English, as many new students of the language will remind you, is a complex and diverse tongue.
Approximately 1.75 billion people in 70 countries around the world speak English, of which nearly 385 million are native speakers based in countries like the US, Australia, New Zealand, the UK and Ireland etc. This also makes it the third most popular language worldwide in terms of native speakers behind Mandarin (1.3 billion) and Spanish (460 million).
Naturally, this vast number of English speakers have given rise to a number of different dialects. As such, we recognise the existence of different types of English such as American, British, Australian and so on.
English originated from England in the UK. The last survey conducted in the UK found that more than 37 dialects of English exist in the country. Similarly, in neighboring Ireland, there are three primary dialects.
Back in February 2019, The New York Times created a British-Irish dialect quiz. Using carefully designed questions, the quiz would identify which part of Ireland or Britain a person hailed from based on how they pronounced certain words.
If you were raised in Ireland or the UK, The Circular recommends that you take the quiz and see if the results truly correspond to where you were raised! And even if you aren’t native to these countries, take it anyway, because it’s fun.
Several people from these countries and outside took the quiz and some of the results were quite interesting. The Circular compiled some of the best Twitter reactions of people:
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