English-language vowel changes before historic /r/

The hurry–furry merger occurs when the vowel /ʌ/ before intervocalic /r/ is merged with /ɜ/, particularly a feature in most dialects of North American English, although it is resisted in New York City English, Mid-Atlantic American English, older Southern American English, and some speakers of Eastern New England English.[2] Speakers with this merger pronounce hurry so that it rhymes with furry, and turret so that it rhymes with stir it.

British English and most other English outside of North America maintains the distinction between these two sounds, so that in their dialects, hurry and furry do not rhyme.[2]

In General American there is a three-way merger between the first vowels in hurry and furry as well as the unstressed vowel in letters. In RP, all of these have different sounds (/ʌ/, /ɜː/ and /ə/, respectively) and there exist some minimal pairs between unstressed /ɜː/ and /ə/, such as foreword /ˈfɔːwɜːd/ vs. forward /ˈfɔːwəd/. In GA, these collapse to [ˈfɔrwɚd], though in phonemic transcription they can still be differentiated as /ˈfɔrwɜrd/ and /ˈfɔrwərd/ to facilitate comparisons with other accents. Furthermore, GA 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 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), especially when it is spelled ⟨er⟩. Thus, boarded and bordered might be distinguished as /ˈbɔːdəd/ and /ˈbɔːdɜːd/ (homophonous in Australia as /ˈbɔːdəd/ and distinguished in RP as /ˈbɔːdɪd/ and /ˈbɔːdəd/), based on length and rounding of /ɜː/. This change was caused by a complete phonemic merger of /ɪ/ and /ə/, a weak vowel merger generalized to all environments.[4]

One notable merger of vowels before /r/ is the Mary–marry–merry merger,[5] which consists of a merging of the vowels /æ/ (as in the name Carrie or the word marry) and /ɛ/ (as in Kerry or merry) with historical /eɪ/ (as in Cary or Mary) whenever they are realised before intervocalic /r/ (the "r" sound when occurring between vowels). No contrast exist before a final or preconsonantal /r/.[6] This merger is fairly widespread, in that it is complete or at a near-complete stage in most varieties of North American English,[sample 1] but rare in other varieties of English. The following variants are common in North America:

• The full Mary–marry–merry merger (also known, in context, as the three-way merger): This is found throughout much of the United States (particularly the American West) and in all of Canada except Montreal. This is found in about 57% of US English speakers, according to a 2003 dialect survey.[7]
• No merger whatsoever (also known as the three-way contrast): A lack of this merger in North America exists primarily in the Northeastern United States: most clearly documented in the accents of Philadelphia, New York City, and Rhode Island. 17% of Americans have no merger.[8][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 U.S. English speakers overall.[7]
• Mary–marry merger only: This is found in only about 16% of U.S. English speakers overall, particularly in the Northeast.[7]
• Mary–merry merger only: This is found among Anglophones in Montreal and in the American South, in about 9% of U.S. English speakers overall, particularly in the eastern half of the U.S.[7][9]
• merry–marry merger only: This merger is rare, found in only about 1% of U.S. English speakers.

The three are kept distinct outside of North America. In accents that do not have 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 RP, they are pronounced as [ˈmɛːɹi], [ˈmaɹi], and [ˈmɛɹi]; in Australian English as [ˈmeːɹi], [ˈmæɹi], and [ˈmeɹi]; in New York City English as [ˈmeɹi⁓ˈmɛəɹi], [ˈmæɹi], and [ˈmɛɹi]; in Philadelphia English, the same as New York, except merry is [ˈmɛɹi⁓ˈmʌɹi]. There is plenty of variance in the distribution of the merger, with expatriate communities of these speakers being formed all over the country.

The Mary–merry merger is possible in New Zealand English, in which the quality of the merged vowel is [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 in turn merge with /iː/ and so Mary (phonemically /ˈmeəɹi/) can be [ˈmiəɹi] or [ˈmiːɹi] instead. In all of those cases, there is a clear distinction between Mary and merry on one hand (regardless of how they are pronounced) and marry /ˈmɛri/ (with the TRAP vowel) on the other.[10]

The merry–Murray merger (sometimes called the ferry–furry merger although the latter name is accurate only for speakers who also have the hurry–furry merger) is a merger of /ɛ/ and /ʌ/ before /r/ (both neutralized with syllabic r) that is common in the Philadelphia accent,[11] which does not usually have the marry–merry merger: "short a" /æ/ as in marry is a distinct unmerged class before /r/. Thus, merry and Murray are pronounced the same, but marry is pronounced differently.

Another widespread merger is the mirror–nearer merger or Sirius–serious merger of /ɪ/ with /i/ before intervocalic /r/ (in other words, the sound "r" when between vowels). The typical result of the merger in General American is [ɪr] or [ɪ̝r].[12] For speakers with this merger, common in general accents throughout North America, mirror and nearer rhyme, and Sirius is homophonous with serious. North Americans who do not merge these vowels often speak the more conservative northeastern or southern accents.

Words that would have a stressed /ɒ/ before intervocalic /r/ in the UK's Received Pronunciation (RP) are treated differently in different varieties of North American English. As shown in the table below, in Canadian English, all of these are pronounced with [-ɔr-], as in cord. In the accents of Philadelphia, southern New Jersey, and the Carolinas (and traditionally throughout the South), these words are pronounced among some with [-ɑr-], as in card (and thus merge with historic prevocalic /ɑr/ in words like starry). In the accents of New York City, Long Island, and nearby parts of New Jersey, these words are pronounced with [ɒr] like in RP. However, this is met with hypercorrection of /ɑr/, (thus still merging with historic prevocalic /ɑr/ in starry).[13] On the other hand, the traditional Eastern New England accents (famously, the Rhode Island and Boston accents) these words are pronounced with [-ɒr-], but that [ɒ] is a free vowel (the outcome of the cot–caught merger) and in that regard it is the same as Canadian /ɒ/, rather than RP /ɒ/. Most of the rest of the United States (marked "General American" in the table), however, has a distinctive mixed system: while the majority of words are pronounced as in Canada, the four (sometimes five) words in the left-hand column are typically pronounced with [-ɑr-];[14] and the East Coast regions seem to be slowly moving toward this system over time.

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/, so that both cord and glory are considered to contain the /oʊ/ phoneme in California, Canada and other places. Therefore, in the horse–hoarse merged accents /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.

Even in the East Coast accents of the United States without the split (Boston, New York City, Rhode Island, Philadelphia, and some coastal Southern), 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-]. Exactly which words are affected by this differs from dialect to dialect and occasionally from speaker to speaker, an example of sound change by lexical diffusion.

The Middle English merger of the vowels with the spellings ⟨our⟩ and ⟨ower⟩ now affects all modern varieties of English that makes words like sour and hour, which originally had one syllable, have two syllables, and thus rhyme with power. In accents that lack the merger, sour has one syllable and power has two syllables. Similar mergers also occur where 'hire' gains a syllable making it homophonous with 'higher', and 'coir' gains a syllable making it homophonous with 'coyer'.[15]

The card–cord merger or cord–card merger is a merger of Early Modern English [ɑr] with [ɒr], resulting in 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 versions of the West Country accent in England and in some accents of Southern American English.[16][17] 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 it is rapidly disappearing.[18] In the United States, dialects with the card–cord merger are some of the only ones without the horse–hoarse merger, with a well-documented correlation. [18]

In Modern English dialects, the reflexes of Early Modern English /uːr/ and /iur/ are highly susceptible to phonemic merger with other vowels. Words belonging to this 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 this 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 RP /ʊə/ (/ʊər/ before a vowel) and GenAm /ʊr/.[19] But these pronunciations are being replaced by other pronunciations in many English accents.

In the English of southern England, cure words are often pronounced with /ɔː/ and so moor is often pronounced /mɔː/, tour /tɔː/, poor /pɔː/.[20] 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] or [or]⁓[ɔr], depending on whether or not the accent is rhotic.[21][22] For many speakers of American English, the historical /uːr/ merges with /ɜr/ after palatal consonants, as in "cure", "sure", "pure" and "mature", or /ɔr/ in other environments such as in "poor" and "moor".[23]

In Australian and New Zealand English, the centring 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).[24] The outcome that occurs in a particular word is not always predictable, but, for example, pure, cure and tour rhyme with fewer and have /ʉːə/; 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, so that sure is often pronounced [ʃɜː] (which is also a common single-word merger in American English, in which the word sure is often /ʃɜr/); yod-dropping may apply as well, yielding pronunciations such as [pɜː] for pure. Other pronunciations in cure–fir merging dialects include /pjɜː(r)/ pure, /ˈk(j)ɜːriəs/ curious, /ˈb(j)ɜːroʊ/ bureau, /ˈm(j)ɜːrəl/ mural.[25]

Varieties of Southern American English, Midland American English, and High Tider English may merge words like fire and far or tired and tarred in the direction of the second words: /ɑr/. This results in a tire–tar merger, but with tower kept distinct.[26]

Some accents of southern British English (including many types of RP, as well as the accent of Norwich) have mergers of the vowels in words like tire, tar (already merged with /ɑː/ as in palm), and tower. Thus, the triphthong /aʊə/ of tower merges either with the /aɪə/ of tire (both surfacing as diphthongal [ɑə]) or with the /ɑː/ of tar. Some speakers merge all three sounds, so that tower, tire, and tar are all homophonous as [tɑː].[27]

The horse–hoarse merger or north–force merger is the merger of the vowels /ɔː/ and /oʊ/ before historic /r/, making pairs of words like horse–hoarse, for–four, war–wore, or–oar, morning–mourning etc. homophones. Historically, the NORTH class belonged to the /ɒ/ phoneme (as in contemporary RP lot), whereas the FORCE class was /oː/ (as in Scottish English go), akin to the contrast between the short lax /ɔ/ and the long tense /oː/ in German.

This merger occurs in most varieties of English today, despite historically keeping the two phonemes separate. In accents that have the merger, horse and hoarse are both pronounced [hɔː(r)s~hoː(r)s], but in accents that do not have the merger hoarse is pronounced with a higher vowel, usually [hors] in rhotic and [hoəs] or the like in non-rhotic accents. Non-merging accents include most Scottish, Caribbean, and older Southern American accents, plus some African American vernacular, modern Southern American, Indian, Irish, and older Maine accents.[28][29] Some American speakers retain the original length distinction (with NORTH being pronounced with a vowel that is as short as LOT in RP) but merge the quality, pronouncing hoarse [hɔˑrs] longer than horse [hɔrs].[30]

The distinction was made in traditional Received Pronunciation as represented in the first and second editions of the Oxford English Dictionary. The IPA symbols used are /ɔː/ for horse and /ɔə/ for hoarse. In the online version of the Oxford English Dictionary, and in the planned third edition (on-line entries), the pronunciations of horse and hoarse are both given as /hɔːs/.[31]

In British English dialectology, prevocalic /ɒr/ in accents that distinguish cot and caught is analyzed as LOT + /r/, not NORTH, as those non-rhotic dialects that maintain the distinction feature two vowels that correspond to historic /ɒ/ before intervocalic /r/: LOT and NORTH–THOUGHT, both of which contrast with FORCE. If /ɒr/ is considered to be the contemporary reflex of NORTH, then the merger is incomplete in the intervocalic position (at least in RP), so that moral and oral do not rhyme: /ˈmɒrəl, ˈɔːrəl/ (though warring, historically /ˈwɒrɪŋ/ is /ˈwɔːrɪŋ/ because it is derived from war /ˈwɔː/). Before the loss of rhoticity, moral and war had the same stressed vowel: /ˈmɒrəl, ˈwɒr/, the latter was then lengthened and raised, merging with THOUGHT: /ˈwɔː/, giving rise to the three-way distinction between prevocalic /ɒr/, /ɔːr/ and /ɔər/ as in moral, warring and oral /ˈmɒrəl, ˈwɔːrɪŋ, ˈɔərəl/ (excluding the marginal /əʊr/, restricted to compounds) due to the derived forms such as warring /ˈwɔːrɪŋ/ (compare the wholly-holy split, which results in creation of a separate /ɒʊ/ phoneme before intervocalic /l/), though the change did not affect all derived forms, such as warrior /ˈwɒriə/.

The distinction between intervocalic /ɒr/ and /ɔːr/ (both distinct from /ɑːr/ as in starry) is stable and it also occurs in Australian English, New Zealand English and South African English, as well as in the majority of regional British English varieties. In Scottish English (which merges cot with caught), moral, war and warring belong to the NORTH class (LOT–THOUGHT + /r/): /ˈmɔrəl, ˈwɔr, ˈwɔrɪŋ/ (as does warrior /ˈwɔriər/), whereas oral, bore and boring feature FORCE (which is GOAT + /r/): /ˈorəl, ˈbor, ˈborɪŋ/. The same applies to the conservative General American varieties that preserve the NORTH–FORCE distinction.

Some regional non-rhotic British English retains the NORTH–FORCE distinction (with NORTH being distinct from LOT + prevocalic /r/, as in RP). This is the case in e.g. South Wales (excluding Cardiff) and some West Midlands English. NORTH is typically the same as THOUGHT, while FORCE varies - in those areas of Wales that make the distinction, it merges with the monophthongal variety of GOAT: /ˈfoːs/ (see toe–tow merger, which those accents lack), whereas in the West Midlands it corresponds to either GOAT + COMMA: /ˈfʌʊəs/ or a separate /oə/ phoneme: /ˈfoəs/. Which word belongs to which set varies to an extent from region to region, so that speakers from Port Talbot tend to use FORCE instead of the etymologically correct NORTH in forceps, fortress, important and importance.[32][33]

The cockney distinction between /oː/ and /ɔə/ is not related to the NORTH–FORCE distinction, which does not exist in that dialect. Instead, it is the THOUGHT split, which gives rise to the phonemic distinction between /oː/ and /ɔə/ in the preconsonantal position, as in board /ˈboːd/ and bored /ˈbɔəd/ as well as pause /ˈpoːz/ and paws /ˈpɔəz/.

In the United States, the merger, though widespread everywhere, is quite recent in some parts of the country. For example, fieldwork performed in the 1930s by Kurath and McDavid shows the contrast robustly present in the speech of Vermont, northern and western New York State, Virginia, central and southern West Virginia, and North Carolina,[34] plus the whole Atlantic coast (North and South),[18] but by the 1990s telephone surveys conducted by Labov, Ash, and Boberg (2006) show these areas as having completely or almost completely undergone the merger;[35] and even in areas where the distinction is still made, the acoustic difference between the [ɔɹ] of horse and the [oɹ] of hoarse is rather small for many speakers.[18] In Labov et al.'s 2006 study, a majority of white participants in only these American cities continue to resist the merger: Wilmington, North Carolina; Mobile, Alabama; and Portland, Maine.[36] A 2013 study of Portland, however, found the merger already now established in Portland "at all age levels".[37] In Labov et al.'s 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 now continuing to maintain the distinction. The same pattern (a horse–hoarse distinction coupled with a card–cord merger) also exists in a minority of speakers in Texas and Utah. New Orleans prominently shows much variability regarding this merger, including some speakers with no merger at all. Though African Americans are rapidly undergoing the merger, they are also less likely to do so than white Americans, with a little over half of Labov et al.'s black participants maintaining the merger nationwide.[38]

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

Spelling-wise, words with the FORCE vowel that are not spelt with an obviously long vowel spelling are relatively more likely to occur in the following circumstances:

• When the vowel immediately follows a labial consonant, one of /p b f v w/, as in the word force itself.
• In past participle words in -orn whose corresponding past tense forms are in -ore, as in torn.
• If a shut vowel spelling ends with a silent e, as in horde.

The near–square merger or cheer–chair merger is the merger of the Early Modern English sequences /iːr/ and /ɛːr/ (and the /eːr/ between them), which is found in some accents of modern English. Many speakers in New Zealand[40][41][42] merge them in favor of the NEAR vowel, while some speakers in East Anglia and South Carolina merge them in favor of the SQUARE vowel.[43] The merger is widespread in the Anglophone Caribbean, including Jamaican English.

This 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/ in American, Canadian, and Irish English. As a result of this 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 and some varieties of Irish English. John C. Wells calls that briefly the NURSE merger.[44] The three separate vowels are retained by some speakers of Scottish English. What has been called the term–nurse merger is resisted by some Irish English speakers, 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 of Irish English, 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 not pronounced the same in those traditional varieties, but the 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, is pronounced as /ʊ/. In all other situations, the NURSE vowel is pronounced as /ɛ/.[45] Example words 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]. Example words 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 opposition is seldom preserved, with both the /ɜːr/ phonemes 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:

• The spelling ⟨or⟩ in words like attorney, word, work, world, worm, worse, worship, worst, wort, worth and worthy. Compare the surviving /ʌr/ (barring the Hurry–furry merger) in words like worry.[46]
• The spelling ⟨our⟩ in words like adjourn, courteous, courtesy, journal, journey, scourge and sojourn. Compare the surviving /ʌr/ (barring the Hurry–furry merger) in words like courage, flourish and nourish.[47][48]

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

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

Some older varieties of Southern American English and some of England's West Country dialects exhibit a partial merger of nurse-near. These dialects generally realise near as /jɜr/, rhyming with nurse (cf. general English realisations of cue and coo), so words such as beard are pronounced as /bjɜrd/.[49] Usual word pairs like beer and burr are still distinguished as /bjɜr/ vs. /bɜr/. However, /j/ drops out after a consonant cluster (e.g. queer) or a palato-alveolar consonant (e.g. cheer), likely due to phonotactic constraints. This results in a merger with nurse in these environments: /kwɜr/, /tʃɜr/. It is thus possible that pairs like steer-stir are merged in some accents as /stɜr/, although this is not explicitly reported in the literature.

There is evidence that African American Vernacular English speakers in Memphis, Tennessee merge both /ɪr/ and /ɛər/ with /ɜr/, so that here and hair are both homophonous with the strong pronunciation of her.[50]

The nurse–north merger (of words like perk towards the sound of pork) involves the merger of /ɜː/ with /ɔː/ that occurs in broadest Geordie.[51] The merger is more accurately called the nurse–north–force–thought merger.

Some THOUGHT words (roughly, those spelled with a) have a distinct [aː] vowel in broad Geordie.[52]

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 (for example Liverpool, new Dublin, and Belfast).[53] The phonemes are merged to [ɛ:] in Hull and Middlesbrough.[54][55][56]

Shorrocks reports that, in the dialect of Bolton, the two sets are generally merged to /ɵ:/, but some NURSE words such as first have a short /ɵ/.[57]

This merger is found in some varieties of African American Vernacular English to the sound IPA: [ɜr]: "A recent development reported for some AAE (in Memphis, but likely found elsewhere)".[58] This is exemplified in Chingy's song "Right Thurr"; the merger is heard at the beginning of the song, but he goes on to use standard pronunciation for the rest of the song.

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