Culture vulture

A friend sent round this Yankee or Dixie Quiz. So I took it.

My score came out 80% Dixie (Do you have Confederate ancestors?). Which is a complete crock, because how is it that I could have only THREE answers that are pegged as solely south/southeast and all the rest be somewhere else (with some also the south), and STILL be tagged Dixie?

I mean, I started off #1 as being “clearly Massachusetts, Maine or Rhode Island”. I’ve spent maybe four weeks in Mass, one in Maine and I’ve driven through RI. Go figure.

Caramel I’ve always pronounced the way it’s spelled, and never confused it with the biblical Mount Carmel. (Nor do I refer to the place of Christ’s crucifixion when I mean horse soldiers, for that matter.)

My answer to #3 was “common throughout the US”. Four WAS “southeastern US, but five was “no bias” and six “common nearly everywhere”.

I’ll give them y’all on seven. Guilty, guilty, guilty.

Eight was “all US; slightly favors the southeast”. Nine “common throughout the entire US”. Ten “universal generic term used nationwide”. Eleven, “very strong bias toward the Northeast US”. (Although I grew up in California and never left the state until I went to Mexico in high school, and I never called them anything else.)

Twelve—really, I use both terms, but it’s “all of southern US and Midwest except Great Lakes area.” Thirteen “favored in western Great Lakes region”. Fourteen “used nationwide and in southern urban areas”. Fifteen “most common nationwide except for Great lakes area.” (And I lived in Wisconsin for a while, so I recognized the term used there. I just never used it.)

Sixteen FINALLY got me back home: “used heavily in northeast US and California”. But as for 17—again, in Southern California we never called it anything else, so how did that become “used heavily in Great Lakes and Midwest region”?

Eighteen brought me “this is common throughout most of the US”. How 19 got me “largely a Texas term but also used in the urbanized Northeast”, I don’t know. And for 20 in LA we never called it anything BUT pillbug, so I’m not getting the “Great Lakes region and northeast US”.

Even so—notwithstanding the categorization of some of these terms, how is it I could still come out 80% Dixie, when most of my responses came from multiple areas?

Now, as it happens, I do have Confederate ancestors. Yankee ones, too. You gotta problem wid’ dat?