San Luis, Arizona
The San Luis Accent
San Luis sits inside the California dialect area, which covers California, United States. No other dialect area in the survey comes close to it.
Take the quiz and see how close your accent is →
What people in San Luis sound like
- “Cot” and “caught” sound the same.
- Fronted “goose” vowel — “dude”, “food”, “too”.
- Uptalk: rising pitch at the end of statements.
- Quotative “like”: “and I was like…”.
These are the markers of the California accent as a whole. No survey claims every speaker in San Luis has all of them — the full California profile sets out where the region varies.
How Arizona answered the Harvard Dialect Survey
The Harvard Dialect Survey, collected by Bert Vaux and Scott Golder in 2002–2003, recorded how respondents in every US state answered the same questions. These are Arizona’s answers, most common first.
| Question | Answers in Arizona |
|---|---|
| Soda, Pop or Coke? The Map of How America Orders a Fizzy Drink | soda 64% · pop 14% · coke 13% |
| Traffic Circle, Roundabout or Rotary? | roundabout 34% · traffic circle 29% · rotary 6% |
| Water Fountain, Drinking Fountain or Bubbler? | drinking fountain 51% · water fountain 46% · bubbler 0% |
| Lightning Bug or Firefly? | firefly 45% · lightning bug 16% |
| Crawfish, Crawdad or Crayfish? | crawdad 40% · crawfish 31% · crayfish 16% |
| Roly Poly or Potato Bug? | potato bug 33% · roly poly 29% |
| You Guys, Y'all or You All? | you guys 49% · you all 16% · y'all 7% |
| Kitty-Corner or Catty-Corner? | kitty-corner 63% · catty-corner 22% |
| Garage Sale or Yard Sale? | yard sale 50% · garage sale 41% |
| Tennis Shoes or Sneakers? | tennis shoes 60% · sneakers 25% |
| Trash Can or Garbage Can? | trash can 42% · garbage can 27% |
| Frosting or Icing? | frosting 36% · icing 11% |
| Frontage Road, Service Road or Access Road? | frontage road 66% · access road 17% · service road 7% |
| Caramel: Two Syllables or Three? | with 2 syllables ("car-ml") 49% · with 3 syllables ("carra-mel") 22% |
| Mischievous or Mischievious? | mischievious (4 syllables) 37% · mischievous (3 syllables) 33% |
| Rubber Band, Hair Tie or Elastic? | rubber band 34% · hair tie 28% · (hair) elastic 5% |
Data from the Harvard Dialect Survey (Bert Vaux and Scott Golder, 2002–2003), used under the CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 licence. A self-selected sample from two decades ago: how people spoke then, not a census.
Is your accent from San Luis?
There is no way to answer that from a description. The test asks 29 questions about the words you use and how you say them, scores your answers against the California English profile and every other profile in the survey, and shows you where people who answer the way you do actually live.