Pronunciation
The Trap–Bath Split: Does “Bath” Rhyme With “Cat” or “Father”?
In southern England, Australia, New Zealand and South Africa, words like bath, grass, dance and laugh use the broad vowel of father. In northern England, Ireland, Scotland and almost all of North America, they use the short vowel of cat. The split happened in southern England in the eighteenth century and never reached the north.
The question, as everyone in the survey sees it
In your natural accent, does “bath” use the vowel in “cat” or “father”?
Say “bath” aloud normally. Choose the closer vowel, not the spelling.
- Like “cat” — a short vowel
- Like “father” — a broad/long vowel
- It varies by word or situation
- I cannot tell
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.
Like “cat” — a short vowel
In these profiles, “bath” takes the short vowel of “cat” — no trap–bath split.
Like “father” — a broad/long vowel
In these profiles, “bath” takes the broad vowel of “father” — the trap–bath split.
It varies by word or situation
In these profiles, the “bath” vowel varies from word to word.
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.