Mirror-Nearer

I was reading something online about this merger, and it appears that I do not have it. I maintain the distinction between "spirit" and "spear it", whereas I have noticed that most merged speakers have the pronunciation identical to my "spear it" for both.

Does anyone else on this board maintain the distinction, or is it fading away in the same manner as the distinction between wine and whine?

The distinction, similar to other potential mergers before rhotics, is alive and well outside of America. Sets like Spirit/Spear it and Marry/Merry/Mary are fully maintained amongst tens millions of speakers and show no sign of being lost. It may be that one day it is gone in America, much like the distinction between short O and broad A is pretty much dead.

(Are you familiar with IPA? If not, see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/International_Phonetic_Alphabet .)

Yes, the serious-Sirius (or mirror-nearer) merger is predominant in North America. It's one of a group of pre-/r/ mergers: Mary-merry-marry, hurry-furry, Tory-torrent. The distinctions remain universal outside of North America, and they're quite common in the northeastern United States (New England, the NYC area, Philadelphia to some extent). Not all of the distinguishers are non-rhotic (/r/-dropping), but the distinctions tend to be retained only in areas where non-rhoticism is common.

I make these distinctions, and I'm a rhotic (/r/-retaining) speaker from Massachusetts. I transcribe my pronunciations thus:

serious [ˈsɪɚiəs]
Sirius [ˈsɪɹiəs]

mirror [ˈmɪɹɚ]
nearer [ˈnɪɚɚ]

Felix: The father-bother distinction isn't quite dead yet here; it's still robust in most of Massachusetts. I have:

[ˈfɑ:ðɚ]
[ˈbɒ:ðɚ]

But it's basically extinct outside of New England.

Yeah, that is definitely true as NAE dialects, even though it should be noted that similar distinctions have been created anew in some NAE dialects such as that here through elision and /ə/ after elided intervocalic consonants being commonly converted into lengthening of the previous vowel. For instance it is common to pronounce "Saturday" as [ˈsɛ̯æʁɾe̞ː] and "better" as [ˈb̥ɜ̟ːʁ] while "bear" is pronounced [ˈb̥ɛ̝ːʁ], it is very common to pronounce "already" as [ˈɒːʁɜ̟ːi̯] while "ore" is pronounced [ˈɔːʁ], and common to pronounce "bitter" as [ˈb̥ɪ̠ːʁ] while "beer" is pronounced [ˈb̥ɪːʁ] or [ˈb̥iːʁ̩ː]. Of course, this is not a resurrection of the old distinction here, but it is a relaxing of phonotactics so that the distinctions formerly neutralized by said mergers are now possible again.

I understand the basics of IPA, but I prefer using John C. Wells's X-SAMPA because it is slightly easier to write.

Felix, I had a feeling that was the case, but I was not completely sure. Now that I think about it, I do not think I have met anyone outside of North America who participates in any of these North American style mergers. That is, unless they were originally non-native speakers who learned English from Canada or the United States.

Lazar, I too am a rhotic speaker, and I have roughly the same distinction method as you have.

"Mirror" is roughly [mI.r\@`]
"Nearer" is roughly [nI:@`.@`]

Our father and bother are slightly different, though.

"Father" is roughly [fa:D@`]
"Bother" is roughly [bAD@`]

Travis, that is quite interesting, but many of your IPA symbols are not showing up on this end. This probably due to an issue with my computer system, though.

I tend towards using IPA these days simply because I generally use rather narrow transcription, which tends to be very verbose in X-SAMPA as opposed to IPA. But anyways, here is my post above with X-SAMPA rather than IPA:

Yeah, that is definitely true as NAE dialects, even though it should be noted that similar distinctions have been created anew in some NAE dialects such as that here through elision and /@/ after elided intervocalic consonants being commonly converted into lengthening of the previous vowel. For instance it is common to pronounce "Saturday" as ["sE_^{R4e_o:] and "better" as ["b_03_+:R] while "bear" is pronounced ["b_0E_r:R], it is very common to pronounce "already" as ["Q:R3_+:i_^] while "ore" is pronounced ["O:R], and common to pronounce "bitter" as ["b_0I_-:R] while "beer" is pronounced ["b_0I:R] or ["b_0i:R=:]. Of course, this is not a resurrection of the old distinction here, but it is a relaxing of phonotactics so that the distinctions formerly neutralized by said mergers are now possible again.