The short vowels MOUTH

MOUTH has a relatively close starting position, with closer variants belonging to broader variants of the New Zealand accent. New tokens of MOUTH are arising from DRESS or TRAP plus vocalized /l/, so that words like twelve, self and health often contain a vowel which, if it is not identical with MOUTH, is extremely close phonetically. Not only is this creating new tokens of MOUTH, it is widening the distribution of MOUTH, which can occur before labials (help) and velars (talc).

MOUTH + unstressed /ɘ/ in words like tower either results in a disyllabic sequence or results in a monophthong, probably to be associated with the BATH/ PALM/START phoneme, although closer values than for BATH/PALM/START can be heard.