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
- Slippers
- 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.
Flip-flops
Expected in 43 of the survey's accent profiles.
- Modern RP
- Bristol
- West Country
- London
- Multicultural London
- Birmingham
- Scouse
- Mancunian
- South Yorkshire
- West Yorkshire
- Geordie
- Central Scottish
- Highland Scottish
- South Wales
- Northern Irish
- Cork
- East Irish
- Southern Appalachian
- New York City
- California
- Texas
- Boston
- Chicago
- Newfoundland
- Jamaican
- Bajan
- Canadian
- Indian
- Trinidadian
- Midland
- African American
- Philadelphia
- New Orleans
- Vancouver
- South Indian
- 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
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 two people there have answered.
See the full question bank, the accent profiles these answers feed, or how the scoring works.