Trap–bath split

Common card · No. 249800

The TRAP–BATH split is a vowel split that occurs mainly in Southern England English (including Received Pronunciation), Australian English, New Zealand English, Indian English and South African English; it also occurs to a lesser extent in some Irish English and Welsh English as well as older Northeastern New England English. The split entails the Early Modern English phoneme /æ/ lengthening in certain environments and ultimately merging with the long /ɑː/ of PALM. In that context, the lengthened vowel in words such as bath, laugh, grass and chance in accents affected by the split is referred to as a broad A (also called in Britain long A). Phonetically, the vowel is [ɑː] in Received Pronunciation (RP), Cockney and Estuary English; in some other accents, including Australian and New Zealand accents, it is a more fronted vowel ([ɐː] or [aː] ) and tends to be a rounded and shortened [ɒ~ɔ] in Broad South African English. A trap–bath split also occurs in the accents of the Middle Atlantic...

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