Liverpool English (LE) is the variety of English spoken in Liverpool and much of the surrounding county of Merseyside, in the north-west of England. After London, the north-west of England is the most densely populated of all regions in England and Wales, with the population of Liverpool standing at around 450,000. LE itself is said to have developed in the middle of the 19th century, after rapid immigration from Ireland during the Irish potato famines of 1845–1847 (see Knowles 1973). Arguably as a result of this immigration, as we will see, there are some similarities between LE's phonological system and those of Irish Englishes. Of course, as we might expect, the phonological system of LE maintains its connection with other northern Englishes, too.

Hamont is a small town located on the north-eastern edge of the Belgian province of Limburg, on the national border with the Netherlands. It is situated about 30 km south of Eindhoven and 15 km west of Weert in the Netherlands. The town has about 13,500 inhabitants. According to Belemans, Kruijsen & Van Keymeulen (1998), the dialect of Hamont belongs to the West Limburg dialects (subclassification: Dommellands). Limburg dialects occupy a unique position among the Belgian and Dutch dialects in that their prosodic system has a lexical tone distinction, which is traditionally referred to as SLEEPTOON ‘dragging tone’ and STOOTTOON ‘push tone’. In line with recent conventions, stoottoon is referred to as Accent 1 and transcribed as superscript 1; sleeptoon is referred to as Accent 2 and is transcribed as superscript 2 (cf. Schmidt 1986).

Tera is the Hausa and English name for the Nyimatli [nimaáli] people as they call themselves, and their language. Their communities lie principally in the north and east of present-day Gombe State and in the adjoining area of Borno State in north-eastern Nigeria. There are approximately 100,000 people who speak the language as their mother tongue (Gordon & Grimes 2005: 175), many of whom also use Hausa as the local lingua franca; increasing numbers are trilingual as the result of the growing importance of English in commerce and education.

Australian English is a regional dialect of English which shares its phonemic inventory with Southern British English through the historical connection with the dialects of the British Isles (in particular London) in the late 18th and early 19th centuries (Cochrane 1989, Yallop 2003, Leitner 2004). Speakers of present-day Australian English are typically those who are born in Australia or who immigrate at an early age when peer influence is maximal. Such speakers fall into three major dialect subgroups: Standard Australian English, Aboriginal English and Ethnocultural Australian English varieties. Standard Australian English (SAusE) is the dominant dialect and is used by the vast majority of speakers. It is a salient marker of national identity, and is used in broadcasting and in public life. The Aboriginal and Ethnocultural varieties are minority dialects allowing speakers to express their cultural identity within the multicultural Australian context (Cox & Palethorpe 2006, Clyne, Eisikovits & Tollfree 2001).