Do you pronounce the words fur and fair the same?
- Red dots indicate the response Always/usually
- Pink dots indicate the response Sometimes
- Grey dots indicate the response Never/rarely
- In cases where more than one response was received from a location, pink dots may also indicate that different responses were returned.
This map shows that responses indicating that fur and fair are pronounced the same are typical of Merseyside, southern Lancashire, and Hull, with a few scattered responses of the same kind elsewhere (including Belfast, although this is obscured by other responses on the map). This 'NURSE-SQUARE Merger' is known to be characteristic of precisely these varieties - see Wells (1982: 372) for Merseyside and Lancashire, Williams and Kerswill (1999: 146) for Hull, and Wells (1982: 444) and Harris (1985: 48) for Belfast.