Pronunciation

“Eschool” for “School”: The Vowel Some Accents Add

Spanish and Portuguese do not allow a word to begin with S followed by another consonant, so a vowel appears in front to make it pronounceable: “eschool”, “estudent”, “espeak”. It is one of the most recognisable features of Spanish-accented English, and it is entirely absent from every native variety.

The question, as everyone in the survey sees it

When you say “school”, is there a small vowel before the S — “eschool”?

Listen to the very start of the word, before the S.

Answer it yourself and see where you land on the map →

Which accents do what

Each accent profile in the survey has an expected answer to this question. Where a profile allows more than one answer, the region genuinely varies.

Yes — there is a short vowel first

In these profiles, a vowel is added before “school” — prothesis.

  • Spanish-accented English
  • Brazilian Portuguese-accented English

No — it starts straight on the S

In these profiles, “school” starts straight on the S.

Why this question is in the survey

Pronunciation questions carry more weight in the scoring than vocabulary questions do, because they are much harder to change deliberately. People move house and pick up new words; the vowel system learned in childhood tends to stay. Every answer is stored with a coarse map cell for the town you grew up in, and a region is coloured in once at least five people there have answered.

See the full question bank, the accent profiles these answers feed, or how the scoring works.