Vowels NURSE

White Southern speech is increasingly rhotic, and stressed syllabic /r – i.e., NURSE – is the most likely context for rhoticity in syllable rhymes. In older white Southern speech, though, non-rhotic forms of NURSE occurred. From South Carolina to Texas and north to eastern Arkansas and the southern edge of Kentucky, an upgliding form,  , once predominated, but very few speakers born after 1930 show it and it is thus nearly obsolete. A few Southerners from the same region, usually from high social strata, showed a monophthongal [з] . The monophthongal form also occurred in eastern Virginia and adjacent parts of Maryland and North Carolina, but a weakly rhotic variant was more common there.

For rhotic speakers, a different diphthongization of NURSE can appear in which the variants  occur. This widening tends to co-occur with widening of the FACE and GOAT diphthongs.