Vocabulary
Thongs, Jandals or Flip-Flops? The Rubber Sandal Question
Australia says thongs, which reliably alarms visitors. New Zealand says jandals, a 1950s trade name compressed from “Japanese sandal”. South Africa says slops, parts of Queensland say pluggers, and Britain, Ireland and North America say flip-flops. It is one of the cleanest single-word splits between Australia and New Zealand.
The question, as everyone in the survey sees it
What do you call rubber sandals held on by a strap between the toes?
The kind worn to the beach or the pool.
- Flip-flops
- Thongs
- Jandals
- Pluggers
- Slops
- 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.
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.