Phonological features

As far as the phonological variation of English in the Channel Islands is concerned, the following three major aspects should be taken into account. First of all, due to the language contact between English and the local Norman French dialects, one may expect to find features in English which can be attributed to an influence from Norman French. In this context it is of particular interest to verify whether such features only occur with speakers of Norman French or whether they are also used by monolingual speakers of English. Secondly, Channel Island English is likely to include non-standard features that equally occur in other varieties of British English. These features may easily have arrived in the Channel Islands with the large number of immigrants from Britain. Thirdly, Channel Island English may be characterized, at least theoretically, by independent phonological developments with no influence from either Norman French or other varieties of English.

Table 2 lists the typical vowel realizations in Channel Island English. Two prominent features will be discussed here in more detail, namely the realizations of the PRICE diphthong and the STRUT vowel.