The vowels in ''fern'', ''fir'', ''fur''.

Do ye hear a difference between the vowels in ''fern'', ''fir'', and ''fur''? There's a clear difference in my accent between them.

fern - /fErn/

fir - /fIr/

fur - /f3`/

I'm from Scotland.

I pronounce them the same way i.e. /f3`n/, /f3`/. To pronounce them differently is nonstandard and pretentious.

I pronounce them all with /3`/.

<<To pronounce them differently is nonstandard>>

Not if you're speaking Scottish Standard English. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scottish_Standard_English

<<and pretentious.>>

Try to think of a better adjective. The fern-fir-fur distinction is something so rare in the English-speaking world, and something that disappeared from English English speech so many centuries ago, that it conveys no class connotations at all. The only thing that it conveys is Scottishness.

<<Try to think of a better adjective. The fern-fir-fur distinction is something so rare in the English-speaking world, and something that disappeared from English English speech so many centuries ago, that it conveys no class connotations at all. The only thing that it conveys is Scottishness.>>

And it's a very unimportant distinction to make, because minimal pairs are very rare.

what kind of symbols are you using?

f3' what does that mean?

We're using X-SAMPA, which is a phonetic alphabet designed for use on ASCII fonts. Here is a guide to the X-SAMPA symbols and their equivalents in the International Phonetic Alphabet: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/X-SAMPA

<<And it's a very unimportant distinction to make, because minimal pairs are very rare.>>

Here's a list of minimal pairs for this distinction:

fir, fur - /fIr/, /f3`/
hertz, hurts - /hErts/, /h3`ts/
tern, turn - /tErn/, /t3`n/
kerb, curb - /kErb/, /k3`b/
ferry, furry - /fErI/, /f3`I/

<<Do ye hear a difference between the vowels in ''fern'', ''fir'', and ''fur''? There's a clear difference in my accent between them.

fern - /fErn/

fir - /fIr/

fur - /f3`/

I'm from Scotland.>>

That sounds interisting, accents that have distinction between that kind of words are very appealing to me, because I could not think of me speaking like that, I pronounce them all with a /E/. :(

<<I pronounce them the same way i.e. /f3`n/, /f3`/. To pronounce them differently is nonstandard and pretentious.>>

hehehe, where are you from? what's standard for you? Well, in my opinion, it's not standard, but I like those pronunciations.

<<hehehe, where are you from? what's standard for you?>>

I'm from Georgia.

<<ferry, furry - /fErI/, /f3`I/>>

For most speakers, the distinction is not neutralised before vowels. Thus, "ferry", "current", "spirit" all have different stressed vowels (for me, /e/, /a/ and /I/, respectively).

(Do "furry" and "hurry" rhyme for you? For American speakers I understand they do, but for most others they're distinct, as in AusE /f3:ri/ vs /hari/. This of course because in "hurry", the r comes before a vowel so the neutralisation does not happen; whereas in "furry", a -y is added to the root "fur" so the neutralisation occurs before the -y enters the picture.)

<<Do "furry" and "hurry" rhyme for you? For American speakers I understand they do>>

Most American speakers (me included) do have the "furry/hurry" merger but there is a small minority of American speakers without the merger, such as Lazar.

Albert,

Re: Do ye hear a difference between the vowels in ''fern'', ''fir'', and ''fur''?

In most Modern English accents no, even though they would have had different sounds in Middle English. I think Scots English still has some relics of Middle English pronunciation.

The unavailibility of the International Phonetic Script and some diacritical marks makes it difficult to discuss how the sound is represented phonetically.

Usually this English vowel sound (semi-vowel?) is writen as a forwards or backwards Greek epsilon. Sometimes it is represented as a u with a circumflex over it (Û). A few pronunciation guides I've seen would spell them as frn, fr and fr with a small yod (l) under the r.

>>The unavailibility of the International Phonetic Script and some diacritical marks makes it difficult to discuss how the sound is represented phonetically.<<

One could X-SAMPA, of course, which is functionally equivalent to IPA.

>>Usually this English vowel sound (semi-vowel?) is writen as a forwards or backwards Greek epsilon. Sometimes it is represented as a u with a circumflex over it (Û). A few pronunciation guides I've seen would spell them as frn, fr and fr with a small yod (l) under the r.<<

Of course, the notation used in many pronunciation guides as found in dictionaries, besides those dictionaries which do use IPA, tend to be notationally useless for most actual linguistic purposes.

<<Do "furry" and "hurry" rhyme for you? For American speakers I understand they do, but for most others they're distinct, as in AusE /f3:ri/ vs /hari/. This of course because in "hurry", the r comes before a vowel so the neutralisation does not happen; whereas in "furry", a -y is added to the root "fur" so the neutralisation occurs before the -y enters the picture.>>

As Kirk said, I do distinguish between "hurry" and "furry". Distinctions like mary-merry-marry and hurry-furry are common in the Northeastern US but rare elsewhere in the US.

One interesting thing about Scottish English is that "hurry" and "furry" rhyme, but this isn't because of a hurry-furry merger (as in North America), but rather because the split between the vowels in "hurry" and "fur" (and hence, "furry") never occurred in the first place.

This parallels how the shift of word-final /Ng/ to /N/ led to a split between words like "ringer" [r\IN@`] and "finger" [fINg@`], which originally rhymed.

Re:"Of course, the notation used in many pronunciation guides as found in dictionaries, besides those dictionaries which do use IPA, tend to be notationally useless for most actual linguistic purposes. " --- TRAVIS

Agree as far as professional linguists are concerned.

Generally speaking, the IPA is a good system. However some linguists like to go further than the basic IPA in transcribing sounds by adding small h's to it to represent the aspirated stops as in Æ:T(h)OM:BAM "atom bomb" ; DIS:K(h)O "disco" or small j's to represent palatalized sounds as in Irish F(j)AM:N (feamainn) "seaweed" even the glottal stop in K(h)IT:E?N "Kitten" and dialectal Irish DUWH? "black".