Happy Thought for 15 May 2026

 Have a Happy Thought:

Have you ever been frustrated with a thing, or surprised that someone else hasn’t already solved some issue? So you spend like 10 minutes knocking together just the bare bones of a solution that will work for you…

And then put it out to the world, only for it to be taken up by an entire field of researchers.

(I’ve definitely done the first part, but maybe not the second part!!)

That’s what John C. Wells did in 1982, when he was trying to help define vowel sounds in the English language.

 

Now, anyone who has ever spoken with an English-language speaker from another country, or perhaps even a different part of the same country, is aware that vowels in English are… slippery, at best.

What Wells was trying to do was come up with groups of words that, as long as they are said by someone with the same accent, use the same consistent vowel sound.

While someone with a different accent would use a different (but still consistent) vowel sound across those words.

An example, comparing a general American accent to Received Pronunciation (usually used by the upper class in England, often called the “Queen’s” or “King’s” English):

In your mind (or out loud if you’re good at accents and don’t mind bothering those around you), say these words in your best American and Received Pronunciation:

Bath, staff, brass, ask, dance, sample, calf

 

In general, you should find that you are using one, consistent form of the “a” sound for all of the “American” pronunciation, and a different but consistent form of the “a” sound for everything using the King’s English.

This group of words Wells called a “lexical set”, and he defined 24 of these sets, for 24 different vowel sounds.

Now, the sets that Wells came up with in 1982 are really only to compare these two accents, so linguists have gone on to create additional lexical sets to compare other English accents. The Wikipedia page contains a good sampling of these, in case you want to sit down with a friend from a different part of the English-speaking world, and laugh at how they (or you) say certain words:

Lexical set - Wikipedia

 

Here’s a few more words, just to get you started:

Thought

Fern

Strut

Force

Kit

Cloth

Cot

Start

Palm

Goat

Dress

Mary

Fleece

Fur

Lot

Mock

Or, if you just want to listen to a couple of soothing voices read through a few lexical sets, skip forward to 23:00 into this episode to listen to the differences between Canadian and Australian English: Lingthusiasm - Lingthusiasm Episode 90: What visualizing our...

Oh, and my comment up top about spending just 10 minutes coming up with a globally-adopted solution?, Here’s Wells on how he came up with these:

I sometimes think that a century from now my lexical sets will be the one thing I shall be remembered for. Yet I dreamt them up over a weekend. (John Wells’s phonetic blog: lexical sets)

 

P.S. Apparently more of you use cursive than I gave credit for! Keep working on those capitals and ​s 

 

Thanks to the Lingthusiasm podcast for bringing us this tongue-twisting joy.