A new YouGov study has discovered just how popular long and short pronunciations of the letter ‘A’ are across the UK.
It’s pretty common knowledge that certain accents in the UK remain staunchly divided on the proper pronunciations of the word ‘bath,’ among others.
This is referred to as the ‘trap-bath split,’ which commonly describes a variation in how people shorten or elongate the ‘a’ sound in particular words.
Accents that have the ‘trap-bath split’ say these two words differently due to how they pronounce the letter ‘a’.
YouGov recently decided to put this to the test to figure out quite how prolific the ‘trap-bath split’ is across the UK.
Following a survey of over 51,000 Britons from across the nation, researchers found that 52% of respondents don’t succumb to the ‘trap-bath split,’ so pronounce bath with a short ‘a’.
Meanwhile, 43% of Britons elongate the ‘a’, meaning they pronounce the ‘a’ in bath like they would when they say ‘arm’.
According to the study: “Mapping the results across Britain shows that the trap-bath split is much more common in the South of England than it is in the rest of the country.”
Looking at the findings on a more granular level, the most prolific ‘trap-bath split’ can be found among people in Essex, where 82% of people surveyed drew out their ‘a’.
Other prominent areas for this phenomenon included Suffolk, Berkshire, Surrey and West Sussex, while in Greater London, 61% of people have the ‘trap-bath split’ in their pronunciation.
Unsurprisingly, the shortened ‘a’ sound is more common in the north of England, where 91% of people in Northumberland use a short ‘a’ sound when they say ‘bath’.
There’s a similar trend in areas like Tyne and Wear, Durham, as well as most other parts of North England and Scotland.
Interestingly, when it comes to the West Country, researchers found there was a near-even split in the ways that people pronounce ‘bath’.
Wales also had its own north and south ‘trap-bath’ divide, with a shorter ‘a’ being much more common in North Wales than it was in South Wales.
As well as in southern England, the trap-bath split appears in some other English dialects, such as in Australia, New Zealand and South Africa.
Studies have found that there are around 40 different accents spoken across the UK that have formed throughout the centuries through various different influences.
While the recent YouGov research doesn’t define the proper pronunciation of the word bath, it could suggest that the jury has spoken, and the northerners may have the upper hand.
