pronounced as /notice/There are a variety of pronunciations in Modern English and in historical forms of the language for words spelled with the letter . Most of these go back to the low vowel (the "short A") of earlier Middle English, which later developed both long and short forms. The sound of the long vowel was altered in the Great Vowel Shift, but later a new long A (or "broad A") developed which was not subject to the shift. These processes have produced the main four pronunciations of in present-day English: those found in the words trap, face, father and square (with the phonetic output depending on whether the dialect is rhotic or not, and, in rhotic dialects, whether or not the Mary–merry merger occurs). Separate developments have produced additional pronunciations in words like wash, talk and comma.
Late Middle English had two phonemes pronounced as //a// and pronounced as //aː//, differing only in length. The pronounced as //a// ("short A") was found in words such as cat pronounced as /[kat]/ and trap pronounced as /[trap]/, and also before pronounced as //r// in words such as start pronounced as /[start]/. The pronounced as //aː// ("long A") was found in words such as face pronounced as /[faːs]/, and before pronounced as //r// in words such as scare pronounced as /[skaːr]/. This long A was generally a result of Middle English open syllable lengthening. For a summary of the various developments in Old and Middle English that led to these vowels, see English historical vowel correspondences.
As a result of the Great Vowel Shift, the long pronounced as /[aː]/ of face was raised, initially to pronounced as /[æː]/ and later to pronounced as /[ɛː]/. After 1700 it was raised even further, and then diphthongized, leading to the modern standard pronunciation pronounced as //eɪ//. Additionally, the short pronounced as /[a]/ of trap was fronted to pronounced as /[æ]/; this change became accepted in standard speech during the 17th century. Today there is much regional variation in the realization of this vowel; in RP there has been a recent trend for it to be lowered again to a fully open pronounced as /[a]/.
These trends, allowed to operate unrestrictedly, would have left standard English without any vowels in the pronounced as /[a]/ or pronounced as /[aː]/ area by the late 17th century. However, this putative gap was filled by the following special developments:
The pronounced as /[aː]/ of the late 17th century has generally backed to pronounced as /[ɑː]/ in several varieties of contemporary English, for example in Received Pronunciation.
The following table shows some developments of Middle English pronounced as //a// in Received Pronunciation. The word gate, which derived from Middle English pronounced as //aː//, has also been included for comparison.
| gate | cast | cart | cat | glad | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Middle English | pronounced as /[ɡaːt]/ | pronounced as /[kast]/ | pronounced as /[kart]/ | pronounced as /[kat]/ | pronounced as /[ɡlad]/ | |
| Great Vowel Shift | valign=top | Phase 1 | valign=top | pronounced as /[ɡæːt]/ | ||
| valign=top | Phase 2 | valign=top | pronounced as /[ɡɛːt]/ | |||
| valign=top | Phase 3 | valign=top | pronounced as /[ɡeːt]/ | |||
| valign=top | Phase 4 | pronounced as /[ɡeɪt]/ | ||||
| Lengthening before pronounced as //r// | pronounced as /[kaːrt]/ | |||||
| Lengthening before pronounced as //f,θ,s// | pronounced as /[kaːst]/ | |||||
| Fronting of pronounced as //a// | pronounced as /[kæt]/ | pronounced as /[ɡlæd]/ | ||||
| Backing of pronounced as //aː// | pronounced as /[kɑːst]/ | pronounced as /[kɑːrt]/ | ||||
| pronounced as //r//-dropping | pronounced as /[kɑːt]/ | |||||
| bad–lad split[1] | pronounced as /[ɡlæːd]/ | |||||
| Lowering of pronounced as //æ// | valign=top | pronounced as /[kat]/ | valign=top | pronounced as /[ɡla(ː)d]/ | ||
The table below shows the results of these developments in some contemporary varieties of English:
| RP | NE | SCO | IRL[2] | GA | AusE | NZE | ||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Lengthening before pronounced as //r// | ✔ | ✔ | variable | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ||
| Lengthening before pronounced as //f,θ,s// | ✔ | variable | variable | ✔ | ||||
| Fronting of pronounced as //a// | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | |||
| Backing of pronounced as //aː// | ✔ | ✔ | partly | partly | ||||
| R-dropping | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | ||||
| bad–lad split | ✔ | ✔ | ✔ | |||||
| pronounced as //æ// tensing | ✔[3] | |||||||
| Lowering of pronounced as //æ// | ✔ | variable | ✔ | |||||
| Output for | gate | pronounced as /[ɡɛɪt]/ | pronounced as /[ɡeːt]/ | pronounced as /[ɡet]/ | pronounced as /[ɡeːθ̠]/ | pronounced as /[ɡeɪt]/ | pronounced as /[ɡæɪt]/ | pronounced as /[ɡæɪt]/ |
| cast | pronounced as /[kɑːst]/ | pronounced as /[kast]/ | pronounced as /[kast]/ | pronounced as /[kæs(ː)t~ka(ː)st]/ | pronounced as /[kæst]/ | pronounced as /[kast]~[kɐːst]/ | pronounced as /[kɐːst]/ | |
| cart | pronounced as /[kɑːt]/ | pronounced as /[kaːt]/ | pronounced as /[kaɹt]/ | pronounced as /[kæ(ː)ɻθ̠~kä(ː)ɻθ̠]/ | pronounced as /[kɑːɹt]/ | pronounced as /[kɐːt]/ | pronounced as /[kɐːt]/ | |
| cat | pronounced as /[kat]/ | pronounced as /[kat]/ | pronounced as /[kat]/ | pronounced as /[kæθ̠~kaθ̠]/ | pronounced as /[kæt]/ | pronounced as /[kat]/ | pronounced as /[kɛt]/ | |
| glad | pronounced as /[ɡla(ː)d]/ | pronounced as /[ɡlad]/ | pronounced as /[ɡlad]/ | pronounced as /[ɡlæd~ɡlad]/ | pronounced as /[ɡlæd]/ | pronounced as /[ɡlaːd]/ | pronounced as /[ɡlɛd]/ | |
| gas | pronounced as /[ɡas]/ | pronounced as /[ɡas]/ | pronounced as /[ɡas]/ | pronounced as /[ɡæs~ɡas]/ | pronounced as /[ɡæs]/ | pronounced as /[ɡas]/ | pronounced as /[ɡɛs]/ | |
Old English (OE) had an open back vowel pronounced as //ɑ//, written (a), as well as a front vowel pronounced as //æ//, written (æ). These had corresponding long vowels pronounced as //ɑː// and pronounced as //æː// but were not normally distinguished from the short vowels in spelling although modern editions of Old English texts often mark them as (ā) and (ǣ). In the low vowel area, there was also a pair of short and long diphthongs, pronounced as //æɑ// and pronounced as //æːɑ//, written (ea) (the long one also (ēa) in modern editions).
In Middle English (ME), the short pronounced as //ɑ/, /æ/ and /æɑ// became merged into a single vowel pronounced as //a//, written (a). In some cases (before certain pairs of consonants) the corresponding long vowels also developed into this short pronounced as //a//. Mostly, however, OE pronounced as //æː// and pronounced as //æːɑ// were raised to become Middle English pronounced as //ɛː// (the sound that often gives in modern spelling), and OE pronounced as //ɑː// was raised and rounded to become ME pronounced as //ɔː// (often (o), (oa) in modern spelling). For more details, see English historical vowel correspondences.
During the Middle English period, like other short vowels, the pronounced as //a// was lengthened in open syllables. Later, with the gradual loss of unstressed endings, many such syllables ceased to be open, but the vowel remained long.
For example, the word name originally had two syllables, the first being open, so the pronounced as //a// was lengthened; later, the final vowel was dropped, leaving a closed syllable with a long vowel. As a result, there were now two phonemes pronounced as //a// and pronounced as //aː//, both written (a), the long one being often indicated by a silent (e) after the following consonant (or, in some cases, by a pronounced vowel after the following consonant, as in naked and bacon).
As a result of the Great Vowel Shift, the long pronounced as //aː// that resulted from Middle English open syllable lengthening was raised, initially to pronounced as /[æː]/ and later to pronounced as /[ɛː]/. pronounced as /[æː]/ "seems to have been the normal pronunciation in careful speech before 1650, and pronounced as /[ɛː]/ after 1650".[4] After 1700 it was raised even further, and then diphthongized, leading to the modern standard pronunciation pronounced as //eɪ//, found in words like name, face, bacon. However, some accents, in the north of England and in Scotland, for example, retain a monophthongal pronunciation of this vowel, while other accents have a variety of different diphthongs.
Before (historic) /r/, in words like square, the vowel has become pronounced as /[ɛə]/ (often practically pronounced as /[ɛː]/) in modern RP, and pronounced as /[ɛ]/ in General American.
Independently of the development of the long vowel, the short pronounced as //a// came to be fronted and raised to pronounced as /link/. This change was mostly confined to "vulgar or popular" speech in the 16th century, but it gradually replaced the more conservative pronounced as /[a]/ in the 17th century, and was "generally accepted by careful speakers by about 1670".[5]
This vowel (that of trap, cat, man, bad, etc.) is now normally denoted as pronounced as //æ//. In present-day RP, however, it has lowered to a fully front pronounced as /link/.[6] Such a quality is also found in the accents of northern England, Wales, Scotland, Ireland, and the Caribbean. Raised pronunciations are also found in Southern Hemisphere English, and are also associated with Cockney. For the possibility of phonemic length differentiation, see bad–lad split, below.
In Modern English, a new phoneme pronounced as //ɑː// developed that did not exist in Middle English. The phoneme pronounced as //ɑː// comes from three sources: the word father lengthening from pronounced as //a// to pronounced as //aː// for an unknown reason (thus splitting from gather); the compensatory lengthening of the short pronounced as //a// in words like calm, palm, psalm when pronounced as //l// was lost in this environment; and the lengthening of pronounced as //a// before pronounced as //r// in words like car, card, hard, part, etc. In most dialects that developed the broad A class, words containing it joined this new phoneme pronounced as //ɑː// as well. The new phoneme also became common in onomatopoeic words like baa, ah, ha ha, as well as in foreign borrowed words like spa, taco, llama, drama, piranha, Bahamas, pasta, Bach, many of which vary between pronounced as //ɑː// and pronounced as //æ// among different dialects of English.
Some of these developments are discussed in detail in the following sections.
See also: English-language vowel changes before historic /r/. In late Middle English, pairs such as cat, cart, were pronounced pronounced as /[kat]/, pronounced as /[kart]/ respectively, distinguished only by the presence or absence of pronounced as /[r]/. However, by the late 17th century they were also distinguished by the quality and length of the vowel. In cat, the vowel had been fronted to pronounced as //kæt//, while in cart it had been lengthened to pronounced as //kaːrt//. This latter change seems to have first occurred in the dialects of southern England in the early 15th century, but did not affect Standard English until the later 17th century.[7] It has affected most varieties of contemporary English, which have distinct vowels in pairs such as cat, cart. In non-rhotic accents, the pronounced as //r// of cart has been lost; in modern RP the word is pronounced pronounced as //kɑːt//, distinguished from cat only by the quality and length of the vowel.
This lengthening occurred when pronounced as //a// was followed by non-pre-vocalic pronounced as //r//; it did not generally apply before intervocalic pronounced as //r// (when the pronounced as //r// was followed by another vowel). Hence the first vowel of carrot and marry has normally remained the same as that of cat (but see the mary–marry–merry merger). However, inflected forms and derivatives of words ending in (historic) pronounced as //r// generally inherit the lengthened vowel, so words like barring and starry have pronounced as //ɑː// as do bar and star.
Unlike lengthening before nonprevocalic pronounced as //r//, which applied universally in Standard English, lengthening, or broadening, before fricatives was inconsistent and sporadic. This seems to have first occurred in the dialects of Southern England between about 1500 and 1650. It penetrated into Standard English from these dialects around the mid-17th century.
The primary environment which favored broadening was before preconsonantal or morpheme-final voiceless fricatives pronounced as //f, θ, s//. The voiceless fricative pronounced as //ʃ// has never promoted broadening in Standard English in words like ash and crash. There is, however, evidence that such broadening did occur in dialects.[8]
Once broadening affected a particular word, it tended to spread by analogy to its inflectional derivatives. For example, from pass (pronounced as /[paːs]/) there was also passing pronounced as /[ˈpaːsɪŋ]/. This introduced broadening into the environment _sV, from which it was otherwise excluded (compare passage which is not an inflectional form, and was never affected by broadening).
In a phenomenon going back to Middle English, pronounced as /[f, θ]/ alternate with their voiced equivalents pronounced as /[v, ð]/. For example, late Middle English path pronounced as /[paθ]/ alternated with paths pronounced as /[paðz]/. When broadening applied to words such as path, it naturally extended to these derivatives: thus when pronounced as /[paθ]/ broadened to pronounced as /[paːθ]/, pronounced as /[paðz]/ also broadened to pronounced as /[paːðz]/. This introduced broadening into the environment before a voiced fricative.
Broadening affected Standard English extremely inconsistently. It seems to have been favored when pronounced as //a// was adjacent to labial consonants or pronounced as //r//.[9] It is apparent that it occurred most commonly in short words, especially monosyllables, that were common and well-established in English at the time broadening took place (c. 1500–1650). Words of 3 or more syllables were hardly ever subject to broadening. Learned words, neologisms (such as gas, first found in the late 17th century), and Latinate or Greek borrowings were rarely broadened.
A particularly interesting case is that of the word father. In late Middle English this was generally pronounced pronounced as /[ˈfaðər]/, thus rhyming with gather pronounced as /[ˈɡaðər]/. Broadening of father is notable both in two respects:
The Oxford English Dictionary describes the broadening of father as "anomalous".[10] Dobson, however, sees broadening in father as due to the influence of the adjacent pronounced as //f// and pronounced as //r// combined. Rather and lather appear to have been subject to broadening later, and in fewer varieties of English, by analogy with father.[11]
The table below represents the results of broadening before fricatives in contemporary Received Pronunciation.[12]
| Environment | RP pronounced as //æ// as in TRAP ("flat A") | RP pronounced as //ɑː// as in PALM or FAther ("broad A") | ||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| _pronounced as /[f]/$ | carafe*, chiffchaff, gaffe, naff, riffraff | calf**, chaff*, giraffe, graph (telegraph, see above), half**, laugh**, staff | ||||
| _pronounced as /[f]/C | Daphne, hermaphrodite, kaftan, naphtha | aft, after, craft, daft, draft/draught**, graft, laughter**, raft, rafter, shaft | ||||
| _pronounced as /[θ]/$ | hath, math (abbrev. for mathematics) | bath, lath*, path | ||||
| _pronounced as /[θ]/C | athlete, decathlon (pentathlon, biathlon, etc.), maths | |||||
| _pronounced as /[s]/$ | alas*, ass (donkey), ass (term of abuse)*, crass, gas, lass, mass (amount), Mass (religious service)* | brass, class, glass, grass, pass | ||||
| _pronounced as /[sp]/ | asp, aspect, aspen, aspic (jelly), aspirant, aspirin, Diaspora, exasperate*, jasper | clasp, gasp, grasp, hasp*, rasp | ||||
| _pronounced as /[st]/ | aster, asteroid, astronaut (astronomical, etc.), bastion, blastocyst (blastopore, etc.), canasta, castanets, chastity, elastic*, fantastic, gastric, gymnastic, hast, Jocasta, mastic, masticate, mastiff*, mastitis, mastoid, mastodon, masturbate*, monastic, onomastic, pasta, pastel, plastic*, procrastinate, Rastafarian, raster, sarcastic, scholastic, spastic | aghast, avast, bastard*, blast, cast, caster, fast, ghastly, last, mast, master, nasty, past, pasteurize*, pastime, pastor, pastoral*, pasture, plaster, repast, vast | ||||
| _pronounced as /[sk]/ | Alaska, Basque*, emasculate, gasket, Madagascar, mascot, masculine, masquerade*, Nebraska, paschal*, vascular | ask, bask, basket, cask, casket, flask, mask, masque*, rascal, task | ||||
| _pronounced as /[sf]/ | blasphemy* | - | _pronounced as /[v]/ | avarice, average, avid, avocado, cavalry, cavern, clavicle (clavichord, etc.), davenport, depravity, extravagant, gravel, gravity, have, havoc, lavatory, maverick, navigator (navigable, etc.), savage, tavern, travesty, unravel | calve, halve, Java, lava, octavo, (salve), Slav, --> | |
| _pronounced as /[ð]/ | blather, fathom, gather, slather | father, lather*, rather | ||||
| other (see below) | calve**, castle, fasten, halve**, raspberry |
In general, all these words, to the extent that they existed in Middle English, had pronounced as //a// ("short A" as in trap) which was broadened to pronounced as /[aː]/. The exceptions are:
The words castle, fasten and raspberry are special cases where subsequent sound changes have altered the conditions initially responsible for lengthening. In castle and fasten, the pronounced as //t// was pronounced, according to a slight majority of 16th and 17th century sources.[18] In raspberry we find pronounced as //s// rather than pronounced as //z//.[19]
The pattern of lengthening shown here for Received Pronunciation is generally found in southern England, the Caribbean, and the Southern hemisphere (parts of Australia, New Zealand and South Africa). In North America, with the possible exception of older Boston accents, broadening is found only in father (the success of broadening in this word alone in North America unexplained) and pasta (which follows the general pattern for recent Italian loanwords, cf. mafia). In the Boston area there has historically been a tendency to copy RP lengthening which perhaps reached its zenith in the 1930s but has since receded in the face of general North American norms.
In Irish English broadening is found only in father (which may, however, also have the FACE vowel). In Scottish and Ulster English the great majority of speakers have no distinction between TRAP and PALM (the Sam–psalm merger). In Welsh English Wells finds broadening generally only in father, with some variation. In the north of England, broadening is usually found only in father and half, and in some regions master.
There was a class of Middle English words in which pronounced as //au// varied with pronounced as //a// before a nasal. These are nearly all loanwords from French, in which uncertainty about how to realize the nasalization of the French vowel resulted in two varying pronunciations in English. (One might compare the different ways in which modern French loanwords like envelope are pronounced in contemporary varieties of English.)
Words with Middle English with the pronounced as //au// diphthong generally developed to pronounced as /[ɒː]/ in Early Modern English (e.g. paw, daughter). However, in some of the words with the pronounced as //a ~ au// alternation, especially short words in common use, the vowel instead developed into a long A. In words like change and angel, this development preceded the Great Vowel Shift, and so the resulting long A followed the normal development to modern pronounced as //eɪ//. In other cases, however, the long A appeared later, and thus did not undergo the Great Vowel Shift, but instead merged with the long A that had developed before pronounced as //r// and some fricatives (as described above). Thus words like dance and example have come to be pronounced (in modern RP, although mostly not in General American) with the pronounced as //ɑː// vowel of start and bath.
Words in this category may therefore have ended up with a variety of pronunciations in modern standard English: pronounced as //æ// (where the short A pronunciation survived), pronounced as //ɑː// (where the pronunciation with lengthened A was adopted), pronounced as //ɔː// (where the normal development of the AU diphthong was followed), and pronounced as //eɪ// (where the A was lengthened before the Great Vowel Shift). The table below shows the pronunciation of many of these words, classified according to the lexical sets of John Wells: for pronounced as //æ//, for RP pronounced as //ɑː// vs. General American pronounced as //æ//, for pronounced as //ɑː//, for pronounced as //ɔː//, for pronounced as //eɪ//. Although these words were often spelled with both (a) and (au) in Middle English, the current English spelling generally reflects the pronunciation, with (au) used only for those words which have pronounced as //ɔː//; one common exception is aunt.
| Environment | lexical set | lexical set | lexical set | lexical set | lexical set | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| _pronounced as /[m]/$ | alms, balm, calm, palm, psalm, qualm[20] | shawm | ||||
| _pronounced as /[mp]/ | champion, rampant, stamp* | example, sample | ||||
| _pronounced as /[mb]/ | amber | chamber | ||||
| _pronounced as /[mf]/ | pamphlet | |||||
| _pronounced as /[nt]/ | ant*, lantern, phantom, rant, scant | advantage, aunt, can't*, chant, grant, plant, slant, vantage | daunt, flaunt*, gaunt*, gauntlet, haunt, jaunt*, saunter, taunt, vaunt | |||
| _pronounced as /[nd]/ | abandon, grand, random | command, demand, Flanders, remand, reprimand, slander | jaundice, laundry, Maundy | |||
| _pronounced as /[n(t)ʃ]/ | franchise | avalanche, blanch, branch, ranch*, stanch, stanchion | haunch, launch, paunch, staunch | |||
| _pronounced as /[n(d)ʒ]/ | evangelist, phalange | angel, arrange, change, danger, grange, mange, range, strange | ||||
| _pronounced as /[ŋk]/ | bank ("bench/financial institution"), canker, flank, plank, ranco(u)r, sanctity | |||||
| _pronounced as /[ŋɡ]/ | anger*, angle, strangle | |||||
| _pronounced as /[ns]/ | ancestor, finance, ransom, romance | answer*, chance, chancellor, dance, enhance, France, lance, lancet, prance, stance, trance, transfer (trans-) | launce | ancient | ||
| Other | salmon | almond |
In some cases, both the pronounced as //a// and the pronounced as //au// forms have survived into Modern English. For example, from Sandre, a Norman French form of the name Alexander, the Modern English surnames Sanders and Saunders are both derived.[21]
See main article: trap–bath split.
The split is a vowel split that occurs mainly in the southern and mainstream varieties of English in England (including Received Pronunciation), in the Southern Hemisphere accents of English (Australian English, New Zealand English, South African English), and also to a lesser extent in older Boston English, by which the Early Modern English phoneme pronounced as //æ// was lengthened in certain environments and ultimately merged with the long pronounced as //ɑː// of father. Similar changes took place in words with (o); see lot–cloth split.
| aff | half | With h-dropping. | |
| ant | aunt | ||
| asp | hasp | With h-dropping. | |
| baff | bath | With th-fronting. | |
| bat | bath | With th-stopping. | |
| caf | calf | ||
| cant | can't | ||
| hath | half | With th-fronting. | |
| have | halve | ||
| lat | lath | With th-stopping and lat meaning 'latitude'. | |
| pat | path | With th-stopping. |
The merger is a merger of pronounced as //æ// and pronounced as //ʌ// occasionally occurring in Received Pronunciation. It is the outcome of lowering the vowel to pronounced as /link/ for those speakers who have a fronted vowel. The merger is likely not categorical, which means that the phonemes remain distinct in their underlying form. In contemporary RP, pronounced as /link/ is the norm for, whereas is usually backer and somewhat higher than, pronounced as /link/ or even pronounced as /link/. In the early days of -lowering, the fully open pronunciation of was typically heard as a merger regardless of the exact phonetic realization of .
In Cockney, pronounced as //æ// and pronounced as //ʌ// can come close as pronounced as /link/ and pronounced as /link/. Thus, Cockney may be an example of a language variety that contrasts near-front and fully front vowels of the same height, roundedness and length, though the former tends to undergo lengthening before pronounced as //d// (see bad–lad split).
In General Australian English, the vowels are distinguished as pronounced as /link/ and pronounced as /link/ before non-nasal consonants.
A three-way merger of pronounced as //æ//, pronounced as //ʌ// and pronounced as //ɑː// is a common pronunciation error among L2 speakers of English whose native language is Italian, Spanish or Catalan.[22]
| back | buck | pronounced as /ˈbak/ | ||
| bad | bud | pronounced as /ˈbad/ | ||
| ban | bun | pronounced as /ˈban/ | ||
| bat | but | pronounced as /ˈbat/ | With the strong form of but. | |
| bat | butt | pronounced as /ˈbat/ | ||
| cal | cull | pronounced as /ˈkal/ | ||
| cant | cunt | pronounced as /ˈkant/ | ||
| cap | cup | pronounced as /ˈkap/ | ||
| carry | curry | pronounced as /ˈkari/ | ||
| cat | cut | pronounced as /ˈkat/ | ||
| fan | fun | pronounced as /ˈfan/ | ||
| gat | gut | pronounced as /ˈgat/ | ||
| Harry | hurry | pronounced as /ˈhari/ | ||
| hat | hut | pronounced as /ˈhat/ | ||
| lack | luck | pronounced as /ˈlak/ | ||
| mad | mud | pronounced as /ˈmad/ | ||
| pat | putt | pronounced as /ˈpat/ | ||
| sack | suck | pronounced as /ˈsak/ | ||
| Sam | sum | pronounced as /ˈsam/ | ||
| tack | tuck | pronounced as /ˈtak/ |
The merger is a merger of pronounced as //ʌ// and pronounced as //ɑː// that occurs in Black South African English and commonly also in non-native speech.
The bad–lad split has been described as a phonemic split of the Early Modern English short vowel phoneme pronounced as //æ// into a short pronounced as //æ// and a long pronounced as //æː//. This split is found in Australian English and some varieties of English English in which bad (with long pronounced as /[æː]/) and lad (with short pronounced as /[æ]/) do not rhyme.
The phoneme pronounced as //æ// is usually lengthened to pronounced as //æː// when it comes before an pronounced as //m// or pronounced as //n//, within the same syllable. It is furthermore lengthened in the adjectives bad, glad and mad; family also sometimes has a long vowel, regardless of whether it is pronounced as two or three syllables. Some speakers and regional varieties also use pronounced as //æː// before pronounced as //ɡ//, pronounced as //ŋ//, pronounced as //l// and/or pronounced as //dʒ//; such lengthening may be more irregular than others. Lengthening is prohibited in the past tense of irregular verbs and function words and in modern contractions of polysyllabic words where the pronounced as //æ// was before a consonant followed by a vowel. Lengthening is not stopped by the addition of word-level suffixes.
British dialects with the bad–lad split have instead broad pronounced as //ɑː// in some words where an pronounced as //m// or pronounced as //n// follows the vowel. In this circumstance, Australian speakers usually (but not universally) use pronounced as //æː//, except in the words aunt, can't and shan't, which have broad pronounced as //aː//.
Daniel Jones noted for RP that some speakers had a phonemic contrast between a long and a short pronounced as //æ//, which he wrote as pronounced as //æː// and pronounced as //æ//, respectively. Thus, in An outline of English phonetics (1962, ninth edition, Cambridge: W. Heffer & Sons) he noted that sad, bad generally had pronounced as //æː// but lad, pad had pronounced as //æ//. In his pronouncing dictionary, he recorded several minimal pairs, for example bad pronounced as //bæːd//, bade pronounced as //bæd// (also pronounced pronounced as //ˈbeɪd//). He noted that for some speakers, jam actually represented two different pronunciations, one pronounced pronounced as //dʒæːm// meaning 'fruit conserve', the other pronounced as //dʒæm// meaning 'crush, wedging'. Later editions of this dictionary, edited by Alfred C. Gimson, dropped this distinction.
Outside of England, can meaning 'able to' remains pronounced as //kæn//, whereas the noun can 'container' or the verb can 'to put into a container' is pronounced as //kæːn//; this is similar to the situation found in /æ/ raising in some varieties of American English. A common minimal pair for modern RP speakers is band pronounced as //bæːnd// and banned pronounced as //bænd//. Australian speakers who use 'span' as the past tense of 'spin' also have a minimal pair between longer pronounced as //spæːn// (meaning width or the transitive verb with a river or divide) and pronounced as //spæn//, the past tense of 'spin' (pronounced as //spæn//). Other minimal pairs found in Australian English include 'Manning' (the surname) pronounced as //ˈmænɪŋ// and 'manning' (the present participle and gerund of the verb 'to man') pronounced as //ˈmæːnɪŋ// as well as 'planet' pronounced as //ˈplænət// versus 'plan it' pronounced as //ˈplæːnət//.
Apart from Jones's, dictionaries rarely show a difference between these varieties of pronounced as //æ//.
Experimental recordings of RP-speaking Cambridge University undergraduates has indicated that after coarticulatory effects are taken into account, words such as bag, that, gab, Ann, ban, damp, mad, bad, and sad may have slightly longer pronounced as //æː// vowels than relatively shorter words such as lad, snag, pad, Pam, and plan. However, no evidence of consistent duration differentiation was found in the possible minimal pairs adder/adder, cad/CAD, can (noun)/can (verb), dam/damn, jam/jam, lam/lamb, manning/Manning, mass/mass, sad/SAD.[23] This casts doubt on its status as a true phonemic split among RP-speakers, and has been described instead as diachronically stable, lexically specific sub-phonemic variation.[24]
See main article: /æ/ raising.
In the sociolinguistics of English, pronounced as //æ// raising is a process that occurs in many accents of American English, and to some degree in Canadian English, by which, the "short a" vowel found in such words as ash, bath, man, lamp, pal, rag, sack, trap, etc., is tensed: pronounced as more raised, and lengthened and/or diphthongized in various environments. The realization of this "tense" (as opposed to "lax") pronounced as //æ// varies from pronounced as /link/ to pronounced as /[ɛə]/ to pronounced as /[eə]/ to pronounced as /[ɪə]/, depending on the speaker's regional accent. The most commonly tensed variant of pronounced as //æ// throughout North American English is when it appears before nasal consonants (thus, for example, in fan as opposed to fat).[25]
Many foreign borrowed words such as taco, llama, drama, piranha, Bahamas, pasta, Bach, pecan, pajamas etc. vary as to whether or not they have the vowel or the vowel in various dialects in English. In Canada and Northern England, many speakers pronounce such words with the same vowel as, whereas in American, Australian and New Zealand English as well as RP, they usually have the same vowel as (although taco and pasta have the vowel in RP). However the pronunciation of certain words can vary even in regions which either usually assign the vowel or usually assign the vowel to such words; pajamas and pecan, for instance, vary among Americans as to whether or not they have pronounced as //æ/ or /ɑː//.[26] [27]
Other pronunciations of the letter in English have come about through: