been attempts to eradicate the dialect since the 19th century which were unsuccessful. John Ward writing in 1843 noted that the Potteries dialect was "now almost banished by the schoolmasters assiduous care". Birks also writes that dialect is still used widely amongst local residents, and is toned down when speaking to visitors to the city to be intelligible to them, which shows the dialect is still present in everyday conversation. He also states that there is "a growing interest in preserving, reading about and speaking dialects." Phonology The linguist Graham Pointon, a native of the Potteries, has noted the following phonological differences between RP and the modern Potteries accent. There is no phoneme , although occurs as an allophone of before , thus, singer rhymes with finger (so-called ng-coalescence). The three RP vowels are replaced by two, with different distributions. Most cases of RP are realised with a sound , so that pairs such as but-bought, pun-pawn, full-fall are distinguished by length alone. Some cases of also use , whereas other words (e.g. book) use a long vowel As with most other dialects in the northern half of England, there is no trap-bath split. The phoneme is mostly restricted to stressed word-final position (e.g. spa) and to words when an historic or has been elided (e.g. palm, farm). H-dropping is common, and conversely any word beginning with a vowel may be emphasised with an initial . The traditional dialect differs much more from RP, but (as with all dialects in England) it is now confined to older residents. The Potteries dialect descends from the West Midlands dialect of Middle English (ME), whereas modern Standard English descends from the East Midlands dialect. ME became in the West Midland area, so that man is pronounced , and cannot is . ME has diphthongised in many cases to . This has been kept distinct from ME which has become a closer monophthongal vowel . Therefore, see is pronounced whereas say is pronounced . ME has in many cases merged with ME – wife , mice . Elsewhere it has undergone the general vowel shift to , and then simplified to and then to my wife is often called (= “my lady”). ME has opened to : for example, tell is pronounced . In final , the has vocalized and the backed and risen to form a diphthong : therefore, ball is pronounced .