About the atlas
The dialect atlas is a map of how English sounds in different places. Pick an accent to see where it is heard, or pick a sound, such as whether cot and caught are said the same, to see which places say it. Every finding comes from a published book or study, and the Sources page lists them all. Where nobody has looked, the map says nothing rather than guess.
How to read the map
Red means a finding. Black means you are pointing at something.
Places
- Yes: this place says it. For cot and caught, the two sound the same.
- For some: some speakers do, some do not, or the source says so.
- Nearly: the two are almost the same, but not quite.
- No: this place does not say it.
- Nothing recorded: no source has looked. This is not the same as no.
For a sound with several ways of saying it, each way gets its own shape.
- First choice
- Second choice
- Third choice
- Fourth choice
Areas
- A light red tint: the whole area says yes.
- Red stripes: for some people in the area.
- An outline with no fill: the area says no.
- Short red ticks along the inside of the edge: the area says yes.
- A smooth loop is a rough area: where it stops is a guess. A sharp edge follows a real border, such as a county or a state.
- Picking an accent: the stronger tint is where it is strongest, the lighter tint is where it is also heard.
- A dotted outline: an accent tied to a group of people, not to one place.
Grey names are cities. Dark names are accents and areas. Zoom in with the wheel, a pinch or the buttons, and drag to move.
Words used
- merger
- Two sounds that used to be different and now sound the same, like "cot" and "caught".
- near-merger
- Two sounds that are still a tiny bit different when measured, but the people saying them can't tell.
- vowel shift
- A chain of vowels that have all moved to new places in the mouth, so each one now sounds a bit like its neighbour used to.
- said vs heard
- Some studies measure how people say words, others test whether they can hear a difference. The two can disagree.
Recently added
- Western: wine = whineSample · 2026-11-14
- Western: father = botherSample · 2026-11-14
- Western: car stays carSample · 2026-11-14
- Western: bed stays bedSample · 2026-11-14
- Western: bat stays batSample · 2026-11-14
- Western: horse = hoarseSample · 2026-11-14
- Western: Mary = marry = merrySample · 2026-11-14
- Western: pin ≠ penSample · 2026-11-14
- Western: cot = caughtSample · 2026-11-14
- Southern: wine = whine for someSample · 2026-11-14
Sample data: not yet checked against sources, and some of it is placeholder.
Map credits
- Made with Natural Earth
- Source: Office for National Statistics licensed under the Open Government Licence v.3.0
- Contains OS data © Crown copyright and database right 2026
- Made use of data provided by the Historic County Borders Project (county-borders.co.uk)
- Contains Tailte Éireann data licensed under CC BY 4.0