British English pronunciation doubt on /ɘʊ/ words (Queen's English exagerrated!) This is a question for all British English pronunciation teachers. I've been studying the phonetics of the sound /ɘʊ/ in RP English. After listening to many words containing the sound I have noticed that there are some words which have the phoneme /ɘʊ/ but I am not convinced you pronounce them all the same. Let me give you an example. Take the word 'old'. It contains the /ɘʊ/ sound, according to the online dictionaries. However, if you compare the words 'coat' (which also contains the /ɘʊ/ sound) and 'old' there is a slight difference between the first vowel sound and how you produce it. The first vowel sound in 'old' is more like the /ɒ/ sound, especially if you say it at normal speed (not super slow like the Queen). However the first vowel sound in 'coat' is pronounced differently (the suprise sound, 'oh'), and uses a slightly different mouth movement (very subtle though). My accent is RP (from South of England) but not a strong as the Queen's RP English. I'm guessing that the RP English sound chart was based around the Queen's RP accent and not a standard southern English accent. So maybe that's why there's the doubt. In my opinion, the phonemic RP English chart should not be based on a very posh Queen-like accent, but on a more standard southern English accent. I would be interested to get your thoughts on the matter and see if anyone other teachers have come to a similar conclusion.