Vowels KIT

The phonetic realization of this vowel in the modern dialect is the same as in RP. Older speakers, however, have a closer realization nearer to, but not as close as [i].

One of the most interesting features of the older East Anglian dialect short vowel system was that, unlike most other varieties, /I/ did not occur at all in unstressed syllables. Unstressed /ə/ continues to be the norm to this day in words such as wanted, horses, David, naked, hundred. More striking, however, is the fact that /ə/ was the only vowel which could occur in any unstressed syllable. This was true not only in the case of word-final syllables in words such as water, butter, which of course also have /ə/ in RP, and in words such as window, barrow, which are pronounced  in very many other forms of English, but also in items such as very, money, city which were . In the modern dialect, dedialectalization has taken place in that words from the very set are now pronounced with final /I/ by older speakers and /i:/ by younger speakers, as is now usual throughout southern England.

The KIT vowel occurred not only in items such as pit, bid in the older dialect but also in a number of other words, such as get, yet, head, again. There is little predictability as to which items have or had the raised vowel, but in all the words concerned the vowel was followed by /n/, /t/ or /d/.