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What are people saying about the Rebel-Yankee Test?


The alphaDictionary Rebel-Yankee Test has been tasken by more than 2.5 million people almost all of whom have enjoyed it. Like it or not, it has caused quite a stir across to country as the NPR and other news reports indicate. Below you can read the responses of several of those taking the test. Send us your comments, too, by clicking here. (Don't miss our new Advanced Rebel-Yankee Test, either.)

I took yer Yankee/Bubba test, and scored this:
100% (Dixie). Is General Lee your grandfather?
That was fun. I had to laugh, since my grandmother (b. 1906) was the last of her direct line of Lee's. Her father was Robert E. Lee, named after his famous relative.
God bless,
A. Richards

Your Rebel-Yankee Test was awesome! I, a true Southerner, scored: "99% Dixie. Is General Lee your grandfather?!" Why, yes, darlin' the great General is in my bloodline!
Thanks for the smile!
Donna Speers

Add to the Yankee or Rebel test:
What do you put your clothes in at home?
  • Drawer (North)
  • Draw (South)
  • Floor (Common for men throughout the US)
  • Someone else puts my clothes away (Why are you even taking this test?)
Alysha

I'm only 83% yankee by the test. That's funny!
Elizabeth MacGilfrey
>dammyankeeX@yahoo.com

It is right!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Miranda

You need to have some better answer options for some of the questions on the Yankee test.
  1. What do you call the road that runs along the side of the interstate? Answer: What road? Must be [something up by] the Great Lakes.
  2. How do you address a group of people? Answer: You guys, even if they're all girls.
Definitely Midwest, maybe Northeast.
C'mon, I'm from Cleveland and only 43% Yankee? Guess your definition of a Yankee only applies to New England. :-)
Nicole

I took your Yankee test, scored 19%. Grinder & bubbler are standard usage in Rhode Island as well as the places you mentioned, and cabinet is exclusively used in RI for that blended drink others mistakenly call a frappe or a milkshake. A seesaw is a dandle, and if you, as I, are from there you are from Rho Dilan.
Just thought y'all ought to know.
Gordon Howard

Do you have a Texas Speech test? How about the way people pronounce pecan? My husband is from NC and he says pee-can. I always tell him we have toilets in our bathrooms in Texas, and we don't put cans in our pies!
Really like your site. Interesting how you say we learn our speech patterns between 2 and 6 yrs. I'm a military brat, so during that time lived in Virginia, Texas and Germany...always on an Army base, always around people from all over the US. So my pronunciation is vastly different from my cousins who spent all their life in South Texas!
thx,
Aimee

On question 16 about a generic name for carbonated beverages, you didn't include "soda water" as one of the choices. That's the word my grandpa taught me, and I've never met a Dairy Queen attendant who didn't know what I meant when I asked "What kind of soda water do y'all have?" Yankees just stare blankly or offer me club soda.
On question 17 about the prank of covering a house with toilet paper, in Houston we always called this "wrapping" a house. That wasn't one of the choices given.
Overall, it was a fun quiz (I scored 88%) and reminded me of the "Texas English" course I took at UT, where I was astonished to learn that not everyone in the US calls a storm a "gully washer" a cold front a "blue norther" or says "fixin' to."
Thanks,
Rhonda Steedman

Your "Yankee or Rebel" test is great! You need to add "ornery." I grew up on the Great Lakes, but have lived in many parts of the country. I took the test twice, once based on my upbringing and once based on my traveling. Two totally different scores!
Cindy Gottschling

I was born in Georgia and spent my entire life there until moving to Washington DC about 10 years ago. The only people I ever heard pronounce the word "aunt" the same as "ain't" were from Appalachia (W.V., Tenn., southern Ohio), including my paternal grandmother. The people in the Deep South that I was surrounded by either pronounced it like "ant", or "caught" (my very proper and very southern maternal grandmother and grandfather), or separated out the "t" into its own syllable, pronounced "aun-tee" (not to be confused with "auntie" which is a different thing altogether).
Kelley Currie

I have called it an "Armadillo Bug" my whole (54 yrs) life... in western Mass., in Boise Idaho, in the Adirondacks, the Mohawk Valley, and here in Northern New Mexico... my playmates in Boise called it a "Potato Bug," but they knew what I meant the first time I called one an "Armadillo Bug".
John Swinney

Since when is this country divided between Yankee and Bubba speak?
I was born in New Orleans and have lived in Houston, TX with stints in other cities in this country and Canada. Sorry, folks, you don't have a clue what the term "Bubba" really implies "way down yonder." Find a more appropriate appellation, please! I wouldn't refer to college educated, well traveled, cosmopolitan Southerners as "Bubbas.". This is a denigrating term with unpleasant associations in most quarters and considered an insult or a joke by most people.
I scored 71% Dixie on your quiz and fail to see a valid correlation between your choice of word pronunciations and the color of my neck...another insult. Shame on you for relying on hackneyed, cliched and out of date misconceptions about the South. Get updated. If you choose to believe writers such as Thomas Friedman, the world has grown smaller, more homogeneous...and he happens to be correct.
Thank you,
Mrs. L.

On your test for whether one is a Yankee or a Rebel I was real surprised that you did not include:
  • Do you call it stuffing or dressing
  • How do you say "suite" like "sweet" or "suit"
Susan Abernethy

Loved this. I am from NC and love anything pertaining to "Dixie". Thanks for making my day.
>Regina

Just took your Yankee test. says I'm barely Yankee yet I have lived in Boston 30yrs and Maine for 3yrs (I'm only 33yrs old!). Might wanna check the accuracy on this one.
Kathryn Rancati

The Yankee test was fun, I'm from southwest Ohio, so barely a Yankee... I was wondering if anyone else has mentioned this. In this part of Ohio, Kentucky, and Indiana, the night before Halloween is commonly called Beggars Night and a drive through to purchase liquor is called a drive thru. Just a FYI.
Julie

I enjoyed taking your Yankee/Southerner word usage quiz today. I didn't need it, however; I am a born and bred native of Massachusetts. You missed a giveaway to my native dialect: We don't drink soda or pop, we drink "tonic".
Yours,
Tricia Hutchins

F.Y.I., putting toilet paper in someone's yard is called wrapping a house in Texas. Also, how about the question of, what do you call the children's game when the kids sit in a circle and tap heads as they walk around to choose someone to chase? In CA. it is called, "duck, duck goose" in Minnesota it is called "duck, duck, grey duck"
Audrey Gow

Your Dixie questionnaire was fun (I'm 96% Dixie). Here's a good question to add, although I really don't have a clue when talking about Maine lobsters or mobsters [up North].
What do you call the electric appliance in your kitchen that keeps the food cool?
  1. refrigerator, used by uppity urban types through out the US
  2. fridge, used by more casual urban types and uppity rural types through out the US
  3. icebox, used by rural southerners
  4. cooler, used by restaurateurs, Maine lobster fisherman, and mobsters
Jeff

  • A doodlebug is the one that makes circular traps in the sand for ants. (Texas)
  • The word crawfish is used totally in Louisiana, along with ditch-bug & mud-bug.
  • The word is tennis shoe. (Texas)
I am 100% Dixie and damn proud of it.
Ron Brown

[You] should have asked the question, "What do you call a shopping cart?" I am from the Midwest and lived in Georgia for a year and I heard the shopping cart called many things, such as buggy, basket and the way I say it, cart. Just a suggestion.
  • Thanks, it was fun to take this quiz.
  • Rondi Poppe