![]() ![]() Astrology is the pseudo-scientific "study" of the influence of the stars and planets on our lives, including horoscopes, agronomy is scientific but instead studies agriculture, and cosmetology is the study of cosmetics and makeup (with a name close to cosmology, a branch of astronomy, and comet, an astronomical object). The actual answer is astronomy, which is not listed, though several answers are listed that sound similar to fields that study stars. What do you call the scientific field that studies the stars? Whether this is a coincidence or deliberate is unknown. In Questionable Content, this is also the way Faye pronounces Penelope's name in comic 725. (A) is the answer Juan from Club Dread (2004) would have given, and the way video game parody band "Random Encounters" pronounces their second cat's name. In English, the only correct way to pronounce this name is "pe-NELL-o-pee" /pəˈnɛləpi/, which is not listed. Neither Option A's "PEN-e-lohp" /ˈpɛːnəˌloʊp/ (possibly "PEEN-e-lohp" /ˈpiːnɪˌloʊp/) nor Option B's "pe-NELL-up" /pɪˈnɛləp/ are a typical pronunciation of this name (beyond mispronunciations). Alternatively, it may suggest that some xkcd readers are particularly introverted.īoth the options for this are wrong, making it the first of many quiz questions to be impossible to answer correctly. Option C may reference the significant decrease in human interaction and social contact during the COVID-19 pandemic. Reference to the first question of the Times quiz: "How would you address a group of two or more people?" (with options including "you all", "you guys", "y'all", etc.). C) I have not been around two or more people for so long that I can't remember.How do you address a group of two or more people? It's coincidental, but likely, that Nate Silver's tweet inspired Randall's post: he was reminded of the 2013 feature from the Times. 2371: Election Screen Time specifically suggests that Randall may be spending too much time obsessing over new posts and content from the election predictors. just three days before this comic was posted. ![]() ![]() posted his results of taking the New York Times version of the survey on October 11, 2020. A prominent predictor of the election results is Nate Silver, who runs the FiveThirtyEight website. Randall's previous two comics have been about election predictions, leading up to the 2020 US General Presidential Election. Many of the questions in this comic directly derive from entries in those surveys. In 2013, Josh Katz of the New York Times created a new version based on the Harvard survey, which became the Times' most popular content of 2013 and spread the idea to many more people. The survey created maps of the distribution of various word usage (such as pop/soda/coke for a fizzy softdrink) and was a relatively early example of widely shared Internet "viral" content. The earliest quiz of this type to be widely disseminated online was the Harvard Dialect Survey, conducted in the early 2000s by Bert Vaux and Scott Golder. There are also quizzes about broader English dialects, but this comic focuses on commonly cited differences between American dialects. These quizzes generally contain questions about word usage, names for certain objects, and pronunciations that vary between different regions of the US. This comic is a parody of online quizzes that offer to compare the user's dialect of American English with others around the country. (And if you’re confused about accents and dialects, watch the video at the top of this article.Title text: Do you make a distinction between shallots, scallops, and scallions? If you use all three words, do they all have different meanings, all the same, or are two the same and one different? If you want to learn more about the way Americans talk, check out our series all about the different dialects and accents from around the United States. If you tend to alternate, choose the one you’d say most of the time. Simply choose the answer that most closely represents what you would say in normal conversation. Using some simplified versions of these variations on the English language, we’ve created an American dialect quiz to see if we can guess which region you’re from based on how you pronounce certain words and which words you use for common things. You might ask people from other parts of the country, “How do you pronounce caramel?” or “Do you say soda or pop?” It can be fun to examine these differences, and it gives us a sense of identity and regional pride. Regional dialect differences in the United States are a source of endless fascination. There are a number of factors that affect the way you talk - age, race, class, gender and more - but perhaps the most significant is geography. ![]()
0 Comments
Leave a Reply. |
AuthorWrite something about yourself. No need to be fancy, just an overview. ArchivesCategories |