The most difficult English sound for speakers of many languages is the ‘r’ sound. Though it is considered a single phoneme, that can occur in four different places. It can occur as a consonant, as a vowel, and attached to vowels.
Spelling | Phoneme | Representative Words | |
---|---|---|---|
1. | 'r' | /ɹ/ | "red" /ɹɛd/ "bread" /bɹɛd/ |
2. | 'ir,' 'or' | /ɝ/ | "bird" /bɝd/ "work" /wɝk/ |
3. | 'er,' 'or' | /ɚ/ | "butter" /bʌɾɚ/ "freer" /fɹiɚ/ |
4.. | "or" | /ɔr/ | "bore" /bɔr/ "oar" /ɔr/ |
5.. | "air," "ear" | /ɛr/ | "bear" /bɛr/ "air" /ɛr/ |
6.. | "fear," "ear" | /ɪr/ | "beer" /bɪr/ "ear" /ir/ |
The first row of the table is the sound of ‘r’ as a consonant. We write it as an upside-down ‘r’ /ɹ/. This is the sound in words like, “red” /ɹɛd/,, or “tried” /tɹɑɪd/.
A right-side-up ‘r’ /r/ is used to stand for the trilled ‘r’ that that occurs in many languages such as Spanish and Finish. For instance Spanish “perro” /pero/ and Finnish “Hari” /hari/.
The second and third rows are two ways of representing the same sound, a vocalic ‘r.’ Vocalic consonants are constants that act as a vowel and can be the core to a syllable. The sound is the ‘r’ sound in “bird,” “early,” “letter,” and “paper.” The reason that there are two ways of representing the same sound is that same as for /ʌ/ and /e/, when the syllable is stressed, we write the sounds as /ɝ/, and when it is unstressed, we write it is ɚ/.
“bird” | /bɝd/ |
“early” | /ɝli/ |
“letter” | /lɛɹɚ/ |
“paper” | /peɪpɚ/ |
The fourth, fifth, and sixth rows add an ‘ɹ’ symbol after the vowel to indicate that the vowel sound merges into the /ɚ/ sound similar to a diphthong. Following is a list of the r-colored vowels.
Three of the vowel sounds are written with two symbols, but /ɝ/ and /ɚ/ are not. They have been written as /ʌɹ/ and /əɹ/. However, that misses the fact that you are making the vowel sound and modifying it with the ‘r’ sound by curling back your tongue or bunching it up. Some linguists write /ɔɹ/, /ɑɹ/, and /ɛɹ/ as single symbols. Remember not to get too hung up on symbols because there is some variation. I try to be consistent on this website.
phoneme/ allophone | Beginning of Word | Middle of Word | End of Word | |
---|---|---|---|---|
1. | /ɚ/ | around [ɚˈɹaʊnd] | perfect [pɚˈfɛkt] | ever [ˈɛvɚ] |
2. | /ɝ/ | Early [ɝli] | Bird [bɝd] | Worm [wɝm] |
3. | /ɑr/ | Art [ɑrt] | Start [stɑrt] | Star [stɑr] |
4. | /ɔr/ | Orb [ɔrb] | Morbid [mɔrbɪd] | Store [stɔr] |
5. | /ɛr/ | Air [ɛr] | Fairly [fɛrli] | Stair [stɛr] |
- Early morbid art is fairly rare. [ɝli mɔrbɪd ɑrt ɪz fɛrli ɹɛr]
- The early bird catches the worm. [ðə ɝli bɝd kæt͡ʃz ðə wɝm̩]
- The moon orbits the Earth. [ðə mun ɔrbɪts ðə ɝθ].
- Air is necessary to breathe.