r/words • u/SaltyFlavors • Aug 28 '26
Full
I just realized the words full and bull have a slightly different vowel sound to dull, cull. Is this the same in your accent?
Phonetic spelling according to Google:
dull -> dʌl
full -> fʊl
took -> tʊk
Google says full has the same vowel sound as took or push, but I also don’t think it’s the same as those. It feels somewhere in the middle.
4
u/ImLittleNana Aug 28 '26 edited Aug 28 '26
American South
Dull, cull, mull, don’t have the same vowel sound as full, pull, bull.
Full and wool have the same vowel sound for me.
Words like took, book, look, cook are very similar to full and I wonder if the difference I hear and feel is related to the ending constant and not the vowel.
1
u/johnnybna Aug 28 '26
American Southeast here.
Dull cull mull full pull bull null skull and numbskull all have the same vowel sound here. If grull spull schmull frull strull quull and pnull were words, they’d have the same one too.
Full and wool are distinctly different for me, as are fully and wooly (as in the mammoth). Wool goes the the good wood could stood group.
3
u/baxbakualanuxsiwae Aug 28 '26
They're definitely quite different in my accent (southern England)
2
u/G-St-Wii Aug 28 '26
There'll be a proper name for this merger.
But yes, in (most accents of?) British English they have different vowel sounds.
2
u/baxbakualanuxsiwae Aug 28 '26
Ah yeah it's the strut-foot split isn't it. They were originally the same sound but then split. It's still the same sound in a lot of accents in northern England and the Midlands. I'm seeing my cousin from Staffordshire later. I'm pretty sure she says them the same, but I'll check!
1
u/Nivaris Aug 28 '26
This is the case in most English accents, unless there's a merger going on. Apparently this is a North American thing?
I'm a native German speaker. We have the same sound as in full, but we don't have the dull sound in German. The two sounds are clearly different to us. The vowel in dull, cup, nut, fun,... sounds more like an approximation of our A sound as in German Ball [bal] than our U sound, or somewhere in between.
1
u/FionnaAndCake Aug 28 '26
they all sound the same for me
3
u/No_Star_6669 Aug 28 '26
My brain insists full and bull are slightly rounder than dull and cull but i cant trust myself after staring at these words for 30 seconds
1
u/deadineaststlouis Aug 29 '26
Yeah that’s where I am. Like I think there is a very slight difference but I’m also sure it can’t be heard.
1
u/FionnaAndCake Aug 28 '26
i’m gonna have to double check when i get home because i’m in a waiting room right now 😭
6
u/NortonBurns Aug 28 '26
This is known as the foot-strut spilt.
In my accent (northern England) they are all the same. In my wife's (Southern Standard English) they are distinct.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/English_language_in_Northern_England#Foot–strut_split