Manchester, Connecticut
The Manchester Accent
Manchester sits inside the Boston dialect area, which covers Boston and eastern New England, United States. The nearest other area is New York City, about 106km away.
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What people in Manchester sound like
- Non-rhotic — “park the car” as “pahk the cah”.
- Intrusive R between vowels: “the idear of it”.
- A broad, fronted vowel in “park”, “aunt” and “half”.
- Local vocabulary: “bubbler” for a drinking fountain, “wicked” as an intensifier.
These are the markers of the Boston accent as a whole. No survey claims every speaker in Manchester has all of them — the full Boston profile sets out where the region varies.
Manchester against New York City
Manchester is close enough to the New York City area that the two get confused. These are the questions where the survey expects a different answer on each side.
| Question | Manchester | New York City |
|---|---|---|
| When you say “car” by itself, do you pronounce an R sound at the end? | “car” ends in a vowel, with no R sound | the R at the end of “car” is pronounced |
How Connecticut 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 Connecticut’s answers, most common first.
| Question | Answers in Connecticut |
|---|---|
| Soda, Pop or Coke? The Map of How America Orders a Fizzy Drink | soda 95% · pop 2% · coke 2% |
| Traffic Circle, Roundabout or Rotary? | rotary 60% · traffic circle 23% · roundabout 10% |
| Water Fountain, Drinking Fountain or Bubbler? | water fountain 80% · drinking fountain 15% · bubbler 2% |
| Crawfish, Crawdad or Crayfish? | crayfish 46% · crawfish 39% · crawdad 5% |
| You Guys, Y'all or You All? | you guys 50% · you all 9% · y'all 3% |
| Kitty-Corner or Catty-Corner? | kitty-corner 63% · catty-corner 9% |
| Tennis Shoes or Sneakers? | sneakers 94% · tennis shoes 2% |
| Frosting or Icing? | frosting 52% · icing 7% |
| Scratch Paper or Scrap Paper? | scrap paper 55% · scratch paper 13% |
| Frontage Road, Service Road or Access Road? | service road 31% · access road 21% · frontage road 20% |
| Does “Route” Rhyme With “Out” or “Hoot”? | rhymes with "hoot" 67% · rhymes with "out" 3% |
| Caramel: Two Syllables or Three? | with 3 syllables ("carra-mel") 54% · with 2 syllables ("car-ml") 28% |
| Mischievous or Mischievious? | mischievous (3 syllables) 67% · mischievious (4 syllables) 13% |
| Rubber Band, Hair Tie or Elastic? | (hair) elastic 44% · rubber band 21% · hair tie 15% |
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.
Dialect areas near Manchester
Is your accent from Manchester?
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 Boston / Eastern New England English profile and every other profile in the survey, and shows you where people who answer the way you do actually live.