The mergers have not occurred in local Dublin, West/South-West, and other very conservative and traditional Irish English varieties ranging from the south to the north. Whereas the vowels corresponding to historical , and have merged to in most dialects of English, the local Dublin and West/South-West accents retain a two-way distinction: versus . The distribution of these two in these accents does not always align to what their spelling suggests: is used when after a labial consonant (e.g. "fern"), when spelled as "ur" or "or" (e.g. "word"), or when spelled as "ir" after an alveolar stop (e.g. "dirt"); is used in all other situations. However, there are apparent exceptions to these rules; John C. Wells describes "prefer" and "per" as falling under the class, despite the vowel in question following a labial. The distribution of versus is listed below in some other example words: