Upgliding diphthongs 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.