Editing Coventry (section)

=== Coventry and Birmingham accents ===
Phonetically the accent of Coventry, like the perhaps better known accent of Birmingham, is similar to Northern English with respect to its system of short vowels. For example, it lacks the BATH/TRAP (Cov. /baθ/, Southern /bɑːθ/) and FOOT/STRUT (Cov. /strʊt/, Southern /strʌt/) splits.<ref name="Trugill"/> Yet the longer vowels in the accent also contain traces of [[Estuary English]] such as a partial implementation of the London [[diphthong]] shift, increasingly so amongst the young since 1950. We also see other [[Estuary English]] features, such as a /l/-vocalisation whereby words such as 'milk' come to be pronounced as /mɪʊk/.<ref name="Trugill"/> However, the distinction between Coventry and Birmingham accents is often overlooked. Certain features of the Birmingham accent (e.g. occasional tapping of prevocalic /r/ in words such as 'crack') stop starkly as one moves beyond Solihull in the general direction of Coventry, a possible approximation of the 'Arden Forest' divide perhaps. In any case, Coventry sits right at a dialectal crossroads, very close to isoglosses that generally delineate 'Northern' and 'Southern' dialects, exhibiting features from both sides of the divide.<ref name="Trugill"/>