Which accents have rhotic — the R at the end of “car” is pronounced?

Bristol / Southwest English, West Country English, Central Scottish English, Highland Scottish English, Northern Irish English, Cork English, East Irish English, Southern Appalachian English, New York City English, California English, Texas English, Chicago / Inland North English, Newfoundland English, Bajan English, Toronto Canadian English, Delhi Indian English.

Which accents have non-rhotic — “car” ends in a vowel, with no R sound?

Modern RP / Standard Southern British, London / Estuary English, Multicultural London English, Birmingham / West Midlands English, Scouse / Liverpool English, Mancunian English, South Yorkshire English, West Yorkshire English, Geordie / Tyneside English, South Wales English, Boston / Eastern New England English, Jamaican English / Patwa continuum, Queensland Australian English, New Zealand English, Johannesburg South African English.

Pronunciation

Rhotic vs Non-Rhotic: Do You Pronounce the R in “Car”?

This single feature divides the English-speaking world roughly in half. Scotland, Ireland, most of the United States, Canada, India and the West Country pronounce the R at the end of car. Most of England, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa, Boston and much of the Caribbean do not.

The question, as everyone in the survey sees it

When you say “car” by itself, do you pronounce an R sound at the end?
Say “That is my car.” Think about the sound, not whether the word contains R.

Yes — there is a clear R sound
No — it ends in a vowel sound
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 — there is a clear R sound

In these profiles, rhotic — the R at the end of “car” is pronounced.

No — it ends in a vowel sound

In these profiles, non-rhotic — “car” ends in a vowel, with no R sound.

It varies

In these profiles, R at the end of a word is sometimes pronounced and sometimes dropped.

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.