Eight maps to show how the differences in how vowels are pronounced in Britain and Ireland.
Explanations of each map below:
Map 1: Rhoticity
Rhoticity in English refers to whether or not an “r” is pronounced when it isn’t before a vowel.
For example, in rhotic accents, the word “arm” has a true “r” sound in it, while in non-rhotic accents, the letter r just makes the vowel longer.
Since “a” at the end of words is lengthened anyway, this means for us non-rhotic speakers, spa and spar are homophones (pronounced identically).
Originally, all dialects of English were rhotic, but in the 17th and 18th century, non-rhotic pronunciation began spreading outwards from the Southeast of England.
Regions outside England that started speaking English before that time, like the Scotland, Ireland, Canada and (most of) the USA, remain rhotic, as do the southwest of England and parts of Lancashire.
Most of England is now non-rhotic, as are Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa.
Map 2: The poor-pour merger
Originally the vowels in “pour” and “poor” were pronounced differently in all accents, but these sounds have gradually shifted together (merged) in the southern half of Britain, and parts of Ireland.
In other regions of the islands they remain separate: in the Northeast of England for example, words like “poor” and “moor” are pronounced like “poo-a” and “moo-a”, while “pour” and “more” are like “por” and “mor”.
Map 3: The horse-hoarse merger
Originally, the sounds in horse and hoarse were different in all accents, but these days they only really remain separate in Ireland, Northern Ireland, and Scotland. In those areas is that words like “hoarse”, “boarder”, “mourning”, and “fore” are pronounced with a longer vowel or a diphthong, while “horse”, “border”, “morning” and “for” are shorter vowels or monophthongs.
There are also some accents in England and the USA where this distinction still made, though it is apparently dying out in those areas.
Map 4: The bath-trap split
In the south of England, especially the southeast, the words “bath”, “last”, “grass” (and many others) get a long ‘aa’ sound, the same vowel as they use in “father”, “half” or (in non-rhotic accents) “car”.
Parts of Ireland make a similar distinction.
In the rest of Britain, they remain the same, with a short “a” sound like “cat” or “trap”.
North American accents generally lack this merger, having formed before it happened in southern England, while more recently colonised nations like Australia, New Zealand, and South Africans often merge these vowels.
List of words aeffected by this split here:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Trap%E2%80%93bath_split…
Map 5: The foot-strut split
Until about 400 years ago, all accents of England pronounced the words “put”, “putt”, “but”, “sugar” “strut”, “dull”, and “full” all the exact same way.
Since then they have split into two different sets with different vowels in southern England, and that pronunciation has spread around most of the world. Northern England and (most of) Ireland are the only exceptions. For us, “good” and “bud” rhyme, as do “put” and “but”.
This merger is actually a bit more complicated because it overlaps with a few other sound changes. I may make a post specifically about this sound change in the future.
Map 6: The goose-foot merger
So originally, pretty much all the words in English with “oo” in them were pronounced the same. Then the Great Vowel Shift happened, and in all dialects, they changed and split into 2 sets of sounds: the words like “food” and “hoop” that kept a long “oo”, the words like “good” and “blood” that got the short “u” sound (blood then split off again, see previous image).
However, these shifts didn’t happen in English’s closest relative, the Scots language.
So when English spread into Scotland, the “oo” vowels merged back together again under the influence of Scots. That pronunciation then spread to Ulster.
So this is a weird sort of merger that actually undid an older split, under the influence of a related language without that split. Confusing right?
Map 7: The full-fool merger
Like the letter “R”, the letter “L” often has a weird effect on the vowels that come before it. In Scotland and Ulster it has caused the sounds in words like “full” and “pull” to merger with the sound in “fool” and “pool.
In Cockney and Estuary English (around London), this merger also exists, but in a different way: L-vocalization.
They don’t pronounce the L as a true L sound at all, but rather as a vowel, which causes the “oo” and “u” sound of these words to merge together.
Map 8: The great scone debate
This image is a bit different, since rather than sets of words having their vowels split or merged together, it’s about one word:
The pronunciation of scone is a hotly debated thing in England, with far-northerners like me assuming only posh southerners say it to rhyme with “cone”. Meanwhile people from Yorkshire and parts of the Midlands insist that only posh southerners say it like “scon”.
It’s interesting that both (predominantly working class) areas assume that the pronunciation they don’t use must be the posh one. Meanwhile in the south things are more blurred, though the short “scon” pronunciation wins, and is apparently how the royal family says it.
Ireland has a similar, but even more distinct divide, between Ulster and the rest of the island.
In a very British turn of events, this is only the second most debated thing about scones in Britain: there is also a debate about whether jam or clotted cream should go on first.
So there you go, eight maps showing accent differences in the UK and Ireland! These are just some of the many many regional differences in the complex and varied accents and dialects of these islands. I may end up recording some audio to go with these images at some point, as I think more than anything else I’ve made, they would benefit from it.
If you want to see a map which tries to show every dialect in Britain in one very detailed image, check out
my map of British dialects.