English: (where the short A pronunciation survived), (where the pronunciation with lengthened A was adopted), (where the normal development of the AU diphthong was followed), and (where the A was lengthened before the Great Vowel Shift). The table below shows the pronunciation of many of these words, classified according to the lexical sets of John Wells: for , for RP vs. General American , for , for , for . Although these words were often spelled with both and in Middle English, the current English spelling generally reflects the pronunciation, with used only for those words which have ; one common exception is aunt. * Not a French loanword In some cases, both the and the forms have survived into modern English. For example, from Sandre, a Norman French form of the name Alexander, the modern English surnames Sanders and Saunders are both derived. split The split is a vowel split that occurs mainly in the southern and mainstream varieties of English in England (including Received Pronunciation), in the Southern Hemisphere accents of English (Australian English, New Zealand English, South African English), and also to a lesser extent in older Boston English, by which the Early Modern English phoneme was lengthened in certain environments and ultimately merged with the long of father. Similar changes took place in words with ; see lot–cloth split. merger The merger is a merger of and occasionally occurring in Received Pronunciation. It is the outcome of lowering the vowel to for those speakers who have a fronted vowel. The merger is likely not categorical, which means that the phonemes remain distinct in their underlying form, as they usually do in RP. In contemporary RP, is the norm for , whereas is usually backer and somewhat higher than , or even . In the early days of -lowering, the fully open pronunciation of was typically heard as a merger regardless of the exact phonetic realization of . In cockney, and can come close as and . Thus, cockney may be an example of a language variety that contrasts near-front and fully front vowels of the same height, roundedness and length, though the former tends to undergo lengthening before (see bad-lad split). In General Australian English, the vowels are distinguished as and before non-nasal consonants. A three-way merger of , and is a common pronunciation error among L2 speakers of English whose native language is Italian, Spanish