Which accents have “fur” and “fair” rhyme — the nurse–square merger?

Scouse / Liverpool English, Mancunian English.

Which accents have “fur” and “fair” stay distinct?

Modern RP / Standard Southern British, Bristol / Southwest English, West Country English, London / Estuary English, Multicultural London English, 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, New York City English, California English, Texas English, Boston / Eastern New England English, Chicago / Inland North English, Newfoundland English, Jamaican English / Patwa continuum, Bajan English, Queensland Australian English, New Zealand English, Toronto Canadian English, Johannesburg South African English, Delhi Indian English.

Which accents have “fur” and “fair” are variably merged?

Scouse / Liverpool English, Mancunian English.

Pronunciation

Fur and Fair: The Merger That Marks Liverpool

Almost nowhere in the English-speaking world rhymes fur with fair. Liverpool and its surroundings do, which makes this the single most efficient test for a Scouse accent in the entire question bank. It is also found in a small area of northeast England.

The question, as everyone in the survey sees it

Do “fur” and “fair” rhyme in your natural accent?
This distinction is especially useful around Liverpool and northwest England.

Yes — they rhyme
No — they sound different
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.

Yes — they rhyme

In these profiles, “fur” and “fair” rhyme — the nurse–square merger.

No — they sound different

In these profiles, “fur” and “fair” stay distinct.

It varies

In these profiles, “fur” and “fair” are variably merged.

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.