In the spoken language, these are pronounced differently; the "have" of possession has a soft V, and the "have to" meaning "must" has a strong F. Haff. (In the past tense, we don't even get that clue.) What is it

There are a few words which tend to have the ... the same) - half, halve, calf, can't, shan't, banana, rather. Also there are still a handful of AmE speakers that follow the southern England approach (mainly in Eastern New England). Yes,

Most of the "ah" class comes from recent loanwords like "pasta". "Pasta" may be a good example of AmE "foreign a", but I don't think it's a good example of the "ah" class. I think it's

) I'm tentatively describing that as "tense a" rather than "ah": ... that have a split short-a system have their tense /& ^/. By Jove, I think you're right! Well, or at least it's a proper subset of that /&

It's my understanding that in U.S. dialects that don't have a tense-/& ^/ versus lax-/& / distinction, /&/ is usually tense in all contexts for Northern Cities speakers, and tense before nasals and ... context I mean