English-language vowel changes before historic /r/

Template:Short description Template:English phonology topics Template:IPA notice In English, many vowel shifts affect only vowels followed by in rhotic dialects, or vowels that were historically followed by that has been elided in non-rhotic dialects. Most of them involve the merging of vowel distinctions, so fewer vowel phonemes occur before than in other positions of a word.

Overview

In rhotic dialects, is pronounced in most cases. In General American English (GA), is pronounced as an approximant Template:IPAblink or Template:IPAblink in most positions, but after some vowels, it is pronounced as r-coloring. In Scottish English, is traditionally pronounced as a flap Template:IPAblink or trill Template:IPAblink, and there are no r-colored vowels.

In non-rhotic dialects like Received Pronunciation (RP), historic is elided at the end of a syllable, and if the preceding vowel is stressed, it undergoes compensatory lengthening or breaking (diphthongization). Thus, words that historically had often have long vowels or centering diphthongs ending in a schwa , or a diphthong followed by a schwa.

• earth: GA , RP
• here: GA , RP
• fire: GA , RP

In most English dialects, there are vowel shifts that affect only vowels before or vowels that were historically followed by . Vowel shifts before historical fall into two categories: mergers and splits. Mergers are more common, so most English dialects have fewer vowel distinctions before historical than in other positions of a word.

In many North American dialects, there are ten or eleven stressed monophthongs; only five or six vowel (rarely seven) contrasts are possible before a preconsonantal and word-final (beer, bear, burr, bar, bore, bor, boor). Often, more contrasts exist if appears between vowels of different syllables. In some American dialects and in most native English dialects outside North America, for example, mirror and nearer do not rhyme, and some or all of marry, merry, and Mary are pronounced distinctly. (In North America, those distinctions are most likely to occur in New York City, Philadelphia, some of Eastern New England (including Boston), and in conservative Southern accents.) In many dialects, however, the number of contrasts in that position tends to be reduced, and the tendency seems to be towards further reduction. The difference in how the reductions have been manifested represents one of the greatest sources of cross-dialect variation.

Non-rhotic accents in many cases show mergers in the same positions as rhotic accents even though there is often no phoneme present. That results partly from mergers that occurred before the was lost and partly from later mergers of the centering diphthongs and long vowels that resulted from the loss of .

The phenomenon that occurs in many dialects of the United States is one of tense–lax neutralizationTemplate:Sfnp in which the normal English distinction between tense and lax vowels is eliminated.

In some cases, the quality of a vowel before is different from the quality of the vowel elsewhere. For example, in some dialects of American English, the quality of the vowel in more typically does not occur except before , and it is somewhere in between the vowels of maw and mow. It is similar to the vowel of the latter word but without the glide.

It is important to note, however, that different mergers occur in different dialects. Generally, these correlate to accents with rhotic vowels, as opposed to non-rhoticity (as in most of British English) or fully pronounced /r/ (as in Scottish English).

Mergers before intervocalic R

Most North American English dialects merge the lax vowels with the tense vowels before , so "marry" and "merry" have the same vowel as "mare", "mirror" has the same vowel as "mere", "forest" has the same vowel as the stressed form of "for", and "hurry" has the same vowel as "stir" as well as that found in the second syllable of "letter". The mergers are typically resisted by non-rhotic North Americans and are largely absent in areas of the United States that are historically largely non-rhotic.

Hurry–furry merger

The hurry–furry merger occurs when the vowel before intervocalic is merged with . That is particularly a feature in many dialects of North American English but not New York City English, Mid-Atlantic American English, older Southern American English, some speakers of Eastern New England English,Template:Sfnp and speakers of Southeastern New England English. Speakers with the merger pronounce hurry to rhyme with furry and turret to rhyme with stirTemplate:Nbspit.

To occur, the merger requires the [[nurse mergers|Template:Ifsubstnurse mergers]] to be in full effect, which is the case in nearly all English dialects worldwide, particularly outside the British Isles. However, in Scotland, hurry is a perfect rhyme of furry , but also the Template:Smallcaps2 mergers have never developed there, meaning that Template:Smallcaps2, Template:Smallcaps2 and Template:Smallcaps2 can all still exist before both intervocalic and coda ; thus, fur, fern, and fir have distinct vowels: .

Dialects in England, Wales, and most others outside North America maintain the distinction between both sounds, so hurry and furry do not rhyme.Template:Sfnp However, in dialects without the foot–strut split, hurry has an entirely different vowel: (in a number of those dialects, a square–nurse merger is in effect instead).

General American has a three-way merger between the first vowels in hurry and furry and the unstressed vowel in letters. In Received Pronunciation, all of them have different sounds (, and , respectively), and some minimal pairs exist between unstressed and , such as foreword vs. forward . In General American, they collapse to , but in phonemic transcription, they can still be differentiated as and to facilitate comparisons with other accents. General American also often lacks a proper opposition between and , which makes minimal pairs such as unorthodoxy and an orthodoxy variably homophonous as . See the strut–comma merger for more information.

In New Zealand English, there is a consistent contrast between hurry and furry, but the unstressed is lengthened to (phonetically Template:IPAblink) in many positions, particularly in formal or slow speech and especially when it is spelled Template:Angbr. Thus, boarded and bordered might be distinguished as and , which is homophonous in Australian English as and distinguished in Received Pronunciation as and , based on the length and the rounding of . The shift was caused by a complete phonemic merger of and , a weak vowel merger that was generalized to all environments.Template:Sfnp

hurry–furry merger homophones

			IPA
currier	courier
demurrer (legal objection)		demurrer (one who demurs)
furrier (n.)	Fourier	furrier (adj.)

Mary–marry–merry merger

One notable merger of vowels before is the Mary–marry–merry merger, a merging of the vowels (as in the name Carrie or the word marry) and (as in Kerry or merry) with the historical (as in Cary or Mary) whenever they are realized before intervocalic . No contrast exists before a final or preconsonantal , where merged with and with (see nurse mergers) centuries ago.Template:Sfnp The merger is fairly widespread and is complete or nearly complete in most varieties of North American English, but it is rare in other varieties of English. The following variants are common in North America:

• The full Mary–marry–merry merger (also known, in this context, as the three-way merger) is found throughout much of the United States (particularly the Western and Central United States) and in all of Canada except Montreal. This is found in about 57% of American English speakers, according to a 2003 dialect survey. The merger is highlighted in the song Merry Go 'Round, whose central wordplay revolves around "Mary", "marry", and "merry" having the exact same pronunciation in the singer's accent.
• No merger, also known as a three-way contrast, exists in North America primarily in the Northeastern United States and is most clearly documented in the accents of Philadelphia, New Jersey, New York City, Rhode Island, and Boston. In the Philadelphia accent, the three-way contrast is preserved, but merry tends to be merged with Murray (see merry–Murray merger below). The three-way contrast is found in about 17% of American English speakers overall.
• The Mary–marry merger is found alone with 16% of American English speakers overall, with the highest concentration in New England, especially New Hampshire.
• The Mary–merry merger is found alone among 9% of American English speakers overall, concentrated in the American South, especially Louisiana where it is the most common variant, and the Southern part of the Mid-Atlantic region.Template:Sfnp It is also found among Anglophones in Montreal.
• The merry–marry merger is found alone rarely, with about 1% of American English speakers.

In accents without the merger, Mary has the a sound of mare, marry has the "short a" sound of mat, and merry has the "short e" sound of met. In modern Received Pronunciation, they are pronounced as , , and ; in Australian English, as , , and ; in New York City English, as , , and ; and in Philadelphia English, the same as New York City except merry is . There is plenty of variance in the distribution of the merger, with expatriate communities of those speakers being formed all over the country.

The Mary–merry merger is possible in New Zealand, and the quality of the merged vowel is then Template:IPAblink (similar to Template:Smallcaps2 in General American). However, in New Zealand, the vowel in Mary often merges with the Template:Smallcaps2 vowel instead (see near–square merger), which before intervocalic may then merge with , so Mary (phonemically ) can be or instead. In all of those cases, there is a clear distinction between Mary and merry (regardless of how both are pronounced) and marry (with the Template:Smallcaps2 vowel) on the other.Template:Sfnp

Mary–marry–merry merger homophones

			IPA	Notes
AaronTemplate:Efn		Erin		with weak-vowel merger
apparel	-	a peril		with weak-vowel merger
arable	airable	errable
-	airer	error
barrel	-	beryl		with weak-vowel merger before
barrier	-	burier
Barry	-	berry
Barry	-	bury
Carrie	Cary	Kerry
carry	Cary	Kerry
-	chary	cherry
-	dairy	Derry
-	fairy	ferry
Farrell	-	feral		with weak-vowel merger before
farrier	-	ferrier
farrow	Faroe‡	-
farrow	pharaoh‡	-
harrowing	-	heroin		with G-dropping
harrowing	-	heroine		with G-dropping
Harry	hairy	-
-	haring	herring
Harold	-	herald
marry	Mary	merry
parish	-	perish
parry	-	Perry
-	scary	skerry
-	Tara‡	Terra
tarrier	-	terrier
tarry	-	Terry
-	tearable	terrible		with weak-vowel merger before
-	tearer	terror
-	vary‡	very
-	wary	wherry		with wine–whine merger
‡In a New York accent, many of the words spelled with <ar> use .

Merry–Murray merger

The merry–Murray merger, also known as the furry–ferry merger, is a merger of and before , with the resulting vowel being . It is common in the Philadelphia accent,Template:Sfnp which does not usually have the marry–merry merger; its "short a" , as in marry and its SQUARE vowel remain distinct unmerged classes before . Therefore, merry and Murray are both pronounced as , but marry and Mary are distinct from this merged pair (and each other).

merry–Murray merger homophones

		IPA	Notes
ferrier	furrier (n.)
Kerry	curry
merry	Murray
skerry	scurry

Mirror–nearer and mergers

The mergers of and (as in mirror and nearer, or Sirius and serious, respectively) and occur in North American English as a part of pre- laxing, together with the Mary–merry and horse–hoarse mergers. The phonetic outcome of the first merger is either a lax vowel Template:IPAblink, or a somewhat raised vowel that approaches the monophthongal allophone of Template:Smallcaps2: , often diphthongal as . In the case of the merger, it tends to approach the monophthongal variant of Template:Smallcaps2: .Template:Sfnp

The mirror–nearer merger is absent from traditional, local, or non-standard accents of the Southern and Eastern United States, where nearer is pronounced with a tense monophthong or a centering diphthong (phonemicized as or , depending on whether the accent is rhotic or not), whereas mirror has a lax monophthong .Template:Sfnp

In the case of the first merger, only a handful of minimal pairs (e.g., cirrus–serous and Sirius–serious) illustrate the contrast, in addition to morphologically distinct pairs (e.g., spirit–spearTemplate:Nbspit), all of which are rendered homophonous by the merger. Indeed, the number of the words containing is itself low. There are a few minimal pairs contrasting in conservative Received Pronunciation: dour–doer, sure–shoer and cure-queuer. Furthermore, the hurry–furry merger that occurs in most varieties of North American English results in a merger of with , removing almost any trace of the historical Template:Smallcaps2 vowel in this position. Instead, it is a simple replacement of one phoneme with another, so that the word tour is perceived to contain the Template:Smallcaps2 vowel, rather than the Template:Smallcaps2 vowel. However, this change may not hold where morpheme boundaries apply; allowing a qualitative distinction to be maintained between the stressed vowels in tourist (a fairly close back monophthong of variable height) on the one hand, and two-wrist (a fully close monophthong in free variation with a narrow closing diphthong) on the other (cf. traditional RP ). The same applies to the mirror–nearer merger, which laxes the vowel in clearing but not in key ring , cf. RP . Certain words are pronounced as if they contained a morpheme boundary before , notably hero and zero .Template:Sfnp

Some words originally containing the sequence are merged with either Template:Smallcaps2 (see cure–force merger) or, more rarely, Template:Smallcaps2 (see cure–nurse merger) instead of Template:Smallcaps2 + .Template:Sfnp

The mirror–nearer and mergers are not to be confused with the fleece–near and goose–cure mergers that occur in some non-rhotic dialects before a sounded and which do not involve the lax vowels and .Template:Clarify

Merger of and before vowels

Words with a stressed before intervocalic in Received Pronunciation are treated differently in different varieties of North American English. As shown in the table below, in Canadian English, all of them are pronounced with , as in cord. In the accents of Philadelphia, southern New Jersey, and the Carolinas (and traditionally throughout the whole South), those words are pronounced by some with , as in card and so merge with historic prevocalic in words like starry. In New York City, Long Island, and the nearby parts of New Jersey, those words are pronounced with like in Received Pronunciation. However, the sound is met with change to and so still merges with the historic prevocalic in starry.

On the other hand, the traditional Eastern New England accents (especially around Boston), the words are pronounced with , but the cot–caught merger still applies elsewhere. In that regard, it is the same as Canadian , rather than Received Pronunciation . Most of the rest of the United States (marked "General American" in the table), however, has a distinctive mixed system.Template:Sfnp

In accents with the horse–hoarse merger, also includes the historic in words such as glory and force. When an accent also features the cot–caught merger, is typically analyzed as to avoid postulating a separate phoneme that occurs only before . Therefore, both cord and glory are considered to contain the phoneme in California, Canada, and elsewhere. Therefore, in accents with the horse–hoarse merger, and are different analyses of the same word cord, and there may be little to no difference in the realization of the vowel.Template:Sfnp

In the varieties of Scottish English with the cot–caught merger, the vowel is pronounced towards the Template:IPAblink of caught and north. It remains distinct from the Template:IPAblink of force and goat because of the lack of the horse–hoarse merger.Template:Sfnp

Even in the American East Coast without the split (Boston, New York City, Rhode Island, Philadelphia and some of the coastal South), some of the words in the original short-o class often show influence from other American dialects and end up with anyway. For instance, some speakers from the Northeast pronounce Florida, orange, and horrible with but foreign and origin with . The list of words affected differs from dialect to dialect and occasionally from speaker to speaker, which is an example of sound change by lexical diffusion.

Merged homophones

			IPA	Notes
coral	choral			in General American and Canadian English

Mergers before historic postvocalic R

/aʊr/–/aʊər/ merger

The Middle English merger of the vowels with the spellings Template:Angbr and Template:Angbr affects all modern varieties of English and causes words like sour and hour, which originally had one syllable, to have two syllables and so to rhyme with power. In accents that lack the merger, sour has one syllable, and power has two syllables. Similar mergers also occur in which hire gains a syllable and so makes it pronounced like higher, and coir gains a syllable and so makes it pronounced like coyer.

Card–cord merger

The card–cord merger, or Template:Smallcaps2 merger, is a merger of Early Modern English with , which results in the homophony of pairs like card/cord, barn/born and far/for. It is roughly similar to the father–bother merger but before r. The merger is found in some Caribbean English accents, in some West Country accents in England, and in some accents of Southern American English.Template:SfnpTemplate:Sfnp Areas of the United States in which the merger is most common include Central Texas, Utah, and St. Louis, but it is not dominant anywhere and is rapidly disappearing.Template:Sfnp Rhotic dialects with the card–cord merger are some of the only ones without the horse–hoarse merger; this correlation is well-documented in the United States.Template:Sfnp

Template:Smallcaps2 merger homophones

		IPA	Notes
arc	orc
are	or
ark	orc
bark	bork
barn	born
car	cor
card	chord
card	cord
carn	corn
carnie	corny
dark	dork
darn	dorn
far	for
farm	form
farty	forty
lard	lord
mart	Mort
Marty	Morty
spark	spork
stark	stork
tar	tor
tart	tort

Template:Smallcaps2 merger

In Modern English, the reflexes of Early Modern English and are highly susceptible to phonemic mergers with other vowels. Words belonging to that class are most commonly spelled with oor, our, ure, or eur. Examples include poor, tour, cure, Europe (words such as moor ultimately from Old English ō words). Wells refers to the class as the Template:Smallcaps2 words after the keyword of the lexical set to which he assigns them.

In traditional Received Pronunciation and General American, Template:Smallcaps2 words are pronounced with Received Pronunciation ( before a vowel) and General American . However, those pronunciations are being replaced by other pronunciations in many accents.

In Southern England, Template:Smallcaps2 words are often pronounced with , so moor is often pronounced , tour , and poor .Template:Sfnp The traditional form is much more common in Northern England. A similar merger is encountered in many varieties of American English, whose prevailing pronunciations are and ⁓, depending on whether or not the accent is rhotic.Template:SfnpTemplate:Sfnp For many speakers of American English, the historical merges with after palatal consonants, as in "cure", "sure", "pure", and "mature", and merges with in other environments such as in "poor" and "moor".

In Australian and New Zealand English, the centering diphthong has mostly disappeared and is replaced in some words by (a sequence of two separate monophthongs) and in others by (a long monophthong). The outcome that occurs in a particular word is not always predictable although, for example, pure, cure, and tour may rhyme with fewer and have , and poor, moor, and sure rhyme with for and paw and have .

Template:Smallcaps2 merger homophones

		IPA	Notes
boor	boar
boor	Boer
boor	bore
gourd	gaud		non-rhotic with the horse–hoarse merger
gourd	gored
lure	law		non-rhotic with yod-dropping and the horse–hoarse merger
lure	lore		with yod-dropping
lured	laud		non-rhotic with yod-dropping and the horse–hoarse merger
lured	lawed		non-rhotic with yod-dropping and the horse–hoarse merger
lured	lord		with yod-dropping and the horse–hoarse merger
moor	maw		non-rhotic with the horse–hoarse merger
moor	more
poor	paw		non-rhotic with the horse–hoarse merger
poor	pore
poor	pour
spoor	spore
sure	shaw		non-rhotic with the horse–hoarse merger
sure	shore
tour	taw		non-rhotic with the horse–hoarse merger
tour	tor		with the horse–hoarse merger
tour	tore
toured	toward		when toward is not pronounced Template:IPAc-en
your	yaw		non-rhotic with the horse–hoarse merger
your	yore
you're	yaw		non-rhotic with the horse–hoarse merger
you're	yore

Template:Smallcaps2 merger

In East Anglia, a Template:Smallcaps2 merger in which words like fury merge to the sound of furry is common, especially after palatal and palatoalveolar consonants, so sure is often pronounced , which is also a common single-word merger in American English in which the word sure is often . Also, yod-dropping may apply, which yields pronunciations such as for pure. Other pronunciations in the accents that merge cure and fir include pure, curious, bureau and mural.Template:Sfnp

Template:Smallcaps2 merger homophones

		IPA	Notes
cure	cur		with yod-dropping
cure	curr
cured	curd
cured	curred
fury	furry
pure	per
pure	purr

– merger

Varieties of Southern American English, Midland American English and High Tider English may merge words like fire and far or tired and tarred towards of the second words: . That results in a tire–tar merger, but tower is kept distinct.Template:Sfnp

–– merger

Some accents of southern British English, including many types of Received Pronunciation and in Norwich, have mergers of the vowels in words like tire, tar (which already merged with , as in palm), and tower. Thus, the triphthong of tower merges with the of tire (both surface as diphthongal ) or with the of tar. Some speakers merge all three sounds, so tower, tire, and tar are all pronounced .Template:Sfnp

Merger homophones

			IPA
Bauer	buyer	bar
coward	-	card
cower	-	car
cowered	-	card
dowel	dial	-
-	fire	far
flour	flyer	-
flower	flyer	-
hour	ire	are
hour	ire	R/ar
Howard	hired	hard
-	mire	mar
our	ire	are
our	ire	R; ar
owl	aisle	-
owl	isle	-
power	pyre	par
-	pious	pass
sour	sire	-
scour	-	scar
shower	shire	-
showered	-	shard
-	spire	spa
-	spire	spar
tower	tire	tar
tower	tyre	tar
trowel	trial	-
vowel	vial	-

Horse–hoarse merger

The horse–hoarse merger, or Template:Smallcaps2 merger, is the merger of the vowels and before historic , which makes word pairs like horse–hoarse, for–four, war–wore, or–oar, morning–mourning pronounced the same. Historically, the Template:Smallcaps2 class belonged to the Early Modern English phoneme (containing the same vowel as lot), while the Template:Smallcaps2 class was (containing the same vowel as go).

The merger now occurs in most varieties of English. Accents that have resisted the merger include most Scottish and Caribbean accents as well as some African American, Southern American, Indian, Irish, older Maine, South Wales (excluding Cardiff), some Northern English (particularly Manchester), and West Midlands accents.Template:Sfnp

In the non-rhotic British accents that make the distinction, Template:Smallcaps2 is typically merged with Template:Smallcaps2, while the phonological status of Template:Smallcaps2 varies. The areas of Wales that make the distinction merge it with the monophthongal variety of Template:Smallcaps2: (those accents lack the toe–tow merger). In the accents of Northern England that lack the merger, Template:Smallcaps2 is not merged with any other lexical set; it is pronounced around while Template:Smallcaps2-Template:Smallcaps2 is a more open . In the West Midlands, Template:Smallcaps2 corresponds to either Template:Smallcaps2 + Template:Smallcaps2: or a separate phoneme: . The words belonging to each set vary to an extent region to region, for example from Port Talbot tend to use Template:Smallcaps2, instead of the traditional Template:Smallcaps2, in forceps, fortress, important and importance.Template:SfnpTemplate:Sfnp

The distinction was once present in the speech of southern England, the NORTH vowel being sounded as and the FORCE vowel as the centring diphthong . For many speakers, however, as noted by Henry Sweet, this contrast had by 1890 become constricted to word-final positions if the following word began with a consonant (so 'horse' and 'hoarse' had thus become homophonous, but not 'morceau' and 'more so'). In his 1918 Outline of English Phonetics, Daniel Jones described the distinction as optional, but he still considered it to be frequently heard in 1962; the two vowels are differentiated in the first (1884–1928) and second (1989) editions of the Oxford English Dictionary with the caveat that in most varieties of southern British pronunciation the two had become identical; no distinction is drawn in the third edition, as well as in most modern British dictionaries (Chambers being a notable exception). John C. Wells wrote in 2002 that the distinction had become obsolete in RP.

In the United States, the merger is now widespread everywhere but is quite recent in some parts of the country. For example, fieldwork performed in the 1930s by Kurath and McDavid showed the contrast to be robustly present in the speech of the entire Atlantic coast, as well as Vermont, northern and western New York State, Virginia, central and southern West Virginia, and North Carolina.Template:SfnpTemplate:Sfnp However, by the 1990s, surveys showed those areas had completely or almost completely undergone the merger.Template:Sfnp Even in areas in which the distinction is still made, the acoustic difference between the of horse and the of hoarse was found to be rather small for many speakers.Template:Sfnp Some American speakers retain the original length distinction but merge the quality. Therefore, hoarse is pronounced longer than horse .Template:Sfnp

In the 2006 study, most white participants in only these American cities still resisted the merger: Wilmington, North Carolina; Mobile, Alabama; and Portland, Maine.Template:Sfnp A 2013 study of Portland, however, found the merger to have been established "at all age levels". In the 2006 study, even St. Louis, Missouri, which traditionally maintained the horse–hoarse distinction so strongly that it instead merged card and cord, showed that only 50% of the participants still maintained the distinction. The same pattern (a horse–hoarse distinction and a card–cord merger) also exists in a minority of speakers in Texas and Utah. New Orleans prominently shows much variability regarding the merger, including some speakers with no merger at all. Black Americans are rapidly undergoing the merger but are also less likely to do so than white Americans, with a little over half of the 2006 study's black participants maintaining the distinction nationwide.Template:Sfnp

In some Indian, Welsh, and Southern American dialects, the distinction between Template:Smallcaps2 and Template:Smallcaps2 may be maintained through the presence or absence of , with horse being and hoarse being .

The two groups of words merged by the rule are called the lexical sets Template:Smallcaps2 (including horse) and Template:Smallcaps2 (including hoarse) by Wells (1982).

In dialects that maintain the distinction between the two phonemes, Template:Smallcaps2 is indicated almost exclusively by the spellings or, aur and ar (when preceded by /w/), as in horse, aural, war, while Template:Smallcaps2 is generally indicated by the spellings oar, ore, our and oor, as in hoarse, wore, four, door.

However, Template:Smallcaps2 can also sometimes occur in words with the or spelling. This is usually in one or more of the following circumstances:

• When the vowel immediately follows a labial consonant, , as in force itself.
• In past participles in -orn with corresponding past tense forms in -ore, as in torn, or words made from ones with the Template:Smallcaps2 vowel.
• When the /r/ is followed by a vowel within the same morpheme, as in words like glory and flora.

However, it does not occur in all words that fit the above criteria. The following table lists some words irregularly with the Template:Smallcaps2 sound, rather than Template:Smallcaps2, with the cases that make them so and regular Template:Smallcaps2 words by comparison. Note that in non-standard accents many words can shift their pronunciation without changing diaphonemes due to lexical diffusion.

Irregular Template:Smallcaps2 words

Template:Smallcaps2 class	Template:Smallcaps2 class	Variable	Type
afford, borne, divorce, Borneo, deport, export, fjord, force, ford, forge, fort, forth, import, porcelain, porch, pork, port, portal, portend, portent, porter, portrait, proportion, report, sport, support	border, born, California, cavort, cyborg, for, forceps, forfeit, fork, form, fortify, fortunate, fortune, fortress, forty, forward, importunate, Morgan, morgue, Mormon, morning, morph, morpheme, morphine, morse, morsel, mortal, mortar, porn, porpoise, quart, reform, remorse, spork, sward, swarm, swarthy, war, warble, ward, warden, wardrobe, warlock, warm, warmth, warn, warp, Warsaw, wart	importantTemplate:Efn	after labial consonant
fourteen, shorn, sworn, torn, worn	born, forty		derived from Template:Smallcaps2 word
adorable, angora, aurora, borax, boron, censorious, choral, Dora, euphoria, fedora, flora, floral, gloria, glorious, glory, gory, Gregorian, historian, laborious, memorial, meritorious, moratorium, moron, Nora, notorious, oral, oriole, pictorial, porous, pretorian, stentorian, story, thorax, thorium, torus, Tory, uxorious, Victoria(n)	aura, aural, aureole, Laura, Taurus		followed by vowel within the same morpheme
horde, sword			sui generis

Template:Smallcaps2 merger homophones

		IPA	Notes
board	baud		non-rhotic
board	bawd		non-rhotic
boarder	border
bored	baud		non-rhotic
bored	bawd		non-rhotic
borne	bawn		non-rhotic
borne	born
Bourne	bawn		non-rhotic
Bourne	born
bourse	boss		non-rhotic with lot–cloth split
core	caw		non-rhotic
cored	cawed		non-rhotic
cored	chord
cored	cord
cores	cause		non-rhotic
corps	caw		non-rhotic
court	caught		non-rhotic
door	daw		non-rhotic
floor	flaw		non-rhotic
fore	for
fort	fought		non-rhotic
four	for
gored	gaud		non-rhotic
hoarse	horse
hoarse	hoss		non-rhotic with lot–cloth split
lore	law		non-rhotic
more	maw		non-rhotic
mourning	morning
oar	awe		non-rhotic
oar	or
ore	awe		non-rhotic
ore	or
oral	aural
oriole	aureole	ˈɔːrioʊl
pore	paw		non-rhotic
pores	pause		non-rhotic
pour	paw		non-rhotic
roar	raw		non-rhotic
shore	shaw		non-rhotic
shorn	Sean		non-rhotic
shorn	Shawn		non-rhotic
soar	saw		non-rhotic
soared	sawed		non-rhotic
sore	saw		non-rhotic
source	sauce		non-rhotic
sword	sawed		non-rhotic
tore	taw		non-rhotic
tore	tor
torus	Taurus
wore	war
worn	warn
yore	yaw		non-rhotic

Template:Smallcaps2 merger

The Template:Smallcaps2 merger or cheer–chair merger is the merger of the Early Modern English sequences and , as well as the between them, and is found in some accents of Modern English. Many speakers in New ZealandTemplate:SfnpTemplate:SfnpTemplate:Sfnp merge them towards the Template:Smallcaps2 vowel, but some speakers in East Anglia and South Carolina merge them towards the Template:Smallcaps2 vowel.Template:Sfnp The merger is widespread in Caribbean English, including Jamaican English.

Template:Smallcaps2 merger homophones

		IPA (using Template:Angbr IPA for the merged vowel)	Notes
beard	Baird
beard	bared
beer	bare
beer	bear
cheer	chair
clear	Claire
dear	dare
deer	dare
ear	air
ear	ere
ear	heir
fear	fair
fear	fare
fleer	flair
fleer	flare
hear	hair
hear	hare
here	hair
here	hare
leer	lair
leered	laird
mere	mare
near	nare
peer	pair
peer	pare
peer	pear
pier	pair
pier	pare
pier	pear
rear	rare
shear	share
sheer	share
sneer	snare
spear	spare
tear (weep)	tare
tear (weep)	tear (rip)
tier	tare
tier	tear (rip)
weary	wary
weir	ware
weir	wear
we're	ware
we're	wear

Template:Smallcaps2 mergers

Common in a vast majority of modern English dialects worldwide is the merger of as many as five Early Modern English vowels (, , , , and ) into when followed by an before a consonant or at the end of a syllable. Thus, the vowels in words like Template:Wikt-lang, Template:Wikt-lang, and Template:Wikt-lang are the same in almost all modern accents of English. John C. Wells briefly calls it the Template:Smallcaps2 merger.Template:Sfnp When another vowel follows, these are often distinct; contrast the vowels in merry, hurry, weary, mirror, and furry (see the Mary–marry–merry merger, mirror–nearer merger, and hurry–furry merger for details). The major exceptions to most of the Nurse mergers are Scottish English and older Irish English, which also do not have mergers of vowels before following another vowel. What Scottish and older Irish English have in common is rhoticity without r-colored vowels, meaning that /r/ is used at the end of a syllable.

Words and names with historic are spelled Template:Vr as in earn, earth or pearl and include the function words her and were, in Template:Vr which have stayed distinct (see both the meet–meat and pane–pain mergers). The relevant words and names with historic are Template:Vr in a stressed syllable, historic are spelled as a stressed Template:Vr, and is any Template:Vr or Template:Vr. The diaphoneme originates from unstressed vowels before and was not otherwise distinct.

Scottish English and rural Irish English dialects both use sequences of a vowel then not r-colored vowels, and both lack the foot–strut split; which result in comparable developments. However, the actual realizations of the retained Nurse vowels vary. Also, while most of Scottish English has some distinction, more prestigious/ younger Irish English realizes the Nurse merger as . The table below summarizes the overall differences:

Retained NURSE vowel table

EME diaphoneme	Scottish English	older and rural Irish English
(spelled Template:Vr or Template:Vr, like fern)	or
(spelled Template:Vr, like fare)
(spelled Template:Vr, like fir)	(often )	or (however, after labials, )
(spelled Template:Vr, like fur)
(unstressed, like letter)

In Scottish English, mid front and are merged into , paralleling the mid back vowel horse–hoarse merger, which Scottish English lacks. The vowel in fir is usually distinct, but is liable to merge than because their non-rhoticized equivalents and belong to the same phoneme; this parallels the hurry–furry merger. All EME became , which included before . The (letter), (term) and (fur) vowels are fully distinct from each other.

For rural and very conservative Irish English, (in whirl) merges entirely with (in earl), sometimes merging again with . The merged merges again with after labials and coronal plosives (including and becoming and ) in many common words, but this no longer productive.

Template:Smallcaps2 merger homophones

*~				IPA	Notes
Bern	-	-	burn
Bert	-	-	Burt
-	-	bird	burred
Bertie	-	birdie	-		with flapping
berth	-	birth	-
-	earn	-	urn
Ernest	earnest	-	-
Ferd	-	-	furred
herd	heard	-	Hurd
herl	-	-	hurl
-	Hearst	-	hurst
-	-	fir	fur
hertz; Hertz	-	-	hurts
kerb	-	-	curb
mer-	-	myrrh	murr
-	-	mirk	murk
per	-	-	purr
Perl	pearl	-	-
tern	-	-	turn
were	-	whirr	-		with wine–whine merger
-	-	whirl	whorl
-	-	whirled	world		with wine–whine merger

Template:Smallcaps2 merger

Some older Southern American English varieties and some of England's West Country dialects have a partial merger of Template:Smallcaps2. They generally pronounce Template:Smallcaps2 as , which rhymes near with a Template:Smallcaps2 word like sir or fur (compare general English realisations of cue and coo). Words such as beard are then pronounced as .Template:Sfnp Usual word pairs like beer and burr are still distinguished as and . However, is dropped after a consonant cluster (as in queer) or a palato-alveolar consonant (as in cheer), likely because of phonotactic constraints, which then results in a merger with Template:Smallcaps2: , .

There is evidence that the African American Vernacular English in Memphis, Tennessee, merges both and with , so here and hair are both pronounced the same as the strong pronunciation of her.

Template:Smallcaps2 merger

The Template:Smallcaps2 merger (words like perk being pronounced like pork) involves the merger of with and occurs in broadest Geordie.

Some Template:Smallcaps2 words (roughly those spelled with a) have a distinct Template:IPAblink vowel in broad Geordie.Template:Sfnp Therefore, the merger involves only some of the words corresponding to historical in Received Pronunciation.

Template:Smallcaps2 merger homophones

		IPA	Notes
bird	board
bird	bored
burn	born
burn	borne
curse	coarse
curse	course
err	oar
err	or
err	ore
fir	for		the weak form of for is distinct:
fir	fore
fir	four
fur	for		the weak form of for is distinct:
fur	fore
fur	four
heard	hoard
heard	horde
her	hoar
her	whore
herd	hoard
herd	horde
occur	a core
occur	a corps
occurred	a chord
occurred	a cord
occurred	accord
perk	pork
purr	pore
purr	pour
sir	soar
sir	sore
stir	store
stirred	stored
Turk	torque
turn	torn
were	war
were	wore
word	ward
worm	warm

Template:Smallcaps2 merger

The Template:Smallcaps2 merger, or fair–fur merger, is a merger of with that occurs in some accents like Scouse, various other dialects within historic Lancashire, Teesside, Hull, the newer Dublin, and the Belfast accents.Template:Sfnp

Scouse, the accent of Liverpool and the Merseyside area, is the dialect with which the merger is most stereotypically associated. The most common realization in modern Scouse is [eː], but [ɛː] and [ɪː] are also possible. It is also found in many neighbouring regions of historic Lancashire, such as Bolton, Wigan and Blackburn, where the quality is generally a more central [ɜː]~[ɵː]. Shorrocks (1999) reports that in the dialect of Bolton, Greater Manchester, the two sets are generally merged to [ɵ:], but some Template:Smallcaps2 words such as first have a short [ɵ].

The merger can also be found among some speakers in the Teesside conurbation and the Humberside (Hull - East Riding of Yorkshire - North East Lincolnshire) area with a quality intermediate between [ɛː] and [ɜː].

Thorne (2003) reports that the Template:Smallcaps2 merger also occurs in Birmingham, remarking the merger as being "another principally northern characteristic". Tennant (1982) reports Template:Smallcaps2 as being pronounced as /eə/ - which would lead Template:Smallcaps2 and Template:Smallcaps2 as being pronounced the opposite way of their RP pronunciation.

The merger is found in some varieties of African American Vernacular English and is pronounced : "A recent development reported for some AAE (in Memphis, but likely found elsewhere)." This is exemplified in Chingy's song "Right Thurr", in which the merger is spelled in the title.

Labov (1994) also reports such a merger in some western parts of the United States "with a high degree of r constriction".

Template:Smallcaps2 merger homophones

		IPA (using Template:Angbr IPA for the merged vowel)	Notes
air	err
Baird	bird
Baird	burd
Baird	burred
bairn	burn
bare	burr
bared	bird
bared	burd
bared	burred
barely	burly
bear	burr
Blair	blur
blare	blur
cairn	kern
care	cur
care	curr
cared	curd
cared	curred
cared	Kurd
chair	chirr
ere	err
fair	fir
fair	fur
fairy	furry
fare	fir
fare	fur
hair	her
haired	heard
haired	herd
hare	her
heir	err
mare	myrrh
pair	per
pair	purr
pare	per
pare	purr
pear	per
pear	purr
spare	spur
stair	stir
stare	stir
ware	were
ware	whir		with wine–whine merger
wear	were
wear	whir		with wine–whine merger
where	were
where	whir		with wine–whine merger

See also

• Phonological history of English
• Phonological history of English vowels
• Coil–curl merger
• English phonology
• History of English
• R-colored vowel

Sources

• Template:Accents of English