Episode 3: kit [ɪ]

This is it. Hosts Phil Thompson and Eric Armstrong chat about the phoneme /ɪ/ and the lexical set ‘kit’. On the way, they discuss the history of the vowel, compare it to the /i/ ‘fleece’ vowel, and /ə/ ‘schwa,’ delve into accent variations of ‘kit’, pin/pen in the American South, and the traditional usage of the terms “dialect” and “acccent” in North American theatre.

Phil, at one point says that “language is a dialect with a navy.” He was, of course, referring to the famous Yiddish quote from Max Weinreich: "A shprakh iz a diyalekt mit an armey un a flot" —'A language is a dialect with an army and a navy.'