Dialect Quiz
Questions: 16 · 10 minutes
1. You hear a stranger use one pronunciation associated with a particular region. What is the most defensible conclusion?
The speaker must have been born in that region.
The speaker’s parents must both come from that region.
The feature is compatible with that region, but one clue cannot establish the speaker’s origin.
The feature reveals the speaker’s exact hometown.
2. On a dialect map, what does an isogloss represent?
The historical route followed by every speaker of a dialect
A ranking of dialects by their number of speakers
A phonetic spelling system used to record accents
A boundary marking where a particular language feature changes
3. A pronunciation once used mainly by younger speakers becomes common across several generations. What does this most clearly demonstrate?
That dialects change as linguistic innovations spread
That regional variation always disappears over time
That older pronunciations were grammatically incorrect
That the community has stopped speaking a dialect
4. In a speaker’s dialect, “pin” and “pen” sound alike when spoken before a nasal consonant. Which pattern does this illustrate?
The pin-pen merger
The Mary-marry-merry merger
Canadian raising
The cot-caught merger
5. A person has recurring speech habits that are distinctive to them, even among people from the same community. What term best describes this individual variety?
Register
Isogloss
Idiolect
Dialect continuum
6. In varieties that use habitual “be,” what does “She be working on Tuesdays” typically communicate?
She began working this Tuesday.
She is working at this exact moment.
She might work on one unspecified Tuesday.
She regularly or characteristically works on Tuesdays.
7. Someone uses more local pronunciations with childhood friends but shifts toward a widely taught standard during a job interview. What is this an example of?
A sound merger
Style-shifting
Language extinction
Mutual unintelligibility
8. In a dialect with systematic negative concord, what does “I didn’t see nobody” ordinarily mean?
The speaker saw somebody but will not identify them.
The speaker did not see anybody.
The two negatives cancel, so the speaker saw everybody.
The speaker is uncertain whether anybody was present.
9. Two speakers pronounce “cot” and “caught” with the same vowel. What is the most direct description of their pattern?
They use negative concord.
They have the cot-caught merger.
They speak a rhotic variety.
They show the pin-pen merger.
10. During a long conversation, one person subtly begins matching the other person’s word choices and speech rhythm. Which concept best fits this behavior?
Negative concord
Dialect leveling
Linguistic accommodation
Lexical borrowing between unrelated languages
11. What does it mean when a dialect has social prestige?
It follows grammar while other dialects do not.
It is associated with status or influential institutions, not with inherent linguistic superiority.
It has changed less than every non-prestige dialect.
It can be understood by all speakers of the language.
12. One speaker pronounces the final “r” in “car,” while another says the word without an audible final “r.” Which feature is being compared?
Rhoticity
Vowel raising
Negative concord
Lexical variation
13. What is the clearest distinction between an accent and a dialect?
An accent concerns pronunciation, while a dialect can also include vocabulary and grammar.
An accent is regional, while a dialect is always tied to social class.
An accent is informal, while a dialect is used in formal settings.
An accent belongs to individuals, while a dialect belongs to entire countries.
14. One community commonly says “soda,” while another commonly says “pop” for the same kind of drink. What type of dialect difference is this?
Syntactic variation
Negative concord
Rhotic variation
Lexical variation
15. A lawyer speaks differently in court than while chatting with close friends. Which concept most directly explains the change?
Sound merger
Language family
Register
Regional isogloss
16. Neighboring towns show small speech differences, and those differences accumulate across distance until speakers at opposite ends sound markedly different. What does this pattern illustrate?
An idiolect
A formal register
A writing-system reform
A dialect continuum