Do the words dawn and horn rhyme for you?
- Red dots indicate the response Never/rarely
- Pink dots indicate the response Sometimes
- Grey dots indicate the response Always/usually
- In cases where more than one response was received from a location, pink dots may also indicate that different responses were returned.
Responses indicating that dawn and horn do not rhyme are most characteristic of Scotland and Ireland. They is also an obvious cluster in central Lancashire, and the hint of a distinction in the southwest of England, although the sparsity of responses from this region means that the pattern is not clear.
Non-identity of dawn and horn is indicative of rhoticity (the survival of historical /r/ in coda position), although it may also indicate that the vowels in these words are different in non-rhotic accents. Rhoticity is a well known feature of precisely the areas identified above - see Wells (1982: 341-2) for southwest England, Wells (1982: 367-8) for Lancashire, Wells (1982: 410) for Scotland, and Wells (1982: 432) for Ireland.