Texarkana, Arkansas
The Texarkana Accent
Texarkana sits inside the Texas dialect area, which covers Texas, United States. No other dialect area in the survey comes close to it.
Take the quiz and see how close your accent is →
What people in Texarkana sound like
- The pin–pen merger — “pin” and “pen” are identical.
- Southern drawl: “bed” stretched towards “bay-ed”.
- Monophthongal “price” in East Texas — “nine” as “nahn”.
- “Y’all” universally, and “fixin’ to” for “about to”.
These are the markers of the Texas accent as a whole. No survey claims every speaker in Texarkana has all of them — the full Texas profile sets out where the region varies.
How Arkansas 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 Arkansas’s answers, most common first.
| Question | Answers in Arkansas |
|---|---|
| Soda, Pop or Coke? The Map of How America Orders a Fizzy Drink | coke 55% · soda 26% · pop 6% |
| Water Fountain, Drinking Fountain or Bubbler? | water fountain 90% · drinking fountain 9% · bubbler 0% |
| Lightning Bug or Firefly? | lightning bug 53% · firefly 5% |
| Crawfish, Crawdad or Crayfish? | crawdad 64% · crawfish 26% · crayfish 2% |
| Roly Poly or Potato Bug? | roly poly 80% · potato bug 1% |
| You Guys, Y'all or You All? | y'all 69% · you all 12% · you guys 10% |
| Kitty-Corner or Catty-Corner? | catty-corner 61% · kitty-corner 23% |
| Garage Sale or Yard Sale? | garage sale 48% · yard sale 44% |
| Tennis Shoes or Sneakers? | tennis shoes 75% · sneakers 16% |
| Trash Can or Garbage Can? | trash can 56% · garbage can 14% |
| Frosting or Icing? | icing 38% · frosting 17% |
| Scratch Paper or Scrap Paper? | scratch paper 42% · scrap paper 17% |
| Frontage Road, Service Road or Access Road? | access road 36% · service road 34% · frontage road 18% |
| Does “Route” Rhyme With “Out” or “Hoot”? | rhymes with "out" 39% · rhymes with "hoot" 12% |
| Caramel: Two Syllables or Three? | with 2 syllables ("car-ml") 48% · with 3 syllables ("carra-mel") 27% |
| Mischievous or Mischievious? | mischievous (3 syllables) 39% · mischievious (4 syllables) 37% |
| Rubber Band, Hair Tie or Elastic? | rubber band 45% · hair tie 14% · (hair) elastic 6% |
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.
Is your accent from Texarkana?
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 Texas English profile and every other profile in the survey, and shows you where people who answer the way you do actually live.