This map took me a long time to make, and is very detailed, but will always be incomplete and inaccurate due to the nature of language.
Why this map is so detailed
The diversity of English dialects in the United Kingdom is enormous.
It’s common for people from either side of a river, mountain, or even town to speak noticeably different ways, with particular features that immediately mark someone out as being from a specific area, to those who have an ear for it.
This is pretty normal in any large region that has been speaking a language continually for 1600 years. You will find the same thing in Germany, Norway, France, and countless other countries. Languages evolve over time, and physical distance between regions means that new features often spread slowly, leading to dialectal differences. Sometimes these differences are small, and only easily recognised by people from the relevant region. Other times there are very clear distinctions, with neighbouring dialects sounding almost like different languages to those unaccustomed to them.
Here I have tried to capture as much nuance as possible. I’ve spent the last few years pooling together every study, survey, map, and database I can find, and then subjecting my image to several rounds of peer feedback. The members of my Facebook group, “Ah yes, the British accent”, were also a huge help in trying to make these borders as accurate as possible. The end result is an image which is, to my knowledge, the most detailed map of British dialects ever made. But it is still very much unfinished, and it always will be.
Why this map is wrong, and always will be
Maps are great. They allow us to display complex geographic data in a way that is visually appealing and easily understood. But often reality is just not that simple.
There’s no precise definition of a “dialect”
The definition is easy enough: a dialect is a form of language that has distinct vocabulary, pronunciation (accent), and/or grammar. But how different does a way of speaking need to be to constitute a different dialect? If any noticeable difference between the way two areas speak is a dialect, then my image is actually using very broad categories and missing much detail. My own tiny hometown (on the border between “North Cumbrian” and “West Northumbrian”) has words and pronunciations that don’t fit it into either grouping, but I think showing my town as a distinct bubble here would be a dangerous precedent. During my research for this image I talked with many people who, like me, perceive their village, town, or even street as being distinct from the surrounding area, and they’re probably right. But that kind of precision would make my image far more complicated, far harder to create, and likely far less accurate in other ways. So I’ve drawn lines around larger areas where more obvious distinctions can be found, without any strong criteria for what constitutes a dialect. I’ve also tried to show the similarities between neighbouring dialects by using a colour scheme that changes gradually across the country.
Borders between dialects are rarely hard lines
More often than not, dialects do not suddenly change as you move from one region to another. They flow and merge over time in complex and messy ways, like coloured inks diffusing into water. Yes, there is definitely a difference between the dialect of Barrow in southern Cumbria and Carlisle in the north, but in reality the region between them is a spectrum, and the placement of any dialect border across Cumbria is pretty arbitrary. Dialects on either side of it will have more in common with each other than they do with the rest of their side of the county.
In an attempt to show this, the first few drafts of this map had no white borders, instead just similar neighbouring colours against each other. However, this turned out to be a nightmare for colour-blind people. I then put in a combination of dotted lines for smaller distinctions, and solid, thick lines to show different dialect groups. But that didn’t feel right either, as while it’s easy to group together the East Midlands as separate from the West Midlands, the “Mid” Midlands doesn’t really have any solid distinction like that: it’s a gradient between the two sides. So I’ve left it all as dotted lines, almost as an apology for the map’s inability to show the true messy gradient that exists. I hope they serve to convey the vagueness and permeability of these “borders”.
In reality these colours should blur and fade together with gradients and checkerboard markings and about 35 extra spatial dimensions, but that would very much defeat the point of trying to make an intelligible map.
Some dialects are not geographically specific at all
While most dialects can be described as regional, spoken mainly in one area, that isn’t always the case. London is the prime example of this: my map cops out with “London Dialects” (plural), because in reality London is incredibly diverse, and deserves its own map to show that complexity. Except no, nobody will ever map that map, because more than anywhere geography is not how London dialects are arranged. Cultural and socioeconomic background is a much bigger deciding factor, and dialects like Multicultural London English aren’t found in one area, but all across London.
Other examples of dialects hat aren’t in this image because they aren’t specifically regional include Received Pronunciation, the “standard” prestige dialect spoken across the southern Britain; and Pitmatic, a dialect spoken by scattered coal-mining towns across the northeast of England.
So yes, this map may be unsatisfying, arbitrary, and unfinished, and no amount of work on it will really change that. It exists mainly as a testament to the huge dialectal diversity of the English language within the UK, and as a way for me to express my fascination and love for that diversity.
Other important notes
What I mean by “British”
This is a map specifically of British English dialects. That means dialects of the English language of the UK (England, Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland), and the Crown Dependencies (The Isle of Man, The Bailiwick of Jersey, and the Bailiwick of Guernsey), which are not part of the UK but are “British”. It does not include Ireland, because Ireland is not British. I considered making this another of my “British and Irish” maps, but honestly this project was already enormous and impossible enough that adding the Republic of Ireland into the mix felt like a step too far.
If you’re unclear on the use of terms like “UK” and “British”, this post is for you:
The difference between Britain, Great Britain, and the United Kingdom.
Why Northern Ireland is included
I did include Northern Ireland, which could be a little controversial (as so many things involving NI are). Broadly speaking, there are two main groups of people in Northern Ireland: those who see themselves as Irish, and those who see themselves as British. Because there are people in Northern Ireland who see themselves as British, I think it’s fitting to include them on a map of British dialects. This does not mean everyone in Northern Ireland is British, and if I ever make a map of Irish dialects, I will also be including Northern Ireland in that, as it obviously has a major Irish population.
There is also a strong link between Ulster dialects and the dialects of Scotland, as both have a strong Scots influence, which makes Northern Ireland an important part of the picture here. If you want to read more about how the languages of Britain and Ireland have evolved and influenced each other, see this post:
A Brief History of British and Irish Languages
Why Scots/Doric are not included:
This map is specifically of the English language, and Scots (and it’s subset, Doric), are not English. Scots is a close sibling to English, but it is distinct enough to be considered its own language. That said, the English dialects of the Scottish Lowlands are heavily influenced by Scots (with many speakers being bilingual in the two languages), and so the dialects are largely the same as the dialects of Scots. The notable exception being that there is no English dialect called “Doric”. Similarly Welsh, Scottish Gaelic, Cornish, Manx, and Irish do not belong on this map, despite being spoken within its borders. For a full list of languages spoken in the UK and Ireland and how they relate, this is the post for you:
Every Native British and Irish Language