Joe wrote, quoting myself where indicated:

> [O:], for |our|, |ore| and |ure|, for me.  I have [E:] for most of what
> is usually cited in RP as [e@], and [I:] for [i@], fairly frequently
> (though by no means universally.  Also, 'our'(the word) is [A:], which
> is actually opposed to 'hour', which is [Au@].

[stE:] for "stare" is certainly the pronunciation that comes across as
most characteristically English to my ears.

I think of "our" the way I pronounce it as a unique diphthong
approximately like [&6] (might be [&V] when the mouth is closing in
preparation for the onset of the next word). The basic idea is that
the vowel remains open, but slides from front-ish to relatively
back-ish. (I have a theory about the underlying phonology, but that's
another story.)

I definitely find my pronunciation of "our" much closer to Tristan's
than to Joe's, because it's a diphthong, though I will agree that it's
slightly closer to Joe's than Tristan's is.

> >  * Consonant wise, the main difference is that the 't' on the end of
> >    'stout' is much more aspirated.
>
> The only one that surprises me is this one.

Surprised that I think of it as peculiarily English? In the accent of
RP speakers, I routinely notice a very strong aspiration of /t/ when
it occurs at the end of a word (as in 'stout' and 'stint'). I
certainly find it a marker of stereotypical British RP.

John Cowan wrote:

> More specifically, *not* having back vowels, esp. low ones, is a
> marker of Australasian-ness.

I know of a couple of phenomenon which could arguably be held as
examples of this, but as a generalisation it is new to me. Do you
mind elaborating?

Adrian.