Response to Aaron J Dinkin s Edits I sort of understand about the Midland thing but where did you get your information about ay and the allophones of ey In HOVOE which seems to be extremely reliable and pretty new it says that ay is raised to e I ll admit I thought that was a bit weird too but there must have been a reason they narrowly transcribed it that way It doesn t say in that book that the phenomenon that s occurring in Philadelphia is exactly the same thing as what s going on in Canada so the allophone could be slightly different than that of Canada It also said there was a general raising and fronting of i and e it didn t say anything about raising and fronting only occurring before consonants I just want to know your sources for that information