Vowels and Diphthongs PRICE

Most words in this set have the diphthong  in the majority of northern English dialects. In Tyneside and Northumberland, the diphthong is a narrower , whilst in parts of the ‘middle North’, including West and South Yorkshire, a monophthongal [a:], distinct from the monophthongal [a:] variant in down, etc., is found in more traditional dialects. In such dialects, ground and grind would be pronounced [gra:nd], [gra:nd] respectively. As with MOUTH words, Petyt found that a compromise variant comprising a diphthong with a lengthened first element was more common in the speech of his 1970–1971 informants. In words such as night or right, northern dialects retained the consonant   when this was vocalized in southern dialects in the 16^th century. In dialects which retained this northern pronunciation, the vowel before  remained short, and so was not shifted to  in the Great Vowel Shift. When northern English dialects later lost this consonant, the preceding vowel was lengthened to /i:/ giving pronunciations such as /ni:t, ri:t/ for night, right etc. This is now retained mainly in frequently-used words and phrases. Thus [a:ri:t] al-right is a common greeting between working-class males on Tyneside and [ni:t] is similarly used for night especially in the expression the night (‘tonight’), but [lεit] would be the more usual pronunciation of light. Petyt (1985: 164) notes that /i:/ was used in words of this subset by his West Yorkshire informants, but that the compromise diphthong described above was also used in these words.