Vernacularisation

The story of supraregionalisation does not end with the disappearance of strongly local features. There is another pathway which such features can take. This is the relegation to vernacular varieties. Take the instance of Middle English /ε:/ as in beat /bε:t/. This pronunciation is now confined to strongly local varieties where supraregionalisation has not taken place. Furthermore, non-local speakers can style-shift downwards to achieve a vernacular effect. Another example of this would be the use of youse or yez for the second person plural (also found in other Anglophone areas such as Tyneside). This is shunned by non-local speakers but can be employed when deliberately switching to a vernacular mode.

The process of vernacularisation has in some instances led to a lexical split. Consider the reflex of velarized  before [d] in Irish English: this led to the diphthong [au] as in the words old [aul] and bold [baul] with the common post-sonorant stop deletion. These forms are available alongside /o:ld/ and /bo:ld/ to non-local speakers but the meanings are somewhat different as the original forms with [au] have gained additional meaning components: [aul] ‘old + affectionate attachment’, e.g. His [aul] car has finally given up the ghost, [baul] ‘daring + sneaking admiration’, e.g. The [baul] Charlie is back on top again.