English-language vowel changes before historic r
Encyclopedia
In the phonological history of the English language
, vowels followed (or formerly followed) by the phoneme
/r/ have undergone a number of phonological change
s. In recent centuries, most or all of these changes have involved merging of vowel distinctions.
accents, for example, although there are ten or eleven stressed monophthongs, only five or six vowel contrasts are possible before a following /r/ in the same syllable (peer, pear, purr, pore, par, poor). Often, more contrasts exist when the /r/ is not in the same syllable; 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, these distinctions are most likely to occur in New York City, Philadelphia
, Eastern New England (including Boston
), and in conservative Southern accents
.) In nearly all dialects, however, the number of contrasts in this position is reduced, and the tendency is towards further reduction. The difference in how these reductions have been manifested represents one of the greatest sources of cross-dialect variation.
Non-rhotic accents often show mergers in the same positions as rhotic accents do, even though there is often no /r/ phoneme present. This results partly from mergers that occurred before the /r/ was lost, and partly from later mergers of the centering diphthongs and long vowels that resulted from the loss of /r/.
The American phenomenon is one of tense–lax neutralization, where the normal English distinction between tense and lax vowels
is eliminated.
In some cases, the quality of a vowel before /r/ is different from the quality of the vowel elsewhere. For example, in American English
the quality of the vowel in more typically does not occur except before /r/, and is somewhere in between the vowels of maw and mow. (It is similar to the vowel of the latter word, but without the glide.)
Different mergers occur in different dialects. Among United States accents, the Boston and New York accents have the least degree of pre-rhotic merging. Some have observed that rhotic
North American accents are more likely to have such merging than non-rhotic accents, but this cannot be said of rhotic British accents like Scottish English
, which is firmly rhotic and yet many varieties have all the same vowel contrasts before /r/ as before any other consonant.
; it is also found among Anglophones
in Montreal
. In the Philadelphia accent the three-way contrast is preserved, but merry tends to be merged with Murray; likewise ferry can be a homophone of furry. (See furry–ferry merger below.) The three are kept distinct outside of North America, as well as in the accents of Philadelphia
, New York City, Boston
, and Providence, Rhode Island
.http://www.alt-usage-english.org/mmm_rf.wav Sample of a speaker with the three-way distinction In accents that do not have the merger, Mary has the a sound of mare, marry has the a sound of mat and merry has the e sound of met. There is plenty of variance in the distribution of the merger, with expatriate communities of these speakers being formed all over the country.
. This accent does not usually have the marry–merry merger. That is, "short a" /æ/ as in marry is a distinct unmerged class before /r/. Thus, merry and Murray are pronounced the same, but marry is distinct from this pair.
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 (and thus merge with historic prevocalic /ɔːr/ in words like glory because of the horse–hoarse merger). In the accents of New York, Philadelphia
, and the Carolinas
, these words are pronounced among some with [-ɑr-], as in card (and thus merge with historic prevocalic /ɑːr/ in words like starry). In the Boston accent
these words are pronounced with [-ɒr-], similar to in RP. Most of the rest of the United States (marked "Gen.Am.
" in the table), however, has a mixed system: while the majority of words are pronounced as in Canada, the four words in the right-hand column are typically pronounced with [-ɑr-].
Even in the Northeastern accents without the split (Boston, New York, Philadelphia), 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 may, for example, 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
.
and New Zealand
merge them in favor of the CHEER vowel, while some speakers in East Anglia
and South Carolina
merge them in favor of the CHAIR vowel. The merger is widespread in the Anglophone Caribbean.
of the syllable
. As a result of this merger, the vowels in fern, fir and fur are the same in almost all accents of English; the exceptions are Scottish English
and some varieties of Hiberno-English
.
, Dublin, and Belfast
).
It is possible that the merger is found in at least some varieties of African American Vernacular English
. 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.http://ldc.upenn.edu/myl/thurr.mp3 Text: "I like the way you do that right there (right there)/Swing your hips when you're walkin', let down your hair (let down your hair)/I like the way you do that right there (right there)/Lick your lips when you're talkin', that make me stare" In the absence of phonological
research in St. Louis, Missouri
(Chingy's hometown), it is impossible to know whether there is a genuine phonemic merger here or not.
Labov (1994) also reports such a merger in some western parts of the United States 'with a high degree of r constriction.'
and the West Country dialects
of English English, words like ear, here, and beard are pronounced /jɝ/, /hjɝ/, /bjɝd/, meaning that there is no complete merger: word pairs like beer and burr are still distinguished as /bjɝ/ vs. /bɝ/. However, if the syllable begins with a consonant cluster
(e.g. queer) or a palato-alveolar consonant
(e.g. cheer), then there is no /j/ sound: /kwɝ/, /tʃɝ/. It is thus possible that pairs like steer-stir are merged in some accents as /stɝ/, 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 /ɛr/ with /ɝ/, so that here and hair are both homophonous with the strong pronunciation of her.
(including many types of RP
, as well as the accent of Norwich
) that causes the triphthong /aʊə/ of tower to merge 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/.
The tire–tar merger, with tower kept distinct, is found in some Midland and Southern U.S. accents.
a merger with the [ɜː] of shirt is common, especially after palatal and palatoalveolar consonants, so that sure is often pronounced [ʃɜː]; yod dropping may apply as well, yielding pronunciations such as [pɜː] for pure. Similarly in American English sure is often pronounced /ʃɝ/. Other American pronunciations showing this merger include /pjɝ/ pure, /ˈkjɝiəs/ curious, /ˈbjɝo/ bureau, /ˈmjɝəl/ mural.
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. 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/. But these pronunciations are being replaced by other pronunciations in many English accents.
In English English it is now common to pronounce CURE words with /ɔː/, so that moor is often pronounced /mɔː/, tour /tɔː/, poor /pɔː/. The traditional form is much more common in the northern counties of England. A similar merger is encountered in many varieties of American English
, where the pronunciations [oə] or [or]~[ɔr] (depending on whether the accent is rhotic or non-rhotic) prevail.
and New Zealand English
that causes the centring diphthong
/ʊə/ to disappear and split into /ʉːə/ (a sequence of two separate monophthong
s) and /oː/ (a long monophthong), causing pure, cure, and tour to rhyme with fewer, and poor, moor and sure to rhyme with for and paw.
Where the /ʊə/ becomes /ʉːə/ and where it becomes /oː/ is not very predictable. But words spelt with -oor that originally had /ʊə/ become /oː/ perhaps by influence of the words door and floor which rhyme with store in all dialect
s of English
.
A similar split occurs in many varieties of North American English
that causes /ʊr/ to disappear and split into /ɝ/ and /ɔr/, causing pure, cure, and lure to rhyme with fir, and poor and moor to rhyme with store and for.
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 Southern
and Western U.S.
accents. Areas where the merger occurs includes central Texas
, Utah
, and St. Louis
. Dialects with the card–cord merger don't have the horse–hoarse merger. The merger is disappearing in the United States
, being replaced by the more common horse–hoarse merger that other regions have.
s. This merger occurs in most varieties of English
. In accents that have the merger horse and hoarse are both pronounced [hɔː(ɹ)s], but in accents that do not have the merger hoarse is pronounced differently, usually [hoɹs] in rhotic
and [hoəs] or the like in non-rhotic accents. Non-merging accents include Scottish English
, Hiberno-English
, the Boston accent
, Southern American English
, African American Vernacular English
, most varieties of Caribbean English
, and Indian English
.
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 United States, the merger is quite recent in some parts of the country. For example, Kurath
and McDavid based on fieldwork performed in the 1930s, 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
; but Labov, Ash, and Boberg based on telephone surveys conducted in the 1990s, shows these areas as having almost completely undergone the merger. And even in areas where the distinction is still made, the acoustic difference between the [ɔr] of horse and the [or] of hoarse is rather small for many speakers.
The two groups of words merged by this rule are called the lexical set
s NORTH (including horse) and the FORCE (including hoarse) by Wells (1982). Etymologically, the NORTH words had /ɒɹ/ and the FORCE words had /oːɹ/.
The orthography of a word often signals whether it belongs in the NORTH set or the FORCE set. The spellings war, quar, aur, and word-final or indicate NORTH (e.g. quarter, war, warm, warn, aura, aural, Thor). The spellings oVr or orV (where V stands for a vowel) indicate FORCE (e.g. board, coarse, hoarse, door, floor, course, pour, oral, more, historian, moron, glory). Words spelled or followed by a consonant mostly belong with NORTH, but the following exceptions are listed with FORCE by Wells (1982):
. Even more minimal pairs become homophonous when accompanied with the horse–hoarse merger, which most General American accents also have.
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
, vowels followed (or formerly followed) by the phoneme
Phoneme
In a language or dialect, a phoneme is the smallest segmental unit of sound employed to form meaningful contrasts between utterances....
/r/ have undergone a number of phonological change
Phonological change
In historical linguistics, phonological change is any sound change which alters the number or distribution of phonemes in a language.In a typological scheme first systematized by Henry M...
s. In recent centuries, most or all of these changes have involved merging of vowel distinctions.
Overview
In most North AmericanNorth American English
North American English is the variety of the English language of North America, including that of the United States and Canada. Because of their shared histories and the similarities between the pronunciation, vocabulary and accent of American English and Canadian English, the two spoken languages...
accents, for example, although there are ten or eleven stressed monophthongs, only five or six vowel contrasts are possible before a following /r/ in the same syllable (peer, pear, purr, pore, par, poor). Often, more contrasts exist when the /r/ is not in the same syllable; in some American dialects and in most native English dialects outside North America, for example, mirror and nearer do not rhyme
Feminine rhyme
A feminine rhyme is a rhyme that matches two or more syllables, usually at the end of respective lines, in which the final syllable or syllables are unstressed.-English:...
, and some or all of marry, merry and Mary are pronounced distinctly. (In North America, these distinctions are most likely to occur in New York City, Philadelphia
Philadelphia dialect
The Philadelphia dialect is the dialect of English spoken in Philadelphia; and extending into Philadelphia's suburbs in the Delaware Valley and southern New Jersey. It is one of the best-studied dialects of American English since Philadelphia's University of Pennsylvania is the home institution of...
, Eastern New England (including Boston
Boston accent
The Boston dialect is the dialect characteristic of English spoken in the city of Boston and much of eastern Massachusetts. The accent and closely related accents can be heard commonly in an area stretching into much of Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Maine, and areas of south-western Nova Scotia...
), and in conservative Southern accents
Southern American English
Southern American English is a group of dialects of the English language spoken throughout the Southern region of the United States, from Southern and Eastern Maryland, West Virginia and Kentucky to the Gulf Coast, and from the Atlantic coast to most of Texas and Oklahoma.The Southern dialects make...
.) In nearly all dialects, however, the number of contrasts in this position is reduced, and the tendency is towards further reduction. The difference in how these reductions have been manifested represents one of the greatest sources of cross-dialect variation.
Non-rhotic accents often show mergers in the same positions as rhotic accents do, even though there is often no /r/ phoneme present. This results partly from mergers that occurred before the /r/ was lost, and partly from later mergers of the centering diphthongs and long vowels that resulted from the loss of /r/.
The American phenomenon is one of tense–lax neutralization, where the normal English distinction between tense and lax vowels
Tenseness
In phonology, tenseness is a particular vowel quality that is phonemically contrastive in many languages, including English. It has also occasionally been used to describe contrasts in consonants. Unlike most distinctive features, the feature [tense] can be interpreted only relatively, that is, in...
is eliminated.
In some cases, the quality of a vowel before /r/ is different from the quality of the vowel elsewhere. For example, in American English
American English
American English is a set of dialects of the English language used mostly in the United States. Approximately two-thirds of the world's native speakers of English live in the United States....
the quality of the vowel in more typically does not occur except before /r/, and is somewhere in between the vowels of maw and mow. (It is similar to the vowel of the latter word, but without the glide.)
Different mergers occur in different dialects. Among United States accents, the Boston and New York accents have the least degree of pre-rhotic merging. Some have observed that rhotic
Rhotic and non-rhotic accents
English pronunciation can be divided into two main accent groups: a rhotic speaker pronounces a rhotic consonant in words like hard; a non-rhotic speaker does not...
North American accents are more likely to have such merging than non-rhotic accents, but this cannot be said of rhotic British accents like Scottish English
Scottish English
Scottish English refers to the varieties of English spoken in Scotland. It may or may not be considered distinct from the Scots language. It is always considered distinct from Scottish Gaelic, a Celtic language....
, which is firmly rhotic and yet many varieties have all the same vowel contrasts before /r/ as before any other consonant.
Mary–marry–merry merger
One of the best-known pre-rhotic mergers is known as the Mary–marry–merry merger, which consists of the mergers before intervocalic /r/ of /æ/ and /ɛ/ with historical /eɪ/. This merger is quite widespread in North America.http://www.alt-usage-english.org/mmm_bc.wav Sample of a speaker with the Mary–marry–merry merger Text: "Mary, dear, make me merry; say you'll marry me." A merger of Mary and merry, while keeping marry distinct, is found in the South and as far north as Baltimore, Maryland, and Wilmington, DelawareWilmington, Delaware
Wilmington is the largest city in the state of Delaware, United States, and is located at the confluence of the Christina River and Brandywine Creek, near where the Christina flows into the Delaware River. It is the county seat of New Castle County and one of the major cities in the Delaware Valley...
; it is also found among Anglophones
Canadian English
Canadian English is the variety of English spoken in Canada. English is the first language, or "mother tongue", of approximately 24 million Canadians , and more than 28 million are fluent in the language...
in Montreal
Montreal
Montreal is a city in Canada. It is the largest city in the province of Quebec, the second-largest city in Canada and the seventh largest in North America...
. In the Philadelphia accent the three-way contrast is preserved, but merry tends to be merged with Murray; likewise ferry can be a homophone of furry. (See furry–ferry merger below.) The three are kept distinct outside of North America, as well as in the accents of Philadelphia
Philadelphia accent
The Philadelphia dialect is the dialect of English spoken in Philadelphia; and extending into Philadelphia's suburbs in the Delaware Valley and southern New Jersey. It is one of the best-studied dialects of American English since Philadelphia's University of Pennsylvania is the home institution of...
, New York City, Boston
Boston accent
The Boston dialect is the dialect characteristic of English spoken in the city of Boston and much of eastern Massachusetts. The accent and closely related accents can be heard commonly in an area stretching into much of Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Maine, and areas of south-western Nova Scotia...
, and Providence, Rhode Island
Providence, Rhode Island
Providence is the capital and most populous city of Rhode Island and was one of the first cities established in the United States. Located in Providence County, it is the third largest city in the New England region...
.http://www.alt-usage-english.org/mmm_rf.wav Sample of a speaker with the three-way distinction In accents that do not have the merger, Mary has the a sound of mare, marry has the a sound of mat and merry has the e sound of met. There is plenty of variance in the distribution of the merger, with expatriate communities of these speakers being formed all over the country.
| Homophonous pairs |
|---|
Mirror–nearer merger
Another widespread merger is that of /ɪ/ with /iː/ before intervocalic /r/. For speakers with this merger, 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.Hurry–furry merger
The merger of /ʌ/ before intervocalic /r/ with /ɝ/ is also widespread in American English apart from the Northeast and the South of the US. Speakers with this merger pronounce hurry to rhyme with furry. In accents that lack the fern–fir–fur merger, hurry and furry rhyme, but they rhyme because they never split in those accents to begin with. Other pairs such as stir it versus turret are split in all accents outside North America.Furry–ferry merger
The merger of /ɛ/ and /ʌ/ before /r/ (both neutralized with syllabic r) is common in the Philadelphia accentPhiladelphia accent
The Philadelphia dialect is the dialect of English spoken in Philadelphia; and extending into Philadelphia's suburbs in the Delaware Valley and southern New Jersey. It is one of the best-studied dialects of American English since Philadelphia's University of Pennsylvania is the home institution of...
. This accent does not usually have the marry–merry merger. That is, "short a" /æ/ as in marry is a distinct unmerged class before /r/. Thus, merry and Murray are pronounced the same, but marry is distinct from this pair.
| Homophonous pairs |
|---|
Historic "short o" before intervocalic r
Words that have /ɒ/ before intervocalic /r/ in RPReceived Pronunciation
Received Pronunciation , also called the Queen's English, Oxford English or BBC English, is the accent of Standard English in England, with a relationship to regional accents similar to the relationship in other European languages between their standard varieties and their regional forms...
are treated differently in different varieties of North American English
North American English
North American English is the variety of the English language of North America, including that of the United States and Canada. Because of their shared histories and the similarities between the pronunciation, vocabulary and accent of American English and Canadian English, the two spoken languages...
. As shown in the table below, in Canadian English
Canadian English
Canadian English is the variety of English spoken in Canada. English is the first language, or "mother tongue", of approximately 24 million Canadians , and more than 28 million are fluent in the language...
, all of these are pronounced with [-ɔr-], as in cord (and thus merge with historic prevocalic /ɔːr/ in words like glory because of the horse–hoarse merger). In the accents of New York, Philadelphia
Philadelphia accent
The Philadelphia dialect is the dialect of English spoken in Philadelphia; and extending into Philadelphia's suburbs in the Delaware Valley and southern New Jersey. It is one of the best-studied dialects of American English since Philadelphia's University of Pennsylvania is the home institution of...
, and the Carolinas
The Carolinas
The Carolinas is a term used in the United States to refer collectively to the states of North and South Carolina. Together, the two states + have a population of 13,942,126. "Carolina" would be the fifth most populous state behind California, Texas, New York, and Florida...
, these words are pronounced among some with [-ɑr-], as in card (and thus merge with historic prevocalic /ɑːr/ in words like starry). In the Boston accent
Boston accent
The Boston dialect is the dialect characteristic of English spoken in the city of Boston and much of eastern Massachusetts. The accent and closely related accents can be heard commonly in an area stretching into much of Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Maine, and areas of south-western Nova Scotia...
these words are pronounced with [-ɒr-], similar to in RP. Most of the rest of the United States (marked "Gen.Am.
General American
General American , also known as Standard American English , is a major accent of American English. The accent is not restricted to the United States...
" in the table), however, has a mixed system: while the majority of words are pronounced as in Canada, the four words in the right-hand column are typically pronounced with [-ɑr-].
| RP and Boston /ɒr/ | |
|---|---|
| Canada /ɔr/ | |
| NYC, Philadelphia, and the Carolinas /ɑr/ | |
| Gen.Am. /ɔr/ | Gen.Am. /ɑr/ |
| foreign Oregon origin Florida forest horrible quarrel warren warranty |
borrow sorry sorrow tomorrow |
Even in the Northeastern accents without the split (Boston, New York, Philadelphia), 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 may, for example, 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
Lexical diffusion
In historical linguistics, lexical diffusion is both a phenomenon and a theory. The phenomenon is that by which a phoneme is modified in a subset of the lexicon, and spreads gradually to other lexical items...
.
Cheer–chair merger
The 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. Some speakers in New York CityNew York City
New York is the most populous city in the United States and the center of the New York Metropolitan Area, one of the most populous metropolitan areas in the world. New York exerts a significant impact upon global commerce, finance, media, art, fashion, research, technology, education, and...
and New Zealand
New Zealand
New Zealand is an island country in the south-western Pacific Ocean comprising two main landmasses and numerous smaller islands. The country is situated some east of Australia across the Tasman Sea, and roughly south of the Pacific island nations of New Caledonia, Fiji, and Tonga...
merge them in favor of the CHEER vowel, while some speakers in East Anglia
East Anglia
East Anglia is a traditional name for a region of eastern England, named after an ancient Anglo-Saxon kingdom, the Kingdom of the East Angles. The Angles took their name from their homeland Angeln, in northern Germany. East Anglia initially consisted of Norfolk and Suffolk, but upon the marriage of...
and South Carolina
South Carolina
South Carolina is a state in the Deep South of the United States that borders Georgia to the south, North Carolina to the north, and the Atlantic Ocean to the east. Originally part of the Province of Carolina, the Province of South Carolina was one of the 13 colonies that declared independence...
merge them in favor of the CHAIR vowel. The merger is widespread in the Anglophone Caribbean.
| Homophonous pairs |
|---|
Fern–fir–fur merger
The fern–fir–fur merger is the merger of the Middle English vowels /ɛ, ɪ, ʊ/ into [ɜ] when historically followed by /r/ in the codaSyllable coda
In phonology, a syllable coda comprises the consonant sounds of a syllable that follow the nucleus, which is usually a vowel. The combination of a nucleus and a coda is called a rime. Some syllables consist only of a nucleus with no coda...
of the syllable
Syllable
A syllable is a unit of organization for a sequence of speech sounds. For example, the word water is composed of two syllables: wa and ter. A syllable is typically made up of a syllable nucleus with optional initial and final margins .Syllables are often considered the phonological "building...
. As a result of this merger, the vowels in fern, fir and fur are the same in almost all accents of English; the exceptions are Scottish English
Scottish English
Scottish English refers to the varieties of English spoken in Scotland. It may or may not be considered distinct from the Scots language. It is always considered distinct from Scottish Gaelic, a Celtic language....
and some varieties of Hiberno-English
Hiberno-English
Hiberno-English is the dialect of English written and spoken in Ireland .English was first brought to Ireland during the Norman invasion of the late 12th century. Initially it was mainly spoken in an area known as the Pale around Dublin, with Irish spoken throughout the rest of the country...
.
| Homophonous pairs |
|---|
Square–nurse merger
The square–nurse merger is a merger of /ɜː(r)/ with /eə(r)/ that occurs in some accents (for example LiverpoolLiverpool
Liverpool is a city and metropolitan borough of Merseyside, England, along the eastern side of the Mersey Estuary. It was founded as a borough in 1207 and was granted city status in 1880...
, Dublin, and Belfast
Belfast
Belfast is the capital of and largest city in Northern Ireland. By population, it is the 14th biggest city in the United Kingdom and second biggest on the island of Ireland . It is the seat of the devolved government and legislative Northern Ireland Assembly...
).
| Homophonous pairs |
|---|
It is possible that the merger is found in at least some varieties of African American Vernacular English
African American Vernacular English
African American Vernacular English —also called African American English; less precisely Black English, Black Vernacular, Black English Vernacular , or Black Vernacular English —is an African American variety of American English...
. In Chingy
Chingy
Howard Bailey, Jr. , better known by his stage name Chingy, is an American rapper.Chingy grew up in the Walnut Park section of St. Louis and began rapping in earnest in his late teens...
's song "Right Thurr
Right Thurr
"Right Thurr" is a 2003 hip hop single from Chingy. The song peaked at #2 on the U.S. Hot 100 and #17 on the United Kingdom pop charts.-Track listing:CD: 1# "Right Thurr"# "Mobb wit Me"CD: 2# "Right Thurr" # "Mobb wit Me"...
", the merger is heard at the beginning of the song, but he goes on to use standard pronunciation for the rest of the song.http://ldc.upenn.edu/myl/thurr.mp3 Text: "I like the way you do that right there (right there)/Swing your hips when you're walkin', let down your hair (let down your hair)/I like the way you do that right there (right there)/Lick your lips when you're talkin', that make me stare" In the absence of phonological
Phonology
Phonology is, broadly speaking, the subdiscipline of linguistics concerned with the sounds of language. That is, it is the systematic use of sound to encode meaning in any spoken human language, or the field of linguistics studying this use...
research in St. Louis, Missouri
St. Louis, Missouri
St. Louis is an independent city on the eastern border of Missouri, United States. With a population of 319,294, it was the 58th-largest U.S. city at the 2010 U.S. Census. The Greater St...
(Chingy's hometown), it is impossible to know whether there is a genuine phonemic merger here or not.
Labov (1994) also reports such a merger in some western parts of the United States 'with a high degree of r constriction.'
Stir–steer merger
In older varieties of Southern American EnglishSouthern American English
Southern American English is a group of dialects of the English language spoken throughout the Southern region of the United States, from Southern and Eastern Maryland, West Virginia and Kentucky to the Gulf Coast, and from the Atlantic coast to most of Texas and Oklahoma.The Southern dialects make...
and the West Country dialects
West Country dialects
The West Country dialects and West Country accents are generic terms applied to any of several English dialects and accents used by much of the indigenous population of South West England, the area popularly known as the West Country....
of English English, words like ear, here, and beard are pronounced /jɝ/, /hjɝ/, /bjɝd/, meaning that there is no complete merger: word pairs like beer and burr are still distinguished as /bjɝ/ vs. /bɝ/. However, if the syllable begins with a consonant cluster
Consonant cluster
In linguistics, a consonant cluster is a group of consonants which have no intervening vowel. In English, for example, the groups and are consonant clusters in the word splits....
(e.g. queer) or a palato-alveolar consonant
Palato-alveolar consonant
In phonetics, palato-alveolar consonants are postalveolar consonants, nearly always sibilants, that are weakly palatalized with a domed tongue...
(e.g. cheer), then there is no /j/ sound: /kwɝ/, /tʃɝ/. It is thus possible that pairs like steer-stir are merged in some accents as /stɝ/, although this is not explicitly reported in the literature.
There is evidence that African American Vernacular English
African American Vernacular English
African American Vernacular English —also called African American English; less precisely Black English, Black Vernacular, Black English Vernacular , or Black Vernacular English —is an African American variety of American English...
speakers in Memphis, Tennessee
Memphis, Tennessee
Memphis is a city in the southwestern corner of the U.S. state of Tennessee, and the county seat of Shelby County. The city is located on the 4th Chickasaw Bluff, south of the confluence of the Wolf and Mississippi rivers....
, merge both /ɪr/ and /ɛr/ with /ɝ/, so that here and hair are both homophonous with the strong pronunciation of her.
Tower–tire, tower–tar and tire–tar mergers
The tower–tire and tower–tar mergers are vowel mergers in some accents of Southern British EnglishBritish English
British English, or English , is the broad term used to distinguish the forms of the English language used in the United Kingdom from forms used elsewhere...
(including many types of RP
Received Pronunciation
Received Pronunciation , also called the Queen's English, Oxford English or BBC English, is the accent of Standard English in England, with a relationship to regional accents similar to the relationship in other European languages between their standard varieties and their regional forms...
, as well as the accent of Norwich
Norwich
Norwich is a city in England. It is the regional administrative centre and county town of Norfolk. During the 11th century, Norwich was the largest city in England after London, and one of the most important places in the kingdom...
) that causes the triphthong /aʊə/ of tower to merge 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/.
The tire–tar merger, with tower kept distinct, is found in some Midland and Southern U.S. accents.
| Homophonous pairs |
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Cure–fir merger
In East AngliaEast Anglia
East Anglia is a traditional name for a region of eastern England, named after an ancient Anglo-Saxon kingdom, the Kingdom of the East Angles. The Angles took their name from their homeland Angeln, in northern Germany. East Anglia initially consisted of Norfolk and Suffolk, but upon the marriage of...
a merger with the [ɜː] of shirt is common, especially after palatal and palatoalveolar consonants, so that sure is often pronounced [ʃɜː]; yod dropping may apply as well, yielding pronunciations such as [pɜː] for pure. Similarly in American English sure is often pronounced /ʃɝ/. Other American pronunciations showing this merger include /pjɝ/ pure, /ˈkjɝiəs/ curious, /ˈbjɝo/ bureau, /ˈmjɝəl/ mural.
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Pour–poor merger
In Modern EnglishModern English
Modern English is the form of the English language spoken since the Great Vowel Shift in England, completed in roughly 1550.Despite some differences in vocabulary, texts from the early 17th century, such as the works of William Shakespeare and the King James Bible, are considered to be in Modern...
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. Wells refers to this class as the CURE words, after the keyword of the lexical set
Lexical set
- Wells Standard Lexical Sets for English :The Standard Lexical Sets for English introduced by John C. Wells in Accents of English are in wide usage...
to which he assigns them.
In traditional Received Pronunciation
Received Pronunciation
Received Pronunciation , also called the Queen's English, Oxford English or BBC English, is the accent of Standard English in England, with a relationship to regional accents similar to the relationship in other European languages between their standard varieties and their regional forms...
and General American
General American
General American , also known as Standard American English , is a major accent of American English. The accent is not restricted to the United States...
, CURE words are pronounced with RP /ʊə/ (/ʊər/ before a vowel) and GenAm /ʊr/. But these pronunciations are being replaced by other pronunciations in many English accents.
In English English it is now common to pronounce CURE words with /ɔː/, so that moor is often pronounced /mɔː/, tour /tɔː/, poor /pɔː/. The traditional form is much more common in the northern counties of England. A similar merger is encountered in many varieties of American English
American English
American English is a set of dialects of the English language used mostly in the United States. Approximately two-thirds of the world's native speakers of English live in the United States....
, where the pronunciations [oə] or [or]~[ɔr] (depending on whether the accent is rhotic or non-rhotic) prevail.
| Homophonous pairs |
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Pure–poor split
The pure–poor split is a phonemic split that occurs in AustralianAustralian English
Australian English is the name given to the group of dialects spoken in Australia that form a major variety of the English language....
and New Zealand English
New Zealand English
New Zealand English is the dialect of the English language used in New Zealand.The English language was established in New Zealand by colonists during the 19th century. It is one of "the newest native-speaker variet[ies] of the English language in existence, a variety which has developed and...
that causes the centring diphthong
Diphthong
A diphthong , also known as a gliding vowel, refers to two adjacent vowel sounds occurring within the same syllable. Technically, a diphthong is a vowel with two different targets: That is, the tongue moves during the pronunciation of the vowel...
/ʊə/ to disappear and split into /ʉːə/ (a sequence of two separate monophthong
Monophthong
A monophthong is a pure vowel sound, one whose articulation at both beginning and end is relatively fixed, and which does not glide up or down towards a new position of articulation....
s) and /oː/ (a long monophthong), causing pure, cure, and tour to rhyme with fewer, and poor, moor and sure to rhyme with for and paw.
Where the /ʊə/ becomes /ʉːə/ and where it becomes /oː/ is not very predictable. But words spelt with -oor that originally had /ʊə/ become /oː/ perhaps by influence of the words door and floor which rhyme with store in all dialect
Dialect
The term dialect is used in two distinct ways, even by linguists. One usage refers to a variety of a language that is a characteristic of a particular group of the language's speakers. The term is applied most often to regional speech patterns, but a dialect may also be defined by other factors,...
s of English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
.
A similar split occurs in many varieties of North American English
North American English
North American English is the variety of the English language of North America, including that of the United States and Canada. Because of their shared histories and the similarities between the pronunciation, vocabulary and accent of American English and Canadian English, the two spoken languages...
that causes /ʊr/ to disappear and split into /ɝ/ and /ɔr/, causing pure, cure, and lure to rhyme with fir, and poor and moor to rhyme with store and for.
Card–cord merger
The card–cord merger is a merger of Early Modern English [ɑr] with [ɒr], resulting in homophonyHomophone
A homophone is a word that is pronounced the same as another word but differs in meaning. The words may be spelled the same, such as rose and rose , or differently, such as carat, caret, and carrot, or to, two, and too. Homophones that are spelled the same are also both homographs and homonyms...
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
Caribbean English
Caribbean English is a broad term for the dialects of the English language spoken in the Caribbean, most countries on the Caribbean coast of Central America, and Guyana. Caribbean English is influenced by the English-based Creole varieties spoken in the region, but they are not the same. In the...
accents, in some versions of the West Country accent
West Country dialects
The West Country dialects and West Country accents are generic terms applied to any of several English dialects and accents used by much of the indigenous population of South West England, the area popularly known as the West Country....
in England, and in some Southern
Southern American English
Southern American English is a group of dialects of the English language spoken throughout the Southern region of the United States, from Southern and Eastern Maryland, West Virginia and Kentucky to the Gulf Coast, and from the Atlantic coast to most of Texas and Oklahoma.The Southern dialects make...
and Western U.S.
American English
American English is a set of dialects of the English language used mostly in the United States. Approximately two-thirds of the world's native speakers of English live in the United States....
accents. Areas where the merger occurs includes central Texas
Central Texas
Central Texas , is a region in the U.S. state of Texas. It is roughly bordered by San Marcos to Fredericksburg to Waco, and to Brenham, and includes the Austin–Round Rock, Killeen-Temple-Fort Hood, Bryan-College Station, and Waco metropolitan areas...
, Utah
Utah
Utah is a state in the Western United States. It was the 45th state to join the Union, on January 4, 1896. Approximately 80% of Utah's 2,763,885 people live along the Wasatch Front, centering on Salt Lake City. This leaves vast expanses of the state nearly uninhabited, making the population the...
, and St. Louis
St. Louis, Missouri
St. Louis is an independent city on the eastern border of Missouri, United States. With a population of 319,294, it was the 58th-largest U.S. city at the 2010 U.S. Census. The Greater St...
. Dialects with the card–cord merger don't have the horse–hoarse merger. The merger is disappearing in the United States
United States
The United States of America is a federal constitutional republic comprising fifty states and a federal district...
, being replaced by the more common horse–hoarse merger that other regions have.
| Homophonous pairs |
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Horse–hoarse merger
The horse–hoarse merger is the merger of the vowels /ɔ/ and /o/ before historic /r/, making pairs of words like horse/hoarse, for/four, war/wore, or/oar, morning/mourning etc. homophoneHomophone
A homophone is a word that is pronounced the same as another word but differs in meaning. The words may be spelled the same, such as rose and rose , or differently, such as carat, caret, and carrot, or to, two, and too. Homophones that are spelled the same are also both homographs and homonyms...
s. This merger occurs in most varieties of English
English language
English is a West Germanic language that arose in the Anglo-Saxon kingdoms of England and spread into what was to become south-east Scotland under the influence of the Anglian medieval kingdom of Northumbria...
. In accents that have the merger horse and hoarse are both pronounced [hɔː(ɹ)s], but in accents that do not have the merger hoarse is pronounced differently, usually [hoɹs] in rhotic
Rhotic and non-rhotic accents
English pronunciation can be divided into two main accent groups: a rhotic speaker pronounces a rhotic consonant in words like hard; a non-rhotic speaker does not...
and [hoəs] or the like in non-rhotic accents. Non-merging accents include Scottish English
Scottish English
Scottish English refers to the varieties of English spoken in Scotland. It may or may not be considered distinct from the Scots language. It is always considered distinct from Scottish Gaelic, a Celtic language....
, Hiberno-English
Hiberno-English
Hiberno-English is the dialect of English written and spoken in Ireland .English was first brought to Ireland during the Norman invasion of the late 12th century. Initially it was mainly spoken in an area known as the Pale around Dublin, with Irish spoken throughout the rest of the country...
, the Boston accent
Boston accent
The Boston dialect is the dialect characteristic of English spoken in the city of Boston and much of eastern Massachusetts. The accent and closely related accents can be heard commonly in an area stretching into much of Massachusetts, New Hampshire, Maine, and areas of south-western Nova Scotia...
, Southern American English
Southern American English
Southern American English is a group of dialects of the English language spoken throughout the Southern region of the United States, from Southern and Eastern Maryland, West Virginia and Kentucky to the Gulf Coast, and from the Atlantic coast to most of Texas and Oklahoma.The Southern dialects make...
, African American Vernacular English
African American Vernacular English
African American Vernacular English —also called African American English; less precisely Black English, Black Vernacular, Black English Vernacular , or Black Vernacular English —is an African American variety of American English...
, most varieties of Caribbean English
Caribbean English
Caribbean English is a broad term for the dialects of the English language spoken in the Caribbean, most countries on the Caribbean coast of Central America, and Guyana. Caribbean English is influenced by the English-based Creole varieties spoken in the region, but they are not the same. In the...
, and Indian English
Indian English
Indian English is an umbrella term used to describe dialects of the English language spoken primarily in the Republic of India.As a result of British colonial rule until Indian independence in 1947 English is an official language of India and is widely used in both spoken and literary contexts...
.
The distinction was made in traditional Received Pronunciation
Received Pronunciation
Received Pronunciation , also called the Queen's English, Oxford English or BBC English, is the accent of Standard English in England, with a relationship to regional accents similar to the relationship in other European languages between their standard varieties and their regional forms...
as represented in the first and second editions of the Oxford English Dictionary
Oxford English Dictionary
The Oxford English Dictionary , published by the Oxford University Press, is the self-styled premier dictionary of the English language. Two fully bound print editions of the OED have been published under its current name, in 1928 and 1989. The first edition was published in twelve volumes , and...
. The IPA symbols used are /ɔː/ for horse and /ɔə/ for hoarse.
In the United States, the merger is quite recent in some parts of the country. For example, Kurath
Hans Kurath
Hans Kurath was an American linguist of Austrian origin. He was full professor for English and Linguistics at the University of Michigan, Ann Arbor...
and McDavid based on fieldwork performed in the 1930s, shows the contrast robustly present in the speech of Vermont
Vermont
Vermont is a state in the New England region of the northeastern United States of America. The state ranks 43rd in land area, , and 45th in total area. Its population according to the 2010 census, 630,337, is the second smallest in the country, larger only than Wyoming. It is the only New England...
, northern and western New York
New York
New York is a state in the Northeastern region of the United States. It is the nation's third most populous state. New York is bordered by New Jersey and Pennsylvania to the south, and by Connecticut, Massachusetts and Vermont to the east...
State, Virginia
Virginia
The Commonwealth of Virginia , is a U.S. state on the Atlantic Coast of the Southern United States. Virginia is nicknamed the "Old Dominion" and sometimes the "Mother of Presidents" after the eight U.S. presidents born there...
, central and southern West Virginia
West Virginia
West Virginia is a state in the Appalachian and Southeastern regions of the United States, bordered by Virginia to the southeast, Kentucky to the southwest, Ohio to the northwest, Pennsylvania to the northeast and Maryland to the east...
, and North Carolina
North Carolina
North Carolina is a state located in the southeastern United States. The state borders South Carolina and Georgia to the south, Tennessee to the west and Virginia to the north. North Carolina contains 100 counties. Its capital is Raleigh, and its largest city is Charlotte...
; but Labov, Ash, and Boberg based on telephone surveys conducted in the 1990s, shows these areas as having almost completely undergone the merger. And even in areas where the distinction is still made, the acoustic difference between the [ɔr] of horse and the [or] of hoarse is rather small for many speakers.
The two groups of words merged by this rule are called the lexical set
Lexical set
- Wells Standard Lexical Sets for English :The Standard Lexical Sets for English introduced by John C. Wells in Accents of English are in wide usage...
s NORTH (including horse) and the FORCE (including hoarse) by Wells (1982). Etymologically, the NORTH words had /ɒɹ/ and the FORCE words had /oːɹ/.
The orthography of a word often signals whether it belongs in the NORTH set or the FORCE set. The spellings war, quar, aur, and word-final or indicate NORTH (e.g. quarter, war, warm, warn, aura, aural, Thor). The spellings oVr or orV (where V stands for a vowel) indicate FORCE (e.g. board, coarse, hoarse, door, floor, course, pour, oral, more, historian, moron, glory). Words spelled or followed by a consonant mostly belong with NORTH, but the following exceptions are listed with FORCE by Wells (1982):
- the past participles borne (but not born), shorn, sworn, torn and worn
- some (but not all) words where or follows a labial consonantLabial consonantLabial consonants are consonants in which one or both lips are the active articulator. This precludes linguolabials, in which the tip of the tongue reaches for the posterior side of the upper lip and which are considered coronals...
:- Borneo
- afford, force, ford, forge, fort (but not fortress), forth
- deport, export, import (but not important), porch, pork, port, portend, portent, porter, portion, portrait, proportion, report, sport, support
- divorce
- sword
- the word corps (but not corpse; corps is a perfect homophoneHomophoneA homophone is a word that is pronounced the same as another word but differs in meaning. The words may be spelled the same, such as rose and rose , or differently, such as carat, caret, and carrot, or to, two, and too. Homophones that are spelled the same are also both homographs and homonyms...
of core) - the word horde (a perfect homophoneHomophoneA homophone is a word that is pronounced the same as another word but differs in meaning. The words may be spelled the same, such as rose and rose , or differently, such as carat, caret, and carrot, or to, two, and too. Homophones that are spelled the same are also both homographs and homonyms...
of hoard)
| Homophonous pairs |
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Cork–quark merger
The cork–quark merger is the merger of the sequences /kɔr/ and /kwɔr/, making cork and quark homophones. This merger is generally observed to be strongest in American EnglishAmerican English
American English is a set of dialects of the English language used mostly in the United States. Approximately two-thirds of the world's native speakers of English live in the United States....
. Even more minimal pairs become homophonous when accompanied with the horse–hoarse merger, which most General American accents also have.
| Homophonous pairs |
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See also
- Phonological history of the English languagePhonological history of the English languageThe phonological history of English describes changing phonology of the English language over time, starting from its roots in proto-Germanic to diverse changes in different dialects of modern English....
- Phonological history of English vowelsPhonological history of English vowelsIn the history of English phonology, there were many diachronic sound changes affecting vowels, especially involving phonemic splits and mergers.-Great Vowel Shift and Trisyllabic laxing:...
- coil–curl merger
- English phonologyEnglish phonologyEnglish phonology is the study of the sound system of the English language. Like many languages, English has wide variation in pronunciation, both historically and from dialect to dialect...
- History of the English languageHistory of the English languageEnglish is a West Germanic language that originated from the Anglo-Frisian dialects brought to Britain by Germanic invaders from various parts of what is now northwest Germany and the Netherlands. Initially, Old English was a diverse group of dialects, reflecting the varied origins of the...
- Vocalic r