From: Piotr Gasiorowski Message: 48923 Date: 2007-06-08
On 2007-06-08 03:51, Rick McCallister wrote:
> I have only heard cloth as /kla:T/,
> never /klOT/ in US English.
It's William Labov's own Philadelphia pronunciation (see _Principles of
Linguistic Change_, Part 1, P. 530). In some places, especially in
traditional NYC English the vowel of <lost, cloth, off, long> etc. may
become very high and develop an "inglide" ([o&] or even [U&]).