 In our e-lectures about English in North America, we mentioned that the transcription system based on the International Phonetic Association is in many ways inadequate for the description of the phonological, in particular the vocalic, facts that govern North American English phonology. This e-lecture discusses an alternative, a notation that abandons the classic distinction between long and short vowels and suggests a binary system instead. Now such a binary system has been adopted by most American phonologists beginning with people like Leonard Bloomfield, George Traeger, Charles Hockett and last but not least, William Labov. Now Labov utilized these insights for his Atlas of North American English. We discussed that in our e-lecture North American English too. Let's look at the central points of this notation. The classification of any English vowel system presupposes two sets of vowels, short vowels and long vowels. Apart from the fact that the respective pairs such as e and e are qualitatively distinct, the long one as in c is always higher than the short one as in sit. We can show that length is also influenced by the environment. Let's start with short vowels. Now English short vowels cannot occur word-finally in stressed position. So there are no words of the form b, b, b, b or b in present-day English. So none of these exist. And indeed there are very few counter examples to this principle. One is the realization of final schwa in the non-rotic dialect of New York City where words like her and fer are frequently realized with final short vowels such as her and fer. In unstressed syllables, conservative received pronunciation used final short e in words such as happy and city. But that is now being replaced by long e among younger speakers who would prefer city and happy. Thus we can generalize and say that short vowels are checked. That is, they must be followed by a consonant. They only occur in closed syllables. Let's contrast this with long vowels. Now English long vowels may occur word-finally in stressed position in a variety of phonetic shapes. The word b for example can be realized as, well let's write down a few examples, b, b with a glide following b or b. So there are many options of realizing this word. Now the long vowels are referred to as free. They can occur without a following consonant even in open syllables. Is there any justification for this long short distinction of present-day English vowels? Well the following samples which I have recorded will tell us acoustically there is no justification. So let's look at my recordings. Now here you find the following four words. The presentation here is on the one hand the waveform view and here at the bottom you find the spectrographic representation. The program I used here is the program Prat. You find some e-lectures about the use of this program in our YouTube video channel. Now let's first of all mark the vowels in this representation. Well this is about the vowel in the word c. This frame here marks the vowel in c. Now this third rectangular marks the vowel in cid. And finally this very small rectangular marks the vowel in cid. Let's now mark the sounds that occur in these representations. So this would be c. This here is cid. Here we have cid. And finally we have cid. Well and if we mark the words, if we rank the words concerning their vowel length we can clearly see that this is of course the longest vowel. So let's associate this with rank number one. And clearly the vowel in cid is longer than the vowel in cid which is number three. And the shortest is obviously e in cid. Thus it seems that length is a matter of the environment. Vowels are generally shorter in closed syllables. This insight is the starting point for an adequate notation for the description of North American English. Instead of using the continuous feature vowel length most American phonologists suggest a true binary system instead. Now in such a system vowels can be represented by two elements. By a nucleus and by a glide. Let's start with the discussion of the nucleus. Now North American English uses six nuclei, six vocaliic nuclei. We have in fact three front nuclei a, a and a. And three back nuclei where for orthographical reasons represents o. It's simply easier to write. This set was elaborated by some American structuralists to a maximum of nine by the addition of three more back vowels. Reducing the short vowels to six however permits a reduction of the feature system to plus minus back without specifying central vowels or the feature of centrality. The second component of this binary system is the glide. To each nucleus one of the following three glides can be added but let's listen first. For example we have a back up glide in the following words. Do, now, bow, to. And you see they all have in common that the second element of the vowel is somewhere here. So there's a glide up to a back vowel position. The second group is the group of front up gliding diphthongs. Now again we have a glide but this time it ends in the front, in a front position. Boy, by, say, see. Well the final group is referred to as in gliding. Now here we have a relatively short glide. Bra, la. And whereas the up glides indicate a movement towards the high front or the high back position. The in glides do not really represent, do not really have a target but they indicate a class of long well they are called now in gliding vowels. Which show no form and movement or move in any centering direction. Let's summarize the situation with the glides, in glides and back up gliding, front up gliding. These are our glide features. Now such a broad phonemic notation captures the phonological character and the phonetic character of North American English vowels. Let us now look at the notation especially at the representation of the vowels. So here is the North American system with simple vowels. It, bat, bat, cart, put, butt. And you see this one, bat, has an in glide almost. So this is a special feature of the speaker we recorded here. This is a speaker from the North by the way. So this speaker can be identified by the absence of a low back merger of these two vowels. So there is a difference. There is still a difference. Well, these six simple vowels then are accompanied by the following complex vowels. Here are the ones with the front up glide. And here are the three back up glide ones. Now bow to. And finally we have the in gliding vowels. Bra, cart. And that's it. This vocaliic system with six simple vowels and 10 vowels that do have a glide. So a total of 16 vowels. This system can now be clearly subdivided into simple vowels and vowels with a glide. Length does not play a role anymore. Let us summarize. The notation used in the atlas of North American English is truly economic. It acknowledges all phonetic facts that can be observed in North American English. It is broad phonemic. In some cases even simplified if you consider the symbols used for the back vowel or. And it is binary. Well, and length doesn't play a role anymore. Where the IPA transcription would use vocaliic symbols such as E as in C, U as in 2, A as in say and or as in saw. And you could possibly feel that some of them are accompanied by a glide. The atlas of North American English system now uses symbols with an off glide. Well, and this really reflects the true phonetic facts. By the way, we did not discuss the consonants. Well, we didn't have to. Their representation is identical in all phonemic notations. To consult the consonantal system of North American English, either load the VLC unit, the North American vowel system, or visit the Virtual English Campus Language Index with more than 60 speakers of North American English. Well, see you there.