Short vowels

LOT, CLOTH

Quite considerable variability is to be heard with the LOT vowel, both between and within accent-types. [ɔ] is widely heard in Orkney, Shetland, Scotland, and Wales, and is a feature of Fashionable Dublin speech in Ireland, contrasting with a Colloquial Dublin (and Irish Rural Western) [a], a feature also of British Creole; [ɔ] might be found too in Creole, and in the West Midlands. [ɒ] , the sound in RP, is also usual regionally throughout England outside the South-west and East Anglia, where [ɑ] is also reported, as it is across southern Ireland as a ‘supraregional’ form. Besides being found in Ireland, [a] can be heard in Creole too. The same distribution of variants exists essentially for CLOTH as for LOT: [ɔ:] , formerly widely heard before fricatives in Southern England, is still to be heard in the speech of older working-class East Anglians, and is a feature of the most conservative type of traditional RP. Creole exhibits variability in terms of length of [a], with CLOTH exhibiting length, and [ɑ] also occurs in CLOTH in this accent.