English-language vowel changes before historic /r/

The hurry–furry merger occurs when the vowel /ʌ/ before intervocalic /r/ is merged with /ɜ/. 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,[2] and speakers of Southeastern New England English. Speakers with the merger pronounce hurry to rhyme with furry and turret to rhyme with stir it. To occur, the merger requires the nurse mergers to be in full effect, which is the case outside the British Isles. In Scotland, hurry /ˈhʌre/ is a perfect rhyme of furry /ˈfʌre/, but there is no merger since the vowel /ɜ/ has never developed because of the lack of nurse mergers. That means that STRUT, DRESS and KIT can all occur before both intervocalic and coda /r/ and so fur, fern, and fir have distinct vowels: /fʌr, fɛrn, fɪr/.

Dialects in England, Wales, and most others outside North America maintain the distinction between both sounds and so hurry and furry do not rhyme.[2] However, in dialects without the foot-strut split, hurry has an entirely different vowel: /ˈhʊri/ (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 (/ʌ/, /ɜː/ and /ə/, respectively), and some minimal pairs exist between unstressed /ɜː/ and /ə/, such as foreword /ˈfɔːwɜːd/ vs. forward /ˈfɔːwəd/. In General American, they collapse to [ˈfɔrwɚd], but in phonemic transcription, they can still be differentiated as /ˈfɔrwɜrd/ and /ˈfɔrwərd/ to facilitate comparisons with other accents. General American also often lacks a proper opposition between /ʌ/ and /ə/, which makes minimal pairs such as unorthodoxy and an orthodoxy variably homophonous as /ənˈɔrθədɑksi/.[3] See the strut–comma merger for more information.

In New Zealand English, there is a consistent contrast between hurry and furry, but the unstressed /ə/ is lengthened to /ɜː/ (phonetically [ɵː]) in many positions, particularly in formal or slow speech and especially when it is spelled ⟨er⟩. Thus, boarded and bordered might be distinguished as /ˈbɔːdəd/ and /ˈbɔːdɜːd/, which is homophonous in Australian English as /ˈbɔːdəd/ and distinguished in Received Pronunciation as /ˈbɔːdɪd/ and /ˈbɔːdəd/, based on the length and the rounding of /ɜː/. The shift was caused by a complete phonemic merger of /ɪ/ and /ə/, a weak vowel merger that was generalized to all environments.[4]

One notable merger of vowels before /r/ is the Mary–marry–merry merger,[5] a merging of the vowels /æ/ (as in the name Carrie or the word marry) and /ɛ/ (as in Kerry or merry) with the historical /eɪ/ (as in Cary or Mary) whenever they are realized before intervocalic /r/. No contrast exists before a final or preconsonantal /r/, where /æ/ merged with /ɑ/ and /ɛ/ with /ɜ/ (see nurse mergers) centuries ago.[6] The merger is fairly widespread and is complete or nearly complete in most varieties of North American English,[sample 1] 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.[5] 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 York City, Rhode Island, and Boston; 17% of Americans have no merger.[7][sample 2] In the Philadelphia accent, the three-way contrast is preserved, but merry tends to be merged with Murray, and ferry can likewise be a homophone of furry (see merry–Murray merger below). The three-way contrast is found in about 17% of American English speakers overall.[5]
• The Mary–marry merger is found alone, with 16% of American English speakers overall, particularly in the Northeast.[5]
• The Mary–merry merger is found alone among Anglophones in Montreal and in the American South, with 9% of American English speakers overall, particularly in the East.[5][8]
• 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 [ˈmɛːɹi], [ˈmaɹi], and [ˈmɛɹi]; in Australian English, as [ˈmeːɹiː], [ˈmæɹiː ~ ˈmaɹiː], and [ˈmeɹiː]; in New York City English, as [ˈmeɹi⁓ˈmɛəɹi], [ˈmæɹi], and [ˈmɛɹi]; and in Philadelphia English, the same as New York City except merry is [ˈmɛɹi⁓ˈmʌɹi]. 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 [e̝] (similar to KIT in General American). However, in New Zealand, the vowel in Mary often merges with the NEAR vowel /iə/ instead (see near–square merger), which before intervocalic /r/ may then merge with /iː/ and so Mary (phonemically /ˈmeəriː/) can be [ˈmiəɹiː] or [ˈmiːɹiː] instead. In all of those cases, there is a clear distinction between Mary and merry (regardless of how both are pronounced) and marry /ˈmɛriː/ (with the TRAP vowel) on the other.[9]

The merry–Murray merger is a merger of /ɛ/ and /ʌ/ before /r/. That is common in the Philadelphia accent,[10] which does not usually have the marry–merry merger, but its "short a" /æ/, as in marry, is a distinct unmerged class before /r/. Therefore, merry and Murray are pronounced the same, but marry is pronounced differently.

The mergers of /ɪr/ and /iːr/ (as in mirror and nearer, or Sirius and serious, respectively) and /ʊr/–/uːr/ occur in North American English as a part of pre-/r/ laxing, together with Mary–merry merger and the horse–hoarse merger in most dialects with the first two mergers. The phonetic outcome of the first merger is either a lax vowel [ɪ], or a somewhat raised vowel that approaches the monophthongal allophone of FLEECE: [i̞], often diphthongal as [ɪə ~ iə]. In the case of the /ʊr/–/uːr/ merger, it tends to approach the monophthongal variant of GOOSE: [ʊ̝].[11]

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 [i] or a centering diphthong [iə ~ ɪə] (phonemicized as /i/ or /ɪə/, depending on whether the accent is rhotic or not), whereas mirror has a lax monophthong [ɪ].[12]

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–spear it), all of which are rendered homophonous by the merger. Indeed, the amount of the words containing /ɪr/ is itself low. No minimal pairs exist for the /ʊr/–/uːr/ merger, due to the extreme scarcity of the /ʊr/ sequence in dialects of English with the foot–strut split (furthermore, the hurry–furry merger that occurs in most varieties of North American English results in a merger of /ʌr/ with /ɜr/, removing almost any trace of the historical FOOT vowel in this position). Instead, it is a simple replacement of one phoneme with another, so that the word tour /tʊr/ is perceived to contain the FOOT vowel, rather than the GOOSE vowel. However, this change may not hold where morpheme boundaries apply, allowing a qualitative distinction to be maintained between the stressed vowels in tourist /ˈtʊrəst/ (a fairly close back monophthong of variable height) on the one hand and two-wrist /ˈturɪst/ (a fully close monophthong in free variation with a narrow closing diphthong) on the other hand (cf. traditional RP /ˈtʊərɪst, ˈtuːrɪst/). The same applies to the mirror–nearer merger, which laxes the vowel in clearing /ˈklɪrɪŋ/ but not in key ring /ˈkirɪŋ/, cf. RP /ˈklɪərɪŋ, ˈkiːrɪŋ/. Certain words are pronounced as if they contained a morpheme boundary before /r/, notably hero /ˈhiroʊ/ and zero /ˈziroʊ/.[13]

Some words originally containing the /uːr/ sequence are merged with either FORCE (see cure–force merger) or, more rarely, NURSE (see cure–nurse merger) instead of FOOT + /r/.[14]

The mirror–nearer and /ʊr/–/uːr/ mergers are not to be confused with the fleece–near and goose–cure mergers that occur in some non-rhotic dialects before a sounded /r/ and which do not involve the lax vowels /ɪ/ and /ʊ/.

Words with a stressed /ɒ/ before intervocalic /r/ 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 [-ɔr-], 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 [-ɑr-], as in card and so merge with historic prevocalic /ɑr/ in words like starry. In New York City, Long Island, and the nearby parts New Jersey, those words are pronounced with [ɒr], like in Received Pronunciation. However, the sound is met with hypercorrection of /ɑr/ and so still merges with the historic prevocalic /ɑr/ in starry.[15]

On the other hand, the traditional Eastern New England accents (famously that of Boston), the words are pronounced with [-ɒr-], but [ɒ] is a free vowel because of the cot–caught merger. In that regard, it is the same as Canadian /ɒ/, rather than Received Pronunciation /ɒ/. Most of the rest of the United States (marked "General American" in the table), however, has a distinctive mixed system. Most words are pronounced as in Canada, the five words in the left-hand column are typically pronounced with [-ɑr-],[16] and the East Coast regions are apparently slowly moving toward that system.

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

In the varieties of Scottish English with the cot-caught merger, the vowel is pronounced towards the [ɔ] of caught and north. It remains distinct from the [o] of force and goat because of the lack of the horse-hoarse merger.

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 [-ɔr-] anyway. For instance, some speakers from the Northeast pronounce Florida, orange, and horrible with [-ɑr-] but foreign and origin with [-ɔr-]. 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.

The Middle English merger of the vowels with the spellings ⟨our⟩ and ⟨ower⟩ 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.[17]

The card–cord merger, or cord–card merger, is a merger of Early Modern English [ɑr] with [ɒr], 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.[18][19] Areas of the United States in which the merger is most common include Central Texas, Utah, and St. Louis, but it is not dominant even there and is rapidly disappearing.[20] In the United States, dialects with the card–cord merger are some of the only ones without the horse–hoarse merger, and there is a well-documented correlation between them. [20]

In Modern English, the reflexes of Early Modern English /uːr/ and /iur/ 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 cure words after the keyword of the lexical set to which he assigns them.

In traditional Received Pronunciation and General American, cure words are pronounced with Received Pronunciation /ʊə/ (/ʊər/ before a vowel) and General American /ʊr/.[21] However, those pronunciations are being replaced by other pronunciations in many accents.

In Southern England, cure words are often pronounced with /ɔː/ and so moor is often pronounced /mɔː/, tour /tɔː/, and poor /pɔː/.[22] 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 [oə] and [or]⁓[ɔr], depending on whether or not the accent is rhotic.[23][24] For many speakers of American English, the historical /iur/ merges with /ɜr/ after palatal consonants, as in "cure," "sure," "pure," and "mature", or /ɔr/ in other environments such as in "poor" and "moor."[25]

In Australian and New Zealand English, the centering diphthong /ʊə/ has practically disappeared and is replaced in some words by /ʉːə/ (a sequence of two separate monophthongs) and in others by /oː/ (a long monophthong).[26] The outcome that occurs in a particular word is not always predictable although, for example, pure, cure, and tour rhyme with fewer and have /ʉːə/, and poor, moor, and sure rhyme with for and paw and have /oː/.

In East Anglia, a cure–nurse merger in which words like fury merge to the sound of furry [ɜː] is common, especially after palatal and palatoalveolar consonants and so sure is often pronounced [ʃɜː], which is also a common single-word merger in American English in which the word sure is often /ʃɜr/. Also, yod-dropping may apply, which yields pronunciations such as [pɜː] for pure. Other pronunciations in the accents that merge cure and fir include /pjɜː(r)/ pure, /ˈk(j)ɜːriəs/ curious, /ˈb(j)ɜːroʊ/ bureau and /ˈm(j)ɜːrəl/ mural.[27]

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: /ɑr/. That results in a tire–tar merger, but tower is kept distinct.[28]

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 /ɑː/, as in palm), and tower. Thus, the triphthong /aʊə/ of tower merges with the /aɪə/ of tire (both surface as diphthongal [ɑə]) or with the /ɑː/ of tar. Some speakers merge all three sounds and so tower, tire, and tar are all pronounced [tɑː].[29]

The horse–hoarse merger, or north–force merger, is the merger of the vowels /ɔː/ and /oʊ/ before historic /r/, which makes word pairs like horse–hoarse, for–four, war–wore, or–oar, morning–mourning pronounced the same. Historically, the NORTH class belonged to the /ɒ/ phoneme (as in contemporary Received Pronunciation lot), but the FORCE class was /oː/ (as in Scottish English go), which is similar to the contrast between the short lax /ɔ/ and the long tense /oː/ in German.

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) and West Midlands English.[30][31]

In the non-rhotic British accents that make the distinction, NORTH is typically merged with THOUGHT, and FORCE varies. The areas of Wales that make the distinction merge it with the monophthongal variety of GOAT: /ˈfoːs/ (those accents lack the toe–tow merger), but in the West Midlands, it corresponds to GOAT + COMMA: /ˈfʌʊəs/ or a separate /oə/ phoneme: /ˈfoəs/. The words belonging to each set vary to an extent region to region, for example from Port Talbot tend to use FORCE, instead of the traditional NORTH, in forceps, fortress, important and importance.[32][33]

The distinction was once present in the speech of southern England, the NORTH vowel being sounded as /ɔː/ and the FORCE vowel as the centring diphthong /ɔə/;[34] for many speakers, however, as noted by Henry Sweet, this contrast had by 1890 become constricted to word-final positions in which the following word did not begin with a vowel ('horse' and 'hoarse' had thus become homophonous, as did 'aurochs' and 'oar ox' but not 'morceau' and 'more so').[35] In his 1918 Outline of English Phonetics, Daniel Jones describes the distinction as optional, but he still considers it to be frequently heard in 1962;[36][37] 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 have become identical;[38][39] no distinction is drawn in the third edition,[40] 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.[34]

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 shows 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[41] .[20] However, by the 1990s, surveys showed those areas had completely or almost completely undergone the merger.[42] Even in areas in which the distinction is still made, the acoustic difference between the [ɔɹ] of horse and the [oɹ] of hoarse was found to be rather small for many speakers.[20] Some American speakers retain the original length distinction but merge the quality. Therefore, hoarse [hɔːrs] is pronounced longer than horse [hɔrs].[43]

In the 2006 study, most white participants in only these American cities still resisted the merger: Wilmington, North Carolina; Mobile, Alabama; and Portland, Maine.[44] A 2013 study of Portland, however, found the merger to have been established "at all age levels".[45] 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.[46]

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

Words with the FORCE vowel that are not written with an obviously long vowel are relatively more likely to occur in the following circumstances:

• When the vowel immediately follows a labial consonant, /m p b f v w (ʍ)/, as force itself.
• In past participles in -orn whose corresponding past tense forms are in -ore, as in torn.
• in vowels ending with a silent e, as in horde.
• derived from a word where the long vowel spelling is used

The near–square merger or cheer–chair merger is the merger of the Early Modern English sequences /iːr/ and /ɛːr/, as well as the /eːr/ between them, and is found in some accents of Modern English. Many speakers in New Zealand[48][49][50] merge them towards the NEAR vowel, but some speakers in East Anglia and South Carolina merge them towards the SQUARE vowel.[51] The merger is widespread in Caribbean English, including Jamaican English.

The fern–fir–fur merger is the merger of as many as five Middle English vowels /ɛ, ɪ, ʊ, ɜ, ə/ into one vowel when historically followed by /r/ in the coda of a syllable. The merged vowel is /ɜː/ in Received Pronunciation and /ɜr/ (phonetically a syllabic approximant [ɹ̩] or [ɻ̍]) in American, Canadian, and Irish English. As a result of the merger, the vowels in words like fir, fur, and fern are the same in almost all modern accents of English. The exceptions are Scottish English, in which /ɪ/ and /ə/ belong to the same phoneme and so /ər/ covers both LETTER and one of the NURSE vowels, and some varieties of Irish English. John C. Wells calls it briefly the NURSE merger.[52] The three separate vowels are retained by some speakers of Scottish English. What has been called the term–nurse merger is resisted by some speakers of Irish English, but the full merger is found in almost all other dialects of English.

In local working-class Dublin, the West and South-West Region, and other very conservative and traditional varieties in Ireland, ranging from the south to the north of the island, the typical English phoneme /ɜːr/ actually retains an opposition as two separate phonemes: /ɛːr/ and /ʊːr/. For example, the words earn and urn are pronounced differently in those traditional varieties: as /ʊ/ NURSE vowel after a labial consonant, as in fern; when it is spelled as "ur" or "or", as in word; or when it is spelled as "ir" after an alveolar stop, as in dirt. In all other cases, the NURSE vowel is then pronounced as /ɛ/. Examples with /ɛ/ include certain [ˈsɛːrtn̩], chirp [tʃɛːrp], circle [ˈsɛːrkəl], earn [ɛːrn], earth [ɛːrt], girl [ɡɛːrl], germ [dʒɛːrm], heard or herd [hɛːrd], irk [ɛːrk], and tern [tɛːrn]. Examples for /ʊ/ include bird [bʊːrd], dirt [dʊːrt], first [fʊːrst], murder [ˈmʊːrdɚ], nurse [ˈnʊːrs], turn [tʊːrn], third or turd [tʊːrd], urn [ʊːrn], work [wʊːrk], and world [wʊːrld]. In non-local middle- and upper-class Dublin and in younger and supraregional Irish accents, the difference is seldom preserved, and both variants of NURSE are typically merged as [ɝː], the same as or similar to most American accents.

In Scottish English, a distinct nurse or fur vowel is also used in these cases:

• The spelling ⟨or⟩ in words like attorney, word, work, world, worm, worse, worship, worst, wort, worth, and worthy. The surviving /ʌr/ (barring the hurry–furry merger) can be compared to words like worry.[53]
• The spelling ⟨our⟩ in words like adjourn, courteous, courtesy, journal, journey, scourge, and sojourn. The surviving /ʌr/ (barring the hurry–furry merger) can be compared to words like courage, flourish, and nourish.[54][55]

In Scottish English, a distinct term or fern vowel is used in these cases:

• Were (past tense of to be)
• Her
• Words like dearth, earl, early, earn, earnest, Earp, earth, heard, hearse, Hearst, learn, learnt, pearl, rehearse, search, and yearn.

Some older Southern American English varieties and some of England's West Country dialects have a partial merger of nurse-near. They generally pronounce near as /jɜr/, which rhymes with nurse (compare general English realisations of cue and coo). Words such as beard are then pronounced as /bjɜrd/.[56] Usual word pairs like beer and burr are still distinguished as /bjɜr/ and /bɜr/. However, /j/ 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 nurse: /kwɜr/, /tʃɜr/.

There is evidence that the African American Vernacular English in Memphis, Tennessee, merges both /ɪr/ and /ɛər/ with /ɜr/ and so here and hair are both pronounced the same as the strong pronunciation of her.[57]

The nurse–north merger (words like perk being pronounced like pork) involves the merger of /ɜː/ with /ɔː/ and occurs in broadest Geordie.[58]

Some THOUGHT words (roughly those spelled with a) have a distinct [aː] vowel in broad Geordie.[59] Therefore, the merger involves only some of the words corresponding to historical /ɔː/ in Received Pronunciation.

The square–nurse merger, or fair–fur merger, is a merger of /ɛə/ with /ɜː/ (/eɪr/ and /ɜːr/ in rhotic accents) that occurs in some accents like the Liverpool, the newer Dublin, and Belfast accents.[60] The phonemes are merged to [ɛː] in Kingston-upon-Hull and Middlesbrough.[61][62][63]

Shorrocks reports that in the dialect of Bolton, Greater Manchester, the two sets are generally merged to /ɵ:/, but some NURSE words such as first have a short /ɵ/.[64]

The merger is found in some varieties of African American Vernacular English and is pronounced IPA: [ɜɹ]: "A recent development reported for some AAE (in Memphis, but likely found elsewhere)."[65] 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."