My pronunciation of vowels (as a nasally northern Ohio resident) is such:
>/i/ greet
>/I/ bid
>/}/ root
>/u/ lute
Root and lute rhyme.
>/U/ book
Book is pronounced with kind of a combination @U or @8.
>/ei/ crate, often reducing to /e/ gr'ea'test
>/8/ road
>/ou/ phone
Road and phone have the same sound -- more /ou/.
>/@/ run
>/E/ bed
>/O/ saw
>/{/ bad
>/{u/ cloud
>/{U_G/ cow
Cloud and cow have the same sound.
>/a/ f'a'ther
>/A/ pond
>/r\/ bitt'er'
>/L\/ litt'le'
Not too sure where that /L\/ came from -- it's a definite /l/ here.
>/n/ mitt'en'
My personal pronunciation of the three above words has a @U sound before
the final consonant (ie: mIt@Un rather than mIt@n), however, a friend says
a kind of aU...
--Erin Notagain--
"I'm sorry, I just don't speak mumblish."