Vowel systems START

The START set of words, corresponding mostly to ME /a/ before /r/, is represented in the Suriname creoles by such words as arse, garden, far, tar, yard, sharp, and shark. Here /r/ is mostly retained. We have one case of early loss (heart) and one case (arse) where metathesis uniquely occurs in a vowel-initial word. Note however that this is parallelled by Jamaican /raas/ and similar forms in other Caribbean creoles.