US dialect atlas
Traffic Circle, Roundabout or Rotary?
Three words for the same junction, split cleanly by region. Rotary is New England's word and almost nobody else's — six states, all clustered — while traffic circle and roundabout divide the rest of the country nearly evenly.
- traffic circle leads 22 states
- roundabout leads 18 states
- rotary leads 6 states
- no listed answer leads 5 states
Take the quiz and see which accent yours matches →
State by state
Share of respondents in each state giving each answer. Percentages do not sum to 100: the survey offered answers this map does not name, and they are left out rather than folded into one of the three.
| State | traffic circle | roundabout | rotary |
|---|---|---|---|
| Alabama | 29.8% ◀ | 29% | 2.6% |
| Alaska | 28.3% | 37% ◀ | 6.5% |
| Arizona | 28.9% | 33.9% ◀ | 6.1% |
| Arkansas | 24.2% | 29.6% | 1.5% |
| California | 37% ◀ | 36.8% | 4.8% |
| Colorado | 34.6% | 51.5% ◀ | 2.7% |
| Connecticut | 23% | 9.5% | 59.6% ◀ |
| Delaware | 54.6% ◀ | 13.6% | 6.8% |
| Florida | 27% | 45.5% ◀ | 5.9% |
| Georgia | 37.3% ◀ | 28.2% | 4.8% |
| Hawaii | 10.9% | 41.8% ◀ | 16.4% |
| Idaho | 24.6% | 46.9% ◀ | 3.1% |
| Illinois | 34.8% ◀ | 26.3% | 6.5% |
| Indiana | 18% | 38.2% ◀ | 6.5% |
| Iowa | 27.7% | 36.9% ◀ | 3.6% |
| Kansas | 29.1% | 44% ◀ | 2.6% |
| Kentucky | 26.7% | 38.2% ◀ | 6.4% |
| Louisiana | 56.5% ◀ | 14.3% | 1.3% |
| Maine | 20% | 5% | 70% ◀ |
| Maryland | 49.9% ◀ | 18.9% | 4.7% |
| Massachusetts | 4.2% | 3.9% | 88.5% ◀ |
| Michigan | 42.9% ◀ | 26.3% | 5.5% |
| Minnesota | 26.4% | 33.2% ◀ | 5.4% |
| Mississippi | 19.1% | 33.9% ◀ | 1.7% |
| Missouri | 36.7% ◀ | 31.7% | 2.7% |
| Montana | 23.4% | 23.4% | 2.6% |
| Nebraska | 25.4% | 40.8% ◀ | 5.3% |
| Nevada | 24.6% | 58.5% ◀ | 3.1% |
| New Hampshire | 42.3% | 5.4% | 46% ◀ |
| New Jersey | 38.4% | 4.6% | 5.8% |
| New Mexico | 38.2% ◀ | 33.6% | 5.5% |
| New York | 56.6% ◀ | 13.3% | 14.5% |
| North Carolina | 59.6% ◀ | 22.1% | 4.2% |
| North Dakota | 22.8% | 26.3% | 4.4% |
| Ohio | 39.9% ◀ | 17.5% | 7% |
| Oklahoma | 53.3% ◀ | 22.1% | 2.2% |
| Oregon | 37.4% ◀ | 37.1% | 5% |
| Pennsylvania | 47.5% ◀ | 10.9% | 6.1% |
| Rhode Island | 15.5% | 4.1% | 72.2% ◀ |
| South Carolina | 57.4% ◀ | 16.9% | 3.7% |
| South Dakota | 14.6% | 21.4% | 2.9% |
| Tennessee | 26.9% | 34.4% ◀ | 3.1% |
| Texas | 40% ◀ | 21.3% | 2.7% |
| Utah | 14.9% | 61.5% ◀ | 3.1% |
| Vermont | 14.5% | 25% | 55.3% ◀ |
| Virginia | 56% ◀ | 18.3% | 5.3% |
| Washington | 35.5% | 41.7% ◀ | 3.2% |
| Washington, D.C. | 53.7% ◀ | 6.1% | 2.4% |
| West Virginia | 40.3% ◀ | 23.5% | 5% |
| Wisconsin | 19.8% | 36.1% ◀ | 6.1% |
| Wyoming | 29% ◀ | 27.5% | 4.4% |
Where this data comes from
The map above is drawn from the Harvard Dialect Survey, collected by Bert Vaux and Scott Golder in 2002–2003. It asked 122 questions and recorded, for each one, the share of respondents in every US state who gave each answer. It is a large self-selected sample rather than a census, and it is now two decades old — treat it as a well-supported picture of how people spoke then, not a measurement of today.
Data used under the CC BY-NC-SA 3.0 licence: attribution and share-alike, non-commercial. DialectGuessr’s own survey data is separate and is described on the about page.