This map took me a long time to make, and is very detailed, but will always be incomplete and inaccurate due to the nature of language.

Why this map is so detailed

The diversity of English dialects in the United Kingdom is enormous.

It’s common for people from either side of a river, mountain, or even town to speak noticeably different ways, with particular features that immediately mark someone out as being from a specific area, to those who have an ear for it.

This is pretty normal in any large region that has been speaking a language continually for 1600 years. You will find the same thing in Germany, Norway, France, and countless other countries. Languages evolve over time, and physical distance between regions means that new features often spread slowly, leading to dialectal differences. Sometimes these differences are small, and only easily recognised by people from the relevant region. Other times there are very clear distinctions, with neighbouring dialects sounding almost like different languages to those unaccustomed to them.

Here I have tried to capture as much nuance as possible. I’ve spent the last few years pooling together every study, survey, map, and database I can find, and then subjecting my image to several rounds of peer feedback. The members of my Facebook group, “Ah yes, the British accent”, were also a huge help in trying to make these borders as accurate as possible. The end result is an image which is, to my knowledge, the most detailed map of British dialects ever made. But it is still very much unfinished, and it always will be.

Why this map is wrong, and always will be

Maps are great. They allow us to display complex geographic data in a way that is visually appealing and easily understood. But often reality is just not that simple.

There’s no precise definition of a “dialect”

The definition is easy enough: a dialect is a form of language that has distinct vocabulary, pronunciation (accent), and/or grammar. But how different does a way of speaking need to be to constitute a different dialect? If any noticeable difference between the way two areas speak is a dialect, then my image is actually using very broad categories and missing much detail. My own tiny hometown (on the border between “North Cumbrian” and “West Northumbrian”) has words and pronunciations that don’t fit it into either grouping, but I think showing my town as a distinct bubble here would be a dangerous precedent. During my research for this image I talked with many people who, like me, perceive their village, town, or even street as being distinct from the surrounding area, and they’re probably right. But that kind of precision would make my image far more complicated, far harder to create, and likely far less accurate in other ways. So I’ve drawn lines around larger areas where more obvious distinctions can be found, without any strong criteria for what constitutes a dialect. I’ve also tried to show the similarities between neighbouring