Which accents have the vowel in “go” glides?

Modern RP / Standard Southern British, Bristol / Southwest English, West Country English, London / Estuary English, Multicultural London English, Birmingham / West Midlands English, Scouse / Liverpool English, Mancunian English, East Irish English, Southern Appalachian English, New York City English, California English, Texas English, Boston / Eastern New England English, Chicago / Inland North English, Newfoundland English, Queensland Australian English, New Zealand English, Toronto Canadian English.

Which accents have the vowel in “go” stays steady — a monophthongal goat vowel?

Birmingham / West Midlands English, Mancunian English, South Yorkshire English, West Yorkshire English, Geordie / Tyneside English, Central Scottish English, Highland Scottish English, South Wales English, Northern Irish English, Cork English, East Irish English, Southern Appalachian English, Newfoundland English, Jamaican English / Patwa continuum, Bajan English, Johannesburg South African English, Delhi Indian English.

Pronunciation

The Vowel in “Go”: Gliding or Steady?

Like the vowel in day, the vowel in go either glides or stays put. Steady versions mark Scottish, Irish, Welsh, Caribbean, Indian, South African and much of northern English speech; gliding versions mark southern England, North America and Australia.

The question, as everyone in the survey sees it

When you say “go” slowly, does the vowel glide or stay fairly steady?
Listen only to the vowel in “go”, not the G sound.

It glides or moves
It stays fairly steady
It varies
I cannot tell

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.

It glides or moves

In these profiles, the vowel in “go” glides.

It stays fairly steady

In these profiles, the vowel in “go” stays steady — a monophthongal goat vowel.

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.