Realizational/phonetic differences

The English /r/ phoneme also provides a good example of a realizational or phonetic difference, which does not affect the system in any way. Although all varieties of English have the /r/ phoneme, there is a wide difference, in the way speakers pronounce it, from  in England to [r] in Scotland and  in parts of Northumbria. Unlike the inventory and distributional differences above, these have no implications for the range of oppositions a speaker can make: whether rat is realized  the available contrasts with vat, sat, cat, mat and so on remain exactly the same.