Does ''mirror'' rhyme with ''nearer'' to you.

I pronounce ''mirror'' and ''nearer'' to rhyme. But I looked in a dictionary and it said that ''mirror'' has the ''i'' sound in ''bit'' and ''nearer'' has the ''ee'' sound in ''beet''.

Do you pronounce ''mirror'' and ''nearer'' to rhyme. And where are you from? Is it regional? Or is that dictionary just wrong?

To me they don't rhyme but for many Americans I believe they do. "near" and "beet" don't rhyme for me either.

* "near" and "beet" don't share the same vowel sound in my accent.

"Mirror" and "nearer" don't rhyme in my accent. (Los Angeles, CA)

They sound pretty much the same to me: [mirR] and [nirR]. The spectrograms look the same, too.

What about ''serious'' and ''Sirius''. Do you pronounce ''serious'' and ''Sirius'' the same way or differently? I pronounce them the same but my dictionary says that ''Sirius'' has the ''i'' sound in ''bit'' and that ''serious'' has the ''ee'' sound in ''beet''.

Mirror and nearer sometimes rhyme and sometimes do not in my English. Usually the difference is like "bit and beer". I do not think people always pronounce words the same way.

Some people pronounce mirror to sound like "mere". Those people also say "pitcher" for "picture."

Yes Bill, people don't pronounce words the same even if its their mother tongue-- our different accents in all, you know.

I pronounce the 'e' in 'near' and 'serious' with the long 'e' sound.

I pronounce the 'i' in mirror with the short 'i' sound-- I would have pronounced the 'i' in 'sirius' this way too-- 'sirius' is new word for me.

Marie, Do you pronounce ''near'' and ''beet'' with the same vowel sound?

The vowel sound in those words is definitely different for me.

near-[nir]
beat-[bi:t]

In the American accent a lot of vowels commonly tend to merge before ''r''.

Mary, marry, and merry sound the same in a lot of accents.

''Mirror'' and ''nearer'' rhyme in a lot of accents.

''Hurry'' and ''furry'' rhyme in a lot of accents.

For me ''mirror'' and ''nearer'' don't rhyme nor do ''hurry'' and ''furry''.

"Near" and "beet" don't share the same vowel sound in my accent either.

I pronounce ''serious'' and ''Sirius'' differently same with "Mary", "marry", and "merry".

''mirror'' = /mir../
''nearer'' = /ni..r../
''hurry'' = /h^ri(:)/
''furry'' = /fe:ri(:)/
''knee" = /ni:/
"near" = /ni../
''bee" = /bi:/
"beer" = /bi../
"beet" = /bi:t/
''serious'' = /si..ri(:)..s/
''Sirius'' = /siri(:)..s/
"Mary" = /me..ri(:)/
"marry" = /m@ri(:)/
"merry" = /meri(:)/

In AmEng, the difference between 'ee' and 'i' (beet/bit), between 'ay' and 'e' (say, fed), between 'oo' and 'u' (moon, push), and between 'oa' and 'o' (road, top) is neutralized by a following 'r'. This is supposedly due to the vowel-like nature of the 'r'. The 'ee', 'ay', 'oo', and 'oa' are considered (by some theorists) as two-component vowels. American English vowels, the theory goes, never have more than two components. Thus, with semi-vowel 'r', you can only have 'ir', 'er', 'ur', 'or' -- not 'eer', 'ayr', 'oor', 'oar'. (I'm not referring to spellings, here, of course!) -- unless you go to "two syllables", that is.

So, according to this theory, "beer" is 'bir' (one-syllable) or 'bee-r' (almost two syllables); "your" is 'yur' (one-syllable) or 'yoo-r' (almost two). The longer you make the vowel, the more the 'r' is squeezed out of the syllable and forced to make a little syllable of its own.

It's a little weird but may be worth thinking about. The underlying pattern of English does seem to be "long vowels" in "open syllables" and "short vowels" in "closed syllables", and this theory seems to be related to the long/short pattern. I'm not sure what to think about it.

Correction: The contrast for 'O' should have been between 'oa' and 'au' (road, taught).