The difference is lost in running speech, so that fault falls together with fort and fought as or . The contrast between the two diphthongs is phonetic rather than phonemic, as the can be restored in formal speech: etc., which suggests that the underlying form of is (John Wells says that the vowel is equally correctly transcribed with or , not to be confused with ). Furthermore, a vocalized word-final is often restored before a word-initial vowel, so that fall out (cf. thaw out , with an intrusive ) is somewhat more likely to contain the lateral than fall . The distinction between and exists only word-internally before consonants other than intervocalic . In the morpheme-final position only occurs (with the vowel being realized as ), so that all is always distinct from or . Before the intervocalic is the banned diphthong, though here either of the vowels can occur, depending on morphology (compare falling with aweless ).
