Vowel length GOOSE/FOOT

According to Wells (1982: 401), “from a diagnostic point of view, the most important characteristic of the Scottish vowel system is its lack [...] of a phoneme /U/”. The vowels of these two sets are together realized as a high, usually rounded, vowel which is central or even front, transcribed here as . As for LOT/THOUGHT and TRAP/PALM, ScStE speakers may show two vowels here, but this is less usual and presumes the other contrasts (Abercrombie 1979: 76–77). The corresponding Scots vowel is OUT, whose realization tends to be fronter, and can even be unrounded to [I]. (GOOSE and FOOT correspond to the Scots set BOOT and so select the vowel of BIT, though lexical ‘bleeding’ leading to replacement with ScStE  is gradually progressing: Johnston 1997: 466). As with KIT/BIT and TRAP,BATH,PALM/CAT, there is sociolinguistic variation in the realization of GOOSE,FOOT/OUT. Macaulay (1977) reported backer variants in higher class speakers and fronter variants in lower class informants.