Central vowels

One of the diagnostic variants in The Bahamas is the mid-central vowel /Λ/. Both Afro-Bahamians and Anglo-Bahamians have a backed variant for the vowel of strut that is somewhat rounded and produced close to the cardinal position of [ç] (Wells 1982; Childs, Reaser and Wolfram 2003). This variant has been well documented in Caribbean creole varieties such as Jamaican English (Wells 1982), but it is quite scattered in the United States, though it is found in the Low Country of South Carolina and Georgia (Thomas 2001). This production is, however, not found at all in British Cockney, the British dialect most often compared to Anglo-Bahamian English. The origin of this variant is difficult to determine given its rarity in some of the more obvious founder dialects of English in The Bahamas.