Which accents have “pin” and “pen” sound the same — the pin–pen merger?

Southern Appalachian English, Texas English, African American English, New Orleans English.

Which accents have “pin” and “pen” stay distinct?

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, 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, New York City English, California 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, Nigerian English, Kenyan English, Pakistani English, Philippine English, Singapore English, Hong Kong English, Melbourne / Southern Australian English, Ghanaian English, Trinidadian English, Malaysian English, Midland American English, Hawaiian English, Philadelphia English, Vancouver / Western Canadian English, Perth / Western Australian English, Chennai / South Indian English, Liberian English, Sri Lankan English, Spanish-accented English, French-accented English, German-accented English, Italian-accented English, Russian-accented English, Brazilian Portuguese-accented English, Japanese-accented English, Mandarin-accented English.

Pronunciation

Pin or Pen? The Southern US Vowel Merger

Across the American South, African American English and much of Texas, the vowels of “pin” and “pen” fall together before an N. The rest of the English-speaking world keeps them apart, which is why the merger is one of the fastest ways to place a North American speaker south of the Midland line.

The question, as everyone in the survey sees it

Do “pin” and “pen” sound the same in your natural accent?
Say them one after the other, not in a sentence.

Yes — they sound the same
No — they have different vowels
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 sound the same

In these profiles, “pin” and “pen” sound the same — the pin–pen merger.

No — they have different vowels

In these profiles, “pin” and “pen” stay distinct.

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.