Vowels lettER

The general distribution of rhotic and non-rhotic varieties and the wholesale shift to rhoticity in white Southern speech are discussed below under R. Unstressed syllables are the most likely contexts for non-rhoticity, and some varieties that show consistent rhoticity in other contexts show variable non-rhoticity in unstressed syllables. In older speech, the commA vowel, both historical, as in idea, and derived from GOAT, as in hollow, is commonly produced as .