Re: Rising/Falling diphthongs

On Fri, 12 Nov 2004 13:56:17 +0000, Ray Brown <ray.brown@...> wrote:

> On Friday, November 12, 2004, at 04:53 , Tristan Mc Leay wrote:
>
>> No need to envision it! Many non-rhotic Englishes have a diphthong
>> (like) [I@)] in words like 'beard', [e@)] in 'bear', [U@)] in 'pure'.
>
> Yep - I have [I@] and [U@]
>
>> Though many non-rhotic Englishes have also monophthongised these
>
> Yep - _bear_ is [bE:]       :)
I think I've gone one further. I seem to have [bE], without a length
distinction, though I'm catching myself drifting towards the local
[be.jr\`=] or whatever it is.

Someone I spoke to recently thought my accent was Australian -- could this
be the result of a mixed urban/rural Southern British lect morphing
towards an urban North Carolinian?




Paul

... YAEPT addict