
click on my username for an archive of my comments) and THAT of an educated
native American English speaker.

There may be subtleties in your sentence structure that you'd be better off
asking a linguist about; but you definitely come off as both educated and non-
native in skimming.

~~~
nopinsight
Thanks a lot for the comment. I kind of notice that I overuse past tense a bit
too, I'll try to go more with my guts next time. My general lesson: Oftentimes
when I try to apply school grammar or logic, I tend to be a bit more off than
when I apply the patterns I absorb through experience.

'Writings' is an interesting case. I believe mental lexicon is a lot harder
for non-natives to grasp, simply because there are a lot more of them and
English does not always treat them consistently. For example, I thought that a
collection of written work is plural, while apparently you consider it a
collection or an abstract object, and therefore used without an article and
cannot in general be in the plural form.

However, this is what I found using Google 'define writing':

    
    
      2. written work, especially with regard to its style or quality. 
      * books, stories, articles, or other written works.
      plural noun: writings
      "he was introduced to the writings of Gertrude Stein"
    

So, dear native speakers, which is more appropriate in my use in the GP
comment? writings or writing? :-)

~~~
danielsju6
There was another good post on here I saw recently on how we're using bad
dictionaries,
[http://jsomers.net/blog/dictionary](http://jsomers.net/blog/dictionary)

For example the better (while old) Websters Revised only has these two entries
for "writings":

    
    
      3. A book; any written composition; a pamphlet; as the writings of Addison.
      ...
      5. Writings, plu. conveyances of lands; deeds; or any official papers.
    

It specifically mentions that writings are more formal and pretty spot on for
how we use the word.

TLDR; use this
[http://machaut.uchicago.edu/websters](http://machaut.uchicago.edu/websters)
1913 websters dictionary rather than the newer, while correct, dictionaries
that don't capture vernacual. It's a shame a state of our dictionaries.

------
evincarofautumn
One of my favourite things to do in online forums such as Stack Overflow,
where there are many non-native English speakers, is to determine where a
person is from based on which grammatical errors they make. It’s more subtle
than accent or other cues, but it is remarkably consistent.

~~~
yen223
I followed Andrew Ng's Machine Learning course on Coursera. The course itself
was great, but halfway through I realized he had to be from Malaysia or
Singapore, because he started talking about "alphabets" instead of "letters".

~~~
evincarofautumn
Yeah, besides word choice (“I have a doubt” = “I have a question” in Indian
English) you also have more interesting things like discourse deixis—“consider
that code: …” instead of “consider this code: …”—or how uncertainty is
expressed—“some” instead of “a” for example shows up in Daft Punk’s “Something
About Us”.

~~~
the_af
Interesting! "I have a doubt" is also a common mistake for us Spanish
speakers. This is because for us "tengo una duda" is an acceptable way of
saying "I have a question".

~~~
hibbelig
German here. It felt _really_ weird when my American boss asked me whether I
have a doubt. Yes, most people in his team are from India.

------
JoshTriplett
One question in particular got me thinking that this quiz could also identify
people with a scientific background, who read a lot of sci-fi and fantasy, or
in general people not inclined towards future shock:

> Fill in the blank. Check all correct answers.

> The sun is in ________.

> ☑ the sky

> ☑ a sky

> ...

------
zachrose
At the end it says: "Calculating score... Meanwhile, please answer these
questions."

At first I was like, "They're kicking off a deferred job for that?"

And then I was like, "Oh, they just want me to answer questions."

------
tokenadult
They appear to list three guesses for variety of English for everybody who
takes the quiz. They correctly spotted that I'm a native speaker of American
(standard) English and listed the other two possibilities as Canadian (I do
listen to radio from Canada, by rebroadcast on Minnesota Public Radio) and
ebonics (which everyone in the United States hears sooner or later).

The guesses for my language background were spot on too. Like many
Minnesotans, I have a few dialectal usages that reflect Scandinavian
influence, and besides English as a first language, the other two languages
guessed for me were Norwegian and Swedish. I have Norwegian ancestry (in
part), so I come by those dialect habits honestly.

~~~
lmkg
Counterdata: I've lived in California my entire life, my only other language
exposure in day-to-day life is Spanish, and I have no Norwegian ancestry or
local connections. It still thought my second- and third-most likely native
languages were Swedish and Norwegian. I'm guessing those languages have ease
picking up "native" English.

~~~
tzs
32 years in California, then 22 in Washington. I too got Norwegian and Swedish
as the guess 2nd and 3rd guess for native language.

For my English variant, Standard American was first, then Canadian, then
Singaporean.

------
skeoh
> I told Sally I was worried about the exam. She said, "Don't worry.
> ____________"

> She'll be right!

I feel like this question is cheating. This could be the only question in the
survey and it would be able to identify Australians.

~~~
the_af
Why would Australians say this? Is it because for them an exam is a "she"?
(disclaimer: not a native English speaker myself, though the test guessed
"American English (Standard)").

~~~
MetallicCloud
I don't know the origins, but we seem to use 'she' as a synonym for 'the
situation'.

She'll be right. She's all good. She's apples.

etc.

------
danielsju6
I finder interesting that they don't do a good job at breakin up no American
English. We ain't just one big ole' dialect, ya know?

I hail from downeast Maine (downeastah) and it thought I was a native dutch
speaker, some fucking horse sh## right there, let me tell ya.... My linguist
friends can do a much better job at pinnin me, spot down to the county, after
college and WITHOUT my tryin. Aight.

Seriously, might want get some pronunciation questions in there—at 314M people
the US is a pretty big chunk that they group into only two (that I saw)
dialects, ebonics and standard. Of course being a youngin and gone to school,
I've probably picked up one or two outa townah habits in my talkin.

FYI I'm ampin it up, if haven't noticed; but I do talk this way around my
"muddah" so I don't get muckeled up one side down the otha—still no idea what
that means but it doesn't sound nice, maybe a slapping, bitching, no idea...
but holy hell do I need a translator to understand my grandparents are saying,
this isn't American standard down here (and why is it always down?)

~~~
vacri
The same is true of the other dialects as well, even good old Mother
England's. Compare the ways in which the upper class and the chavs talk. North
versus south. Different vernacular, different grammar types, innit?

~~~
danielsju6
Yeah seemed more a which language did you originally speak rather than what
english do you speak, questionnaire. I seriously can't understand what half of
the generation before me is saying on my mom's side—it isn't my English for
sure.

------
erichurkman
For the US, also check out the short quiz from the NY Times [1] based on the
Harvard Dialect Survey from ~10 years ago.

It got both mine and my spouse's hometown area dead right.

[1] [http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/12/20/sunday-
review/...](http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2013/12/20/sunday-
review/dialect-quiz-map.html?_r=0)

~~~
Fuzzwah
That was very interesting for me, an Australian living in the US. Phoenix
specifically. I'm constantly amazed at how quickly American's can spot that
I'm an Aussie.

I've gotten pretty used to the obvious different words between Australia and
the US; rubbish = trash, car boot = trunk, pram = stroller, take away = carry
out / to go, etc.

However this quiz highlighted a bunch that I wouldn't have been aware of, such
as no one in the US knowing what soft-drink is and nature strip wasn't even on
the list for "the grass beside a road".

------
yen223
I got Ebonics. This quiz is whack.

~~~
iamthepieman
Ah see what you did dere.

For english dialect I got:

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

and for native language I got:

1\. Swedish 2\. Norwegian 3\. English

I'm 100% native English

~~~
NAFV_P
> _I 'm 100% native English_

Same here regarding habitat (Gloucester), my results were:

Dialect: 0\. English 1. Welsh 2. South African

Native: 0\. English 1. Finnish 2. Romanian

But my mother is Welsh, and I lived in Cardiff for three years. I'd say that
is fairly accurate.

------
victorvation
It was absolutely spot on for me. I grew up speaking native (Canadian) English
in a Cantonese-speaking home in a Portuguese neighbourhood, and it picked up
on all three of those exactly.

------
sirdogealot
>Up the audience's expectations, the critics built.

I just got that sentence on asking if it were grammatical or not. I believe
that is referred to as yoda grammar?

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

Number 1 is correct. However I would admit to speaking american, and I did
listen to a lot of rap growing up, so ebonics might be reasonable? But I am a
white kid from the rich suburbs, so it's a bit odd but possible I suppose.

------
obituary_latte
Other: impossible to complete on iOS due to insane drop down boxes that don't
allow one to make or even view the proper selection. So, I suppose, I'm in the
entitled American group. Finally, popular.

edit: dead I guess? If anyone has showdead on and sees this, I'd be much
obliged if you could take a gander at my history and theorize as to what got
me banned. Email in profile. Thanks in advance.

------
laurent123456
None of the top three guesses are correct in my case, not even close. I wonder
if this is because they have more data for Chinese and Portuguese (Brazil)
speakers.

    
    
        Our top three guesses for your English dialect:
        1. South African
        2. Welsh (UK)
        3. New Zealand
    
        Our top three guesses for your native (first) language:
        1. Chinese
        2. Portuguese
        3. English

~~~
witty_username
Same for me, Indian:

1\. US Black Vernacular / Ebonics 2\. New Zealand 3\. Singaporean Our top
three guesses for your native (first) language:?

1\. German 2\. Dutch 3\. English - See more at:
[http://www.gameswithwords.org/WhichEnglish/done.php#sthash.i...](http://www.gameswithwords.org/WhichEnglish/done.php#sthash.igF1TVhT.dpuf)

#3 (Singapore) is a little bit close and #3 is correct.

------
neonscribe
I've noticed that prepositions seem to change usage over time in different
regions. For example, "different to" has become common in British vernacular,
even though "different from" is still typical for formal British English and
in American vernacular. Sometimes I hear "different than" but I'm not sure
where it is commonly used.

------
judk
Is there really a significant population that self identifies as speaking
Ebonics?

That whole methodology seems rife with biases. The instructions are in
standard american english. The pictures are confusing. The input controls are
broken on mobile. I reject written sentences ad ungrammatical even though I
hear and speak them fine.

~~~
Yardlink
The instructions ask you to choose what feels right, not what you learnt at
school to be grammatical. So you should expect poor results if you rejected
right-feeling sentences.

------
Osmium
Worked very well for me, correctly guessing my dialect which is spoken by
relatively few people (not one of the 'standard' ones). I definitely found
this surprising, especially considering I haven't lived in my home country for
the better part of a decade. Very cool.

~~~
vacri
I'm from Australia. It thought I was Welsh. Apart from a strong sheep segment
in the economy and being considered second-class by the English (and who
isn't?), there's not much in common between the two countries... :)

~~~
Osmium
Possibly because Welsh English is quite close to Australian English according
to this blog post:

[http://gameswithwords.fieldofscience.com/2014/05/the-
english...](http://gameswithwords.fieldofscience.com/2014/05/the-english-
grammars-of-world.html)

~~~
vacri
Interesting visualisation, but if I'm reading it correctly, a smaller number
means more similar, and the number for Australian->Welsh is the third highest
number for the Australian dialect, suggesting that they're more dissimilar
than others.

Hrm, that's if you mouseover Australian. If you mouseover Welsh,
Welsh->Australian is indeed the lowest number of the list. So, according to
these numbers, Welsh is most like Australian, but Australian is least(ish)
close to Welsh.

Weird.

------
hargup
I'm from India and a native Hindi speaker. The algorithm got a result far away
from the correct one.

Our top three guesses for your English dialect:?

1\. US Black Vernacular / Ebonics 2\. Singaporean 3\. English (England)

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

1\. Russian 2\. Turkish 3\. Polish

------
bane
Top 3 guesses:

    
    
       1. American (Standard)
       2. Singaporean
       3. Canadian
    

(#1 is correct, #3 is close)

Native Language

    
    
       1. English
       2. Norwegian
       3. Chinese
    

(#1 is correct, interesting about the other 2)

------
kd5bjo
It wasn't until after I had finished that I realized I was mixing up two
distinct concepts in my responses:

1) What I would consider correct phrasing for my own speech, and

2) What I would accept as correct when spoken by someone else

------
jelmerdejong
Creepy :)

Our top three guesses for your English dialect:

1\. US Black Vernacular / Ebonics 2\. American (Standard) 3\. Canadian - See
more at:
[http://www.gameswithwords.org/WhichEnglish/#sthash.yDkuaast....](http://www.gameswithwords.org/WhichEnglish/#sthash.yDkuaast.dpuf)

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

1\. Dutch 2\. English 3\. Norwegian - See more at:
[http://www.gameswithwords.org/WhichEnglish/#sthash.yDkuaast....](http://www.gameswithwords.org/WhichEnglish/#sthash.yDkuaast.dpuf)

And yes: I'm Dutch.

~~~
DouweM
I'm Dutch as well, and I got:

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

1\. English 2. Dutch 3. Swedish

I think it's cool that my English is good enough for it to judge me a native
speaker, while it still has enough information to see similarities to other
Dutch people who took the quiz. Swedes' English is quite good as well, so that
makes sense as a third guess.

No idea where "US Black Vernacular / Ebonics" and "Singaporean" are coming
from, however. I'd be interested to see which choices exactly make my English
similar to those dialects.

------
memming
I got Ebonics, and it guessed that I am Vietnamese or Finnish. I consider
myself to speak standard American English, and I am a Korean. Not enough
training data? Is that why it's on HN???

~~~
bane
No idea why Finnish, but the Korean population near where I live often speak
with notable dialectal markers indicative of Ebonics. I think it comes from
the relative popularity of hip-hop culture in Korean popular culture.

This interview is a great example. [https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aeb-
PJJN9sk](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=aeb-PJJN9sk)

~~~
memming
Well, plus I actually grew up in the states!

------
jimmaswell
"It was the monkey that pushed the bear." What possible room for
interpretation is there here? Unless you're not paying attention.

[http://i.imgur.com/cxGR1Mm.png](http://i.imgur.com/cxGR1Mm.png)

I think this thing is broken. I did catch myself almost selecting something
ridiculous-sounding a few times because I didn't read the sentence close
enough, though; maybe that's what happened. But there were a ton of "US Black
Vernacular" options that I never picked.

~~~
Yardlink
I guess most people from "ebonics" postcodes who took this quiz and trained it
are more educated than their neighbors so they ended up picking the US
standard English options like you did.

------
onethree
I'm impressed - it suggested New Zealand as #1, and Australia as #2. Raised in
Australia and New Zealand, with kiwi parents.

~~~
joshschreuder
I got Australia #1, New Zealand #2. Born and raised in Australia and never
been to NZ. Pretty similar dialects though I guess :)

~~~
spingsprong
It said I was from New Zealand. I've never been to New Zealand in my life.

------
albemuth
From Costa Rica, learned english in Scotland as a kid but had american
teachers growing up. They guessed:

    
    
        1. American (Standard)
        2. US Black Vernacular / Ebonics
        3. Singaporean
    
        1. Norwegian
        2. English
        3. Dutch
    

Seems like Singaporean should be penalised just by mere
demographics/statistics.

~~~
JetSetWilly
Being born, raised in living in Scotland I got:

1\. Scottish (UK)

2\. English (England)

3\. Irish (Republic of)

Surprisingly accurate.

------
Geee
Wow, this is pretty good. It guessed my Finnish native language. Although it
said my English dialect is 1. US Black Vernacular / Ebonics 2. Singaporean 3.
New Zealand. Well, I don't think I have any specific dialect so it might be
just pretty random.

------
stayyoloing
Didn't peg Hawaiian Pidgin even though I purposefully answered a couple
questions that way (like "stay x") while choosing standard grammar otherwise.
Top was just standard American English, the other top three were just like
black Vernacular.

------
benstein
Would love to see more details as to WHY I got the suggested responses. As a
prescribed grammarian, born and raised in the northeast US, I was definitely
surprised to see Canadian and ebonics. Assuming not enough training data
yet...?

~~~
gameswithwords
When we're done with the project, we'll put up a final version that actually
gives you a breakdown of why you get the score you do, what parts of the world
certain grammar rules are particularly common -- all the things people
(including me!) want to know.

We're actually getting some of that up bit-by-bit as data comes in (you can
watch for it on our site blog). Thank you to everyone who has been
participating so far.

------
felipellrocha
I'm Brazilian, and their top guess for native language was Portuguese. Good
work!

------
girvo
Wow. I was born in NZ, and my family are all Kiwi's. I moved to Australia when
I was 7. The guesses for my dialect are 1. NZ and 2. Australia! Very well
done. I'm curious to see how good the algorithm ends up being.

~~~
dagurp
The guesses for my dialect were 1. NZ and 2. Singapore but I'm Icelandic and
have never lived anywhere else. (I'm not saying that it's flawed but I thought
it was interesting)

------
ollyfg
This is really cool, I didn't know that so many of those sentences might be
considered valid.

It got my country right with it's second guess (New Zealand), which is pretty
good considering what a small sample of kiwis it must have.

~~~
vorg
Ticking both "she'll be right" and "it'll be OK" was probably the big
giveaway.

------
DrinkWater
My results: 1\. US Black Vernacular 2\. Singaporean 3\. New Zealand

and my native language: 1\. Greek 2\. Finish 3\. Russian

It is actually German. I am trying to find a pattern here, but i believe these
results generated statistically/by machine learning?

~~~
claudius
I also got Singaporean and New Zealand as well as the three native languages
(albeit in different ordering) while being a German native speaker. I’d claim
it to be mere chance that these are somehow related to standard German
sentence structuring, especially the use of the passive in the first few
questions.

------
TheLoneWolfling
English speaking Canadian:

    
    
      1. New Zealand
      2. South African
      3. Welsh (UK)
    
      1. Norwegian
      2. English
      3. Romanian
    

Seems a little off.

------
markjspivey
This is an interesting variation of a semiotic commutation test, although
while not honoring emergent grammar (Paul hopper) as much as I do.

------
alexchamberlain
Very interesting. Point of correction: Welsh is not a dialect of English! It's
a completely different language.

~~~
ubernostrum
[http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welsh_English](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welsh_English)

"Welsh English, Anglo-Welsh, or Wenglish (see below) refers to the dialects of
English spoken in Wales by Welsh people. The dialects are significantly
influenced by Welsh grammar and often include words derived from Welsh. In
addition to the distinctive words and grammar, there is a variety of accents
found across Wales from the Cardiff dialect to that of the South Wales Valleys
and to West Wales."

~~~
alexchamberlain
Right, but that is not Welsh...

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welsh_language](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Welsh_language)

~~~
ubernostrum
Nobody claimed it was. Talking about "Welsh English" refers to a Welsh-
language-influenced dialect of English spoken primarily in Wales by people who
also speak or live among/are influenced by speakers of the Welsh language.

------
hornetblack
I got

1\. New Zealand 2\. South African 3\. Australian.

With native languages as

1\. English 2\. Chinese 3\. Greek

I'm English speaking Australian. So it got very close.

------
kostyk
totally incorrect for me. Didn't guess my nationality and put Russian at third
place in native languages.

------
Dewie
Guesses native language:

1\. English 2\. Chinese 3\. Greek

Guesses dialect:

1\. Australian 2\. Singaporean 3\. American (Standard)

I'm Norwegian.

