pronounced as /notice/Most dialects of modern English have two close back vowels: the near-close near-back rounded vowel pronounced as //ʊ// found in words like foot, and the close back rounded vowel pronounced as //uː// (realized as central pronounced as /[ʉː]/ in many dialects) found in words like goose. The vowel pronounced as //ʌ//, which historically was back, is often central pronounced as /[ɐ]/ as well. This article discusses the history of these vowels in various dialects of English, focusing in particular on phonemic splits and mergers involving these sounds.
The Old English vowels included a pair of short and long close back vowels, pronounced as //u// and pronounced as //uː//, both written (u) (the longer vowel is often distinguished as (ū) in modern editions of Old English texts). There was also a pair of back vowels of mid-height, pronounced as //o// and pronounced as //oː//, both of which were written (o) (the longer vowel is often (ō) in modern editions).
The same four vowels existed in the Middle English system. The short vowels were still written (u) and (o), but long pronounced as //uː// came to be spelt as (ou), and pronounced as //oː// as (oo). Generally, the Middle English vowels descended from the corresponding Old English ones, but there were certain alternative developments.
The Middle English open syllable lengthening caused short pronounced as //o// to be mostly lengthened to pronounced as //ɔː// (an opener back vowel) in open syllables, a development that can be seen in words like nose. During the Great Vowel Shift, Middle English long pronounced as //oː// was raised to pronounced as //uː// in words like moon; Middle English long pronounced as //uː// was diphthongised, becoming the present-day pronounced as //aʊ//, as in mouse; and Middle English pronounced as //ɔː// of nose was raised and later diphthongized, leading to present-day pronounced as //oʊ ~ əʊ//.
At some point, short pronounced as //u// developed into a lax, near-close near-back rounded vowel, pronounced as //ʊ//, as found in words like put. (Similarly, short pronounced as //i// has become pronounced as //ɪ//.) According to Roger Lass, the laxing occurred in the 17th century, but other linguists have suggested that it may have taken place much earlier.[1] The short pronounced as //o// remaining in words like lot has also been lowered and, in some accents, unrounded (see open back vowels).
In a handful of words, some of which are very common, the vowel pronounced as //uː// was shortened to pronounced as //ʊ//. In a few of those words, notably blood and flood, the shortening happened early enough that the resulting pronounced as //ʊ// underwent the "foot–strut split" (see next section) and are now pronounced with pronounced as //ʌ//. Other words that underwent shortening later consistently have pronounced as //ʊ//, such as good and foot. Still other words, such as roof, hoof, and root, are variable, with some speakers preferring pronounced as //uː// and others preferring pronounced as //ʊ// in such words, such as in Texan English. For some speakers in Northern England, words ending in -ook that have undergone shortening to pronounced as //ʊ// elsewhere, such as book and cook, still have the long pronounced as //uː// vowel.
The – split is the split of Middle English short pronounced as //u// into two distinct phonemes: pronounced as //ʊ// (as in foot) and pronounced as //ʌ// (as in strut). The split occurs in most varieties of English, the most notable exceptions being most of Northern England and the English Midlands and some varieties of Hiberno-English. In Welsh English, the split is also absent in parts of North Wales under influence from Merseyside and Cheshire accents[2] and in the south of Pembrokeshire, where English overtook Welsh long before that occurred in the rest of Wales.[3]
The origin of the split is the unrounding of pronounced as //ʊ// in Early Modern English, resulting in the phoneme pronounced as //ʌ//. Usually, unrounding to pronounced as //ʌ// did not occur if pronounced as //ʊ// was preceded by a labial consonant, such as pronounced as //p//, pronounced as //f//, pronounced as //b//, or was followed by pronounced as //l//, pronounced as //ʃ//, or pronounced as //tʃ//, leaving the modern pronounced as //ʊ//. Because of the inconsistency of the split, put and putt became a minimal pair that were distinguished as and . The first clear description of the split dates from 1644.[4]
In non-splitting accents, cut and put rhyme, putt and put are homophonous as, and pudding and budding rhyme. However, luck and look may not necessarily be homophones since many accents in the area concerned have look as, with the vowel of goose.
The absence of the split is a less common feature of educated Northern English speech than the absence of the trap–bath split. The absence of the foot–strut split is sometimes stigmatized, and speakers of non-splitting accents may try to introduce it into their speech, which sometimes results in hypercorrection such as by pronouncing butcher .[5]
In Birmingham and the Black Country, the realisation of the and vowels is somewhat like a neutralisation between Northern and Southern dialects. may be pronounced with a pronounced as //ɤ//, and may be pronounced with a pronounced as //o//. However, both may also be pronounced with a phonetically intermediate pronounced as //ɤ//[6] which is also present further north in Tyneside. There is also variation in some non-splitting dialects, as while most words use pronounced as //ʊ//, some words such as none, one, once, nothing, tongue and among(st) may instead be pronounced with pronounced as //ɒ// in dialects such as parts of Yorkshire.
The name – split refers to the lexical sets introduced by and identifies the vowel phonemes in the words. From a historical point of view, however, the name is inappropriate because the word foot did not have short pronounced as //ʊ// when the split happened, but it underwent shortening only later.
| Middle English input | pronounced as /oː/ | pronounced as /oː/ | pronounced as /oː/ | pronounced as /u/ | pronounced as /u/ | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Great Vowel Shift | pronounced as /uː/ | pronounced as /uː/ | pronounced as /uː/ | pronounced as /u/ | pronounced as /u/ | |
| Early shortening | pronounced as /uː/ | pronounced as /uː/ | pronounced as /u/ | pronounced as /u/ | pronounced as /u/ | |
| Quality adjustment | pronounced as /uː/ | pronounced as /uː/ | pronounced as /ʊ/ | pronounced as /ʊ/ | pronounced as /ʊ/ | |
| Foot-strut split | pronounced as /uː/ | pronounced as /uː/ | pronounced as /ɤ/ | pronounced as /ɤ/ | pronounced as /ʊ/ | |
| Later shortening | pronounced as /uː/ | pronounced as /ʊ/ | pronounced as /ɤ/ | pronounced as /ɤ/ | pronounced as /ʊ/ | |
| Quality adjustment | pronounced as /uː/ | pronounced as /ʊ/ | pronounced as /ʌ/ | pronounced as /ʌ/ | pronounced as /ʊ/ | |
| RP output | pronounced as /uː/ | pronounced as /ʊ/ | pronounced as /ʌ/ | pronounced as /ʌ/ | pronounced as /ʊ/ |
The – merger or the –schwa merger is a merger of pronounced as //ʌ// with pronounced as //ə// that occurs in Welsh English, some higher-prestige Northern England English and some General American. The merger causes minimal pairs such as unorthodoxy and an orthodoxy to be merged. The phonetic quality of the merged vowel depends on the accent. For instance, merging General American accents have pronounced as /link/ as the stressed variant and pronounced as /link/ as the word-final variant. Elsewhere, the vowel surfaces as pronounced as /link/ or even pronounced as /link/ (GA features the weak vowel merger). That can cause words such as hubbub (in RP) to have two different vowels (pronounced as /[ˈhʌbəb]/) even though both syllables contain the same phoneme in both merging and non-merging accents. On the other hand, in Birmingham, Swansea and Miami, at least the non-final variant of the merged vowel is consistently realized as mid-central pronounced as /link/, with no noticeable difference between the stressed and the unstressed allophones.[7]
The merged vowel is typically written with (IPA|ə) regardless of its phonetic realization. That largely matches an older canonical phonetic range of the IPA symbol (IPA|ə), which used to be described as covering a vast central area from near-close pronounced as /link/ to near-open pronounced as /link/.
Because in unmerged accents, pronounced as //ə// appears only in unstressed syllables, the merger occurs only in unstressed syllables. Word-finally, there is no contrast between the vowels in any accent of English (in Middle English, pronounced as //u//, the vowel from which pronounced as //ʌ// was split, could not occur in that position), and the vowel that occurs in that position approaches pronounced as /link/ (the main allophone of in many accents). However, there is some dialectal variation, with varieties such as broad Cockney using variants that are strikingly more open than in other dialects. The vowel is usually identified as belonging to the pronounced as //ə// phoneme even in accents without the pronounced as //ʌ–ə// merger, but native speakers may perceive the phonemic makeup of words such as comma to be pronounced as //ˈkɒmʌ//, rather than pronounced as //ˈkɒmə//. The open variety of pronounced as //ə// occurs even in some Northern English dialects (such as Geordie), none of which has undergone the foot–strut split, but in Geordie, it can be generalised to other positions and so not only comma but also commas may be pronounced with pronounced as /link/ in the second syllable, which is rare in other accents. In contemporary Standard Southern British English, the final pronounced as //ə// is often mid pronounced as /link/, rather than open pronounced as /link/.[8]
All speakers of General American neutralise pronounced as //ʌ//, pronounced as //ə// and pronounced as //ɜː// (the vowel) before pronounced as //r//, which results in an r-colored vowel pronounced as /[ɚ]/. GA lacks a truly contrastive pronounced as //ɜː// phoneme (furry, hurry, letters and transfer (n.), which are distinguished in RP as pronounced as //ɜː//, pronounced as //ʌ//, pronounced as //ə// and pronounced as //ɜː//, all have the same r-colored pronounced as /[ɚ]/ in GA), and the symbol is used only to facilitate comparisons with other accents. See hurry–furry merger for more information.
Some other minimal pairs apart from unorthodoxy–an orthodoxy include unequal vs. an equal and a large untidy room vs. a large and tidy room . However, there are few minimal pairs like that, and their use as such has been criticised by scholars such as Geoff Lindsey because the members of such minimal pairs are structurally different. Even so, pairs of words belonging to the same lexical category exist as well such as append vs up-end and aneath vs uneath . There also are words for which RP always used pronounced as //ʌ// in the unstressed syllable, such as pick-up, goosebumps or sawbuck, that have merging accents use the same pronounced as //ə// as the second vowel of balance. In RP, there is a consistent difference in vowel height; the unstressed vowel in the first three words is a near-open pronounced as /link/ (traditionally written with (IPA|ʌ)) but in balance, it is a mid pronounced as /link/.[7] [8] [9]
Development of /juː/See main article: articles. Earlier Middle English distinguished the close front rounded vowel pronounced as //yː// (occurring in loanwords from Anglo-Norman like duke) and the diphthongs pronounced as //iw// (occurring in words like new), pronounced as //ew// (occurring in words like few)[10] and pronounced as //ɛw// (occurring in words like dew).
By Late Middle English, pronounced as //y//, pronounced as //ew//, and pronounced as //iw// all merged as pronounced as //ɪw//. In Early Modern English, pronounced as //ɛw// merged into pronounced as //ɪw// as well.
pronounced as //ɪw// has remained as such in some Welsh, some northern English and a few American accents. Thus, those varieties of Welsh English keep threw pronounced as //θrɪw// distinct from through pronounced as //θruː//. In most accents, however, the falling diphthong pronounced as //ɪw// turned into a rising diphthong, which became the sequence pronounced as //juː//. The change had taken place in London by the late 1800s. Depending on the preceding consonant and on the dialect, it either remained as pronounced as //juː// or developed into pronounced as //uː// by the processes of yod-dropping or yod-coalescence. That has caused the standard pronunciations of duke pronounced as //d(j)uːk// (or pronounced as //dʒuːk//), new pronounced as //n(j)uː//, few pronounced as //fjuː// and rude pronounced as //ruːd//.
The – merger is a phenomenon in Scottish English, Northern Irish English, Malaysian English, and Singapore English,[11] in which the modern English phonemes pronounced as //ʊ// and pronounced as //uː// have merged into a single phoneme. As a result, word pairs like look and Luke, pull and pool, full and fool are homophones, and pairs like good and food and foot and boot rhyme.
The history of the merger dates back to two Middle English phonemes: the long vowel pronounced as //oː// (which shoot traces back to) and the short vowel pronounced as //u// (which put traces back to). As a result of the Great Vowel Shift, pronounced as //oː// raised to pronounced as //uː//, which continues to be the pronunciation of shoot today. Meanwhile, the Middle English pronounced as //u// later adjusted to pronounced as //ʊ//, as put is pronounced today. However, the pronounced as //uː// of shoot next underwent a phonemic split in which some words retained pronounced as //uː// (like mood) while the vowel of other words shortened to pronounced as //ʊ// (like good). Therefore, the two processes (pronounced as //oː//→pronounced as //uː//→pronounced as //ʊ// and pronounced as //u//→pronounced as //ʊ//) resulted in a merger of the vowels in certain words, like good and put, to pronounced as //ʊ//, which is now typical of how all English dialects pronounce those two words. (See the table in the section "– split" above for more information about these early shifts.) The final step, however, was for certain English dialects under the influence of foreign languages (the Scots language influencing Scottish English, for example) to merge the newly united pronounced as //ʊ// vowel with the pronounced as //uː// vowel (of mood and shoot): the – merger. Again, this is not an internally motivated phonemic merger but the appliance of different languages' vowel systems to English lexical incidence.[12] The quality of this final merged vowel is usually pronounced as /[ʉ~y~ʏ]/ in Scotland and Northern Ireland but pronounced as /[u]/ in Singapore.
The full–fool merger is a conditioned merger of the same two vowels specifically before pronounced as //l//, which causes pairs like pull/pool and full/fool to be homophones; it appears in many other dialects of English and is particularly gaining attention in several American English varieties.
| bull | boule | pronounced as /buːl/ | ||
| cookie | kooky | pronounced as /kuːki/ | Also homophones in some dialects that lack the – merger but pronounce cookie as rather than . | |
| could | cooed | pronounced as /kuːd/ | ||
| full | fool | pronounced as /fuːl/ | ||
| hood | who'd | pronounced as /huːd/ | ||
| look | Luke | pronounced as /luːk/ | Also homophones in some dialects that lack the – merger but pronounce look as rather than . | |
| looker | lucre | pronounced as /ˈluːkər/ | Also homophones in some dialects that lack the – merger but pronounce looker as rather than . | |
| pull | pool | pronounced as /puːl/ | ||
| should | shooed | pronounced as /ʃuːd/ | ||
| soot | suit | pronounced as /suːt/ | With yod-dropping. | |
| wood | wooed | pronounced as /wuːd/ | ||
| would | wooed | pronounced as /wuːd/ |
In Geordie, the vowel undergoes an allophonic split, with the monophthong pronounced as /[{{IPAplink|uː}} ~ {{IPAplink|ʉː}}]/ being used in morphologically-closed syllables (as in bruise pronounced as /[bɹuːz ~ bɹʉːz]/) and the diphthong pronounced as /[ɵʊ]/ being used in morphologically-open syllables word-finally (as in brew pronounced as /[bɹɵʊ]/) but also word-internally at the end of a morpheme (as in brews pronounced as /[bɹɵʊz]/).
Most dialects of English turn pronounced as //uː// into a diphthong, and the monophthongal pronounced as /[{{IPAplink|uː}} ~ {{IPAplink|ʉː}} ~ {{IPAplink|ɨː}}]/ is in free variation with the diphthongal pronounced as /[ʊu ~ ʊ̈ʉ ~ əʉ ~ ɪ̈ɨ]/, particularly word-internally. Word-finally, diphthongs are more usual. Compare the identical development of the close front vowel.
The change of pronounced as //uː.ɪ// to pronounced as /[ʊɪ]/ is a process that occurs in many varieties of British English in which bisyllabic pronounced as //uː.ɪ// has become the diphthong pronounced as /[ʊɪ]/ in certain words. As a result, "ruin" is pronounced as monosyllabic pronounced as /[ˈɹʊɪn]/ and "fluid" is pronounced pronounced as /[ˈflʊɪd]/.