Upgliding diphthongs FLEECE

The /i:/ vowel is an upgliding diphthong of the type  , noticeably different from London . The modern accent demonstrates happy-tensing, and this vowel therefore also occurs in the modern dialects in the lexical set of money, city, etc.

Unstressed they has /i:/ Are they coming? /a:ði:kΛmə​n/. In the traditional dialect, mice was /mi:s/, and deaf could be /di:f/.

FACE In the traditional dialects of East Anglia, the Long Mid Mergers have not taken place (Wells 1982: 192–194). The vowel /æi/ in these lects occurs only in items descended from ME /ai/, while items descended from ME /a:/ have /e:/ = [e: ~ ε:]. Thus pairs such as days-daze, maid-made are not homophonous. (The /e:/ vowel also occurred in the older dialect in a number of words descended from ME /ε:/ such as beans, creature .) This distinction, which now survives only in the northern area, is currently being lost through a process of transfer of lexical items from /e:/ to /æi/ (Trudgill and Foxcroft 1978). The most local modern pronunciation of /æi/ is [æi], but qualities intermediate between this and RP  occur in middle-class speech.