So many of us have transplanted ourselves across the country so many times that we don’t know anymore whether we’re Southerners or Northerners.

I was born in Jacksonville, Florida, to parents who were both from old-time Southern families. When I was growing up we had to say “yes ma’am” and “yes sir” and eat grits for breakfast. When I was 12, I moved to Southern California, where I discovered that saying “yes ma’am” was considered a sarcastic act that could get you in trouble with teachers. And grits? Nobody out there had heard of them. (I was just as glad.)

Just about the time I’d adjusted to California culture, it was time to move to the Northeast, where I learned to talk about tag sales and bubblers and eat grinders. The cheese that people put on pizza? That’s called moots here (rhymes with foots.) Oh, yeah–and the other weird thing: you have to ASK for it on your pizza. Pizza doesn’t automatically come with moots. Just don’t call it mozz-a-rella when you say it. People laugh and point.

Anyhow, when I came here, people laughed when I talked, saying I talked Southern. And my Southern relatives were horrified whenever I would talk to them: “You sound just like a Yankee, honey. You need to come back HOME.”

So which was I? Dixie or Yankee?

If you’ve got the same problem, you don’t have to sit up nights trying to figure out which one you are. Go click on this link and take The Yankee or Dixie quiz and you can find out once and for all just who you are, based on nothing more than the words you use. (Don’t worry–there’s no quiz about the Civil War or red states vs. blue states.)

It’s all about if you say aunt or ant. Do you call athletic shoes sneakers or tennis shoes? Is a drive-thru liquor store a party barn or a brew-through? (They have DRIVE-THRU LIQUOR STORES?!?)

I’ve lost a lot of my Southern dialect these days, but I still scored 55% Dixie, just from my leftovers.

I’m not sure my Southern relatives would be all that pleased.

This comes, thanks to Dorothy Thompson, who posted it on the Yahoo writers page. She’s a dyed-in-the-wool Southerner, too–the times I’ve talked to her on the telephone, I LOVE hearing her accent. That’s the thing I miss, living up here in the cold north: those soft Southern sounds. And, of course, the utilitarianism of the word “y’all.” It really is a word that can’t be replaced with “youse guys.” I’m sorry. It just can’t.