Pronunciation of "and"

[gr5959]

As a foreign student of English I am puzzled by a phenomenon I noticed recently when listening on Radio Four to a discussion between lecturers in literature from Oxford and Cambridge universities. Some of them pronounced the a in and, hand, have as [ᴂ], exactly as I learned it many years ago and as it appears in the Pronouncing Dictionaries of John Wells and Daniel Jones. However, the others pronounced it more like [ᴧ], the sound in but or in German Land.

Is the latter pronunciation a regional or social phenomenon or does this indicate a general shift in English pronunciation? G.R.

 

[Charlie Bernstein]

They pronounced and und? Maybe English speakers do that somewhere. It just sounds German to me.