The NYT has a brief survey that seems to be effective at predicting the origin of the way you speak. Not surprisingly, mine shows up as just generic Boston/NY/NJ. Interestingly, a friend who’s from Tennessee, but spent a good portion of his childhood in Europe around a fairly diverse community of English speakers, was told his dialect’s origin is a mix of Northern Tennessee (the exact region he’s from), the Midwest, and San Francisco. The latter two likely being s lot of what he picked up in Europe. He was very impressed that it was able to tease out the specific Tennessee portion. It seemed to work very well for his family as well. If you have a few minutes, give it a try.
Here’s my result:
