Vocabulary
Sneakers, Trainers or Runners? What You Call Athletic Shoes
North America says sneakers, Britain says trainers, and Ireland says runners — but the American picture is more divided than it looks, with tennis shoes across the South and gym shoes in Chicago. Australia adds joggers to the mix.
The question, as everyone in the survey sees it
What do you call shoes worn for sport or exercise?
Think of the general everyday word, not a particular brand.
- Sneakers
- Trainers
- Tennis shoes
- Runners
- Gym shoes
- Joggers
- Something else
Who says 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.
Trainers
Expected in 17 of the survey's accent profiles.
Why this question is in the survey
Vocabulary questions like this one are the fastest way to place a speaker, because the answer is a single conscious word choice rather than a sound people cannot hear in themselves. They also travel: a word that splits England into five regions often splits North America into three quite different ones. 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.