Comparison of vowels across dialects

In order to see some of the differences and similarities between varieties of English, we will plot some of the vowels represented in Table 5.2 on the vowel quadrilateral, and then look more closely at a few keywords. This will let us see two things:

1. The symbols used to transcribe vowels represent an abstraction over the data: for example, sometimes vowels with roughly the same vowel qualities in two different varieties are transcribed with different symbols. Likewise, identical symbols are sometimes used to represent different vowel qualities.

2. The IPA cardinal vowel system can be applied to real data, although the vowels of spoken language are not the same as cardinal vowels.

The monophthongs of RP, Australian and American are shown in Figures 5.3–5.5. Figures 5.6–5.9 show the diphthongs from the same varieties. The vowels plotted on these graphs should be cross-referred to the keywords in Table 5.2. These plots show where the vowels lie in the CV space, so we can interpret the symbols used more accurately.