Front vowels

Wells (1982) notes that the Bahamian /æ/ of TRAP occupies a more central position of [a] rather than a front position, but his description needs to be qualified in order to take into account generational and ethnic differences. In acoustic measurements of Bahamian vowels by Thomas (2001) and Childs, Reaser and Wolfram (2003), the production of the vowel in TRAP by both black and white speakers is shown to remain low and somewhat retracted. However, among older Anglo-Bahamian speakers, the vowel is raised before d in words like sad or plaid, occupying a position closer to [ɪ] ; this production is different from Afro-Bahamian speakers. The production of the vowel of TRAP by younger speakers in the white communities shows the vowel realized as [a] in all other environments. The lowered and backed trap production by the Afro-Bahamian speakers and the younger generation of Anglo-Bahamian residents is typical of many Caribbean varieties of English. The cross-generational analysis of different groups of Bahamians by Childs, Reaser and Wolfram (2003) indicates that Anglo-Bahamians are moving somewhat toward Afro-Bahamian norms.

Both Afro-Bahamians and Anglo-Bahamians produce the vowel of FACE as [ei] (Wells 1982; Childs, Reaser and Wolfram 2003). This phonetic production is typical of varieties of North American English in general and AAVE (Thomas 2001) but different from white Southern speech in the US and most Southern British English varieties, which have a lowered and centralized nucleus for /e/.

Thomas (2001: 106) reports that there is a merger of the vowels of NEAR and SQUARE in Bahamian English, making items like fear and fair or ear and air homophonous. In this respect, Bahamian English resembles the low country dialect of South Carolina, although a number of English dialects exist that exhibit this merger.