Southeastern phonology: vowels and diphthongs MOUTH

In London English, MOUTH has diphthongal and monophthongal variants. For the social stratification of London English the general principle is: the weaker the end point, the more basilectal the variant. According to Wells (1982: 309), the MOUTH vowel monophthong is a “touchstone for distinguishing between ‘true Cockney’ and popular London”. Only “true Cockney” working-class speakers have a long monophthong of the [æ : ~ a˘] kind or alternatively a diphthong with a weak second element of the [æə ~ æ^ə] type. Suburban working-class speakers and middle-class speakers have a closing diphthong of the  type.

According to the Survey of English Dialects (SED), the prevalent variant in most Southeastern accents used to be a variant of the  type. In the speech of younger speakers, this “provincial” variant was neither found by Altendorf (2003) in Colchester and Canterbury nor by Williams and Kerswill (1999) in Milton Keynes. Adolescent speakers in these towns use “metropolitan”  rather than the older “provincial” form . In Milton Keynes and Reading, they even prefer . Williams and Kerswill (1999: 152) comment that this is a case in which levelling in the Southeast has led to a compromise on the RP form rather than the intermediate London variant.