Thank you for correcting my careless notation. I often forget about the differences between some of the u-sounds, because my native language (Russian) has just

Thank you for correcting my careless notation. I often forget about the differences between some of the u-sounds, because my native language (Russian) has just one. To me, "look" and "Luke" actually sounds like a passable rhyme, and in general one feature common to nearly everyone who speaks English with a Slavic accent is that they do not distinguish between [ʊ] and [u:]. I know the difference intellectually, and I try to pronounce them correctly, but I probably still get it wrong every now and then. I believe [ʊ] used to be [u], but I don't remember when this quality change happened. I think there are still current dialects in the center and north of England where this split didn't happen, so they would have [lʊv]. Here's an interesting self-aware example: http://linguistics.stackexchange.com/questions/6911/understanding-the-strut-vowel-as-a-listener-without-the-split http://linguistics.stackexchange.com/questions/6911/understa...