The long monophthongs

NURSE

Although some older speakers use the vowel similar to RP [з:], there is a prominent ‘island variant’ here, which is unrounded, lax and more open than RP [з:]. It is difficult to transcribe and I tentatively use [a:] for it. It has a fronter value approximating [æ:] in church and a backer value approximating [Λ:] in work.