Phonological features STRUT

The STRUT vowel may be pronounced as  in Channel Island English. Words such as sun or duck are locally realized as  and . In comparison to the RP vowel  is further back and above all, the vowel is rounded. Parallels to this feature in other varieties are rather difficult to find. In the data of the Survey of English Dialects (SED; Orton 1962–1971),  is very occasionally used for the STRUT vowel. In the responses to question IV.6.14 (‘ducks’),  occurs three times in Kent, once in Essex and once in Hampshire. In question IX.2.3 (‘sun’),  was recorded twice in Kent, once in Wiltshire and once in the Isle of Man. An influence from Norman French seems more likely in this case. Channel Island French does not have a vowel sound comparable to English /Λ/. One can therefore assume that a phone substitution takes place in English, replacing /Λ/ by  . This hypothesis is confirmed by the fact that the same phone substitution occurs in English loanwords in Channel Island French. Thus, the word bus is pronounced  in the local French dialects.

The results for the STRUT vowel among the same 40 informants in Guernsey equally lend support to the hypothesis. The quantitative analysis of the variable shows a generational difference. The older informants (and speakers of Guernsey French) scored about 10% higher than the younger informants (monolingual speakers of English).