text: 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 ).
  In Cockney, the main difference between  and ,  and  as well as  and  is length, not quality, so that his , merry  and Polly  differ from here's , Mary  and poorly  (see cure-force merger) mainly in length. In broad Cockney, the contrast between  and  is also mainly one of length; compare hat  with out  (cf. the near-RP form , with a wide closing diphthong).
  "Long" and "short" vowel letters in spelling and the classroom teaching of reading
  In the teaching of English, vowels are commonly said to have a "short" and a "long" version. The terms "short" and "long" are not accurate from a linguistic point of view—at least in the case of Modern English—as the vowels are not actually short and long versions of the same sound; the terminology is a historical holdover due to their arising from proper vowel length in Middle English. The phonetic values of these vowels are shown in the table below.