Y'all, You Guys, or Youse? Our Time Waster for This Morning.

We spent a very enjoyable hour going through this word quiz as a group. Then we saw that at the end they will give you their best guess on where you are from. So I went and took it myself. (Warning, the last map with the overall conclusion loads super slowly compared to all the other maps ... be patient or you'll lose the whole thing.)

I wound up with Spokane, Tacoma, Portland which were way off based solely on the word "kitty corner", but the map does show a very high match to Kansas where I grew up and North Texas, where I now live. I could see real connections on certain words to my time in Houston and my parents' Cincinnati / Illinois connections also.

Then I saw you could link to the specific map results and so took it a second time to try to capture the map, was asked a few different questions in the mix. I wound up still with stubborn Spokane but two more realistic cities about my word learning: Des Moines and Wichita.

None of this is as good as the Dictionary of Regional English which would be my wish if a bookish fairy godmother showed up to ask what very expensive books I'd love to read for the next year. But its fun enough and interesting. Enjoy!

Literary Paint Chips: Gallery 1

From the Paris Review Daily - Paint Samples, suitable for the home, sourced from colors in literature.

For example if you want to see that gray green greasy color of the river Limpopo, this is where you're gonna go.

“Then Kolokolo Bird said, with a mournful cry, ‘Go to the banks of the great gray-green, greasy Limpopo River, all set about with fever-trees, and find out.’ ” “The Elephant’s Child,” Rudyard Kipling.

I noticed that one of the people credited is Ben Schott who wrote a couple of my favorite trivia books. And I see he also has done some almanacs.

Thanks to Scott for this link.