"Bath" and "Barth" - where in England does it change?

[FairyPenguin]

I know people in Bedford and Northampton who all say "Barth". I met someone from Leicester and she says "Bath". Leicester isn't that far away from Northampton.

Whereabouts in the country does the pronunciation change?

Born in south London, now living in south south Kent.
It's barth, innit.

I'm from Bristol, we call bath the place baath and a bath to bathe in a bath.

And it's arse, not ass.

Shelagh what you said was fine - if your dd starts copying the teacher's pronunciation I'd let it go. she'll probably switch back & forth a few times through school

I'm from W London - I can't remember exactly how I pronounced it when I was growing up (ie with or without a bit of an r in the middle) but after 30 years of living in Lancashire I now say kind of baath & graass & caastle.

There's a good map in this article: www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/1546787/Map-that-shows-Northerners-have-the-last-laff.html

I say barth and parth and larf, but also grass and glass... I'm inconsistent!

As an Irish person who lived in London for several years in the late nineties, it always puzzled me how London and South East accents didn't pronounce existing r in words and added them to words that haven't got them!

We spell it how we say it in Leicestershire. Only southern incomers say barth. They larf at us and we laff at them.

As an Irish person living in London I'm with CremeEggThief- completely baffled by the way the Emglish do not pronounce "r" in a word but add it to words where it doesn't exist! And by the pronounciation of "r" itself- whenever I say the letter here I need to remind myself "arr-like a pirate"!

English obviously! I'm aware that my colleagues are frequently confused by my Hiberno-English also!

Baath with no r in Bath

South London & I say 'barf'. DP is from Wiltshire and says 'bath'. DS is from Kent & is confused

barth in northamptonshire
bath in leicestershire

Thats the dividing line as far as I can tell

Apparently the line where pronunciation changes is called an isogloss. There was a radio programme a while back about the one where house becomes arse. It's a fascinating remnant of ancient dialects and population movements.

Born in Birkenhead, and it's barth for me - but parents were from Lancashire and Durham, so of mixed race from an accent pov.

From Wiltshire - baath, to rhyme with paath

Used to be long a in Birmingham. For some brummies their only giveaway item for this is laugh which they will use a long a for. So the isogloss is moving north in some respects.

Liverpudlian parents (well one from birkenhead)

So even though i have lived pretty much as far south as you can get for 40 years i say

Bath, grass, glass...

Lancashire here. It's bath with a short 'a'.
It does confuse me how people who say Barth and larff (laugh) wouldn't say hart or cart for hat and cat. Isn't it the same sound?
It gets confusing doing phonics in school. My there and hair sound like her, not ehhh. (Can't explain the sound) Which they like you to say.

I'm a Londoner (now married to a fellow Londoner) but had a years long relationship with someone from Notts. The "bath" and "path" thing I was prepared for, but the one that always got me was raspberry, pronounced with a "z" in it like "razbury".

I live just outside the city of Bath (born in Bristol but have worked in Bath) and I say it somewhere between barf and barth. Definitely never with a short "a" as hat.