/ʌ/, /ər/ minimal pairs

/ər/ words

/ər/ can occur in a stressed and in an unstressed syllable. For example, in butter and father, it is unstressed, but in stir, occur and prefer, /ər/ is stressed:. To distinguish these two cases, some scholars use different symbols: e.g., /ɜr, ɝ/ for the stressed ER sound, and /ər, ɚ/ for the unstressed ER sound. In this book, we use the same symbol /ər/ since their pronunciation is the same.

Another thing to mention regarding /ər/ is that /ər/ is essentially the same sound as the vocalic /r/ (i.e., the /r/ that carries its own vowel sound). This led some to claim that /ər/ is the syllabic consonant /r/ sound. In this book, we treat /ər/ as the composite of /ə/ plus /r/. Some common words containing /ər/ include the following:

with "er":

certain, concern, determine, her, nerve, perfect, person, service, term, verb, were

with "ear":

early, earn, earth, heard, learn, pearl, search

with "ur":

burn, curly, fur, hurt, murder, return, surface, surgeon, Thursday, turn, urban, urgent

with "ir":

bird, birthday, circle, dirty, firm, girl, shirt, sir, skirt, stir, third, thirsty, thirty

with "or":

attorney, word, work, worm, world, worse, worst, worth

with "our":

courteous, journalist, journey

colonel (The word “colonel” also has the r-colored vowel /ər/ as it is pronounced /ˈk/ər/nl/)

/ər/ homophones

These words are homophones:

birth - berth

colonel - kernel

earn - urn

fir - fur

heard - herd

tern - turn