Talk:Sound correspondences between English accents

All Sets Can Merge

As the tables already show, it is possible for the following lexical sets to merge with other sets. For example:

• DRESS may completely merge with TRAP in Singaporean Standard English.
• FACE may merge with HAPPY in the Scottish English.
• GOAT may merge with THOUGHT in various North England Englishes.
• MOUTH may merge with PRICE in General South African English.
• START may completely merge with TRAP, BATH and PALM in Cameroonian English.

Consequently, the following demonstrably incorrect claims must be removed:

• "The groups are defined such that no mergers of each group's sets take place outside them."
• "The lexical sets FACE, DRESS, GOAT, MOUTH, and START do not merge with other sets."

1.126.107.52 (talk) 19:40, 26 August 2025 (UTC)

I've included these in the article along with a more detailed description of why they are not included in the tables. Basically, it boils down to this article being conceptually flawed because the most mergers that can be shown for each set is two. I'm currently working on a draft version that would fix this problem, but it's quite slow going so it looks like this is the best we can really do at the moment. ^{[citation unneeded]} (talk) 10:52, 7 October 2025 (UTC)

The phoneme /u/

Many dictionaries also contain the phoneme /u/ as in "situation":

• https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/definition/english/situation?q=situation

I would be glad if it were added to the "STRUT to GOOSE" section. Many thanks in advance 185.18.68.210 (talk) 10:22, 6 October 2025 (UTC)

The /u/ phoneme (as in situation) is already present in the "STRUT to GOOSE" section as GOOSE. Please let me know if I've misunderstood you! ^{[citation unneeded]} (talk) 21:54, 6 October 2025 (UTC)

Hi! Thanks for your reply. However, I can't find the /u/ phoneme (as in situation) in the "STRUT to GOOSE" section. GOOSE shows /uː/ not /u/ 185.18.68.210 (talk) 21:53, 14 October 2025 (UTC)

It's not a phoneme. See . Nardog (talk) 01:30, 7 October 2025 (UTC)

Hello! Thanks for your response. You could argue that it's not a phoneme, but you could say exactly the same about /i/, which is included in the table as "happY". See: https://www.oxfordlearnersdictionaries.com/about/english/pronunciation_english

So, I think that both /i/ and /u/ should be treated in the same way. If /i/ exists in the table, it's reasonable to ask why /u/ doesn't 185.18.68.210 (talk) 21:56, 14 October 2025 (UTC)

/i/ is not a phoneme either. One could say it's an archiphoneme, but in reality it's just a conventional shorthand for "/iː/ or /ɪ/ depending on accent". See happy tensing. Nardog (talk) 13:35, 15 October 2025 (UTC)

But /i/ is in the table in this article. So either it should be removed or /u/ should be added as well. This is called consistency 185.18.68.210 (talk) 15:19, 15 October 2025 (UTC)

I've had a deeper look and I think that the main reason this article has /i/ and not /u/ is that Wells defined happY as a lexical set but didn't do the same for sitUation/actUal, and this article uses his sets as its basis. Neither /i/ nor /u/ are actually phonemes in their own right because, though they occasionally have independent realizations (see CaE, Cockney, Cumbrian, Pitmatic, Scouse, all forms of Ulster English, Newfoundland English etc. for happY in the table), their definition is purely based on environment, so they aren't phonemes but positional allophones.

When we talk about the 'happY lexical set', we really mean 'the words containing a positional allophone of the KIT lexical set' (in the positions outlined here and here), and when we might have talked about the actUal lexical set, we really mean 'the words containing a positional allophone of the GOOSE lexical set'. happY sometimes gains the realization of FLEECE, just as actUal sometimes gains the realization of FOOT, but they don't represent phonemes any more than think (a positional allophone of KIT which gains the realisation of TRAP in some accents) represents a phoneme.

However, if I rewrote the previous paragraph using BATH for happy, TRAP for KIT and PALM for FLEECE, I would be describing the process that led to the BATH lexical set, which does describe a phoneme in accents with the TRAP-BATH split. While this might seem to be a contradiction, the difference here is that the version of the BATH set that became static can't be easily described using a rule (gas [ɡæs] vs glass [ɡlɑːs], mass [mæs] vs pass [pɑːs], is it [plæstɪk] or [plɑːstɪk]?).

I'd appreciate some feedback here, because I'm not entirely certain, though I think that's along the right lines. The next question to ask seems to be 'should we get rid of happY?' but I feel that there's little point because it does convey useful information and is true to Wells' system. Perhaps a note explaining that happY doesn't actually describe a phoneme would be a good idea? If you can find some good sources describing whether /u/ uses /uː/ or /ʊ/ in lots of different accents, then it might be worth adding, but there's also some appeal to sticking to Wells' original sets because that's what people are familiar with. ^{[citation unneeded]} (talk) 15:17, 15 October 2025 (UTC)

Okay, I get your perspective now. Still, I wonder how /u/ is realised in modern RP. As /uː/ (as in GOOSE) or /ʊ/ (as in FOOT)? Do you know the answer perhaps? 185.18.68.210 (talk) 15:28, 15 October 2025 (UTC)

As an SSBE speaker, I can confirm that it's pronounced using the GOOSE vowel [ʉw] rather than the FOOT vowel [ɵ], at least in my ideolect. ^{[citation unneeded]} (talk) 17:26, 15 October 2025 (UTC)

Table design

While I think the current layout of information is pretty good, I think that the "Lexical set" and "Examples" columns should not disappear when scrolling horizontally in the table. The examples especially are essential to show what contexts certain allophones are used. As it stands, only the diaphoneme column remains visible. FitzCorb (talk) 11:42, 30 March 2026 (UTC)

This is something we've fixed in the draft revision of this article! ^{[citation unneeded]} (talk) 12:24, 31 March 2026 (UTC)

Oh I'm quite pleased to see that there is indeed an overhaul planned! I started off by wanting to fiddle with the abbreviations and the ordering of them, but I realized it would get more complicated from there. So I'll leave that be and in the meantime, I'll just make the change for abbreviations without changing the ordering.

• ScE → SSE (Scottish Standard English) per the Scobbie, Gordeeva & Matthews source that is cited the most for Scottish English in this article
• SSE → SgE (Singapore English) since most sources don't abbreviate it (and also don't specify that it's the standard variety) – and this one has it as SgE.

This also appears to be consistent with general practice among sources. I could not find much usage of ScE online except to mean Scots. ‍ –‍ Kilvin77 • 👾  05:53, 17 May 2026 (UTC)

Changing the consonant table

It would be more useful to change the consontant table so that it would similar to the vovel charts. So first Diaphonemes, then Examples and then each variety of English or the varieties we know and then just a general 'others' column for these varieries we don't know enough ~2026-22093-04 (talk) 07:41, 10 April 2026 (UTC)