Her hair - contrasting /ɜː/ and /eə/ in English

Welcome to season 5 of English Sound Building! Today, we’re following on from last week, and contrasting two sounds we’ve looked at before, but not in relation to each other: /ɜ:/ and /eə/.

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Transcript

So, today we’re moving on from last week’s look at /e/ and /eə/, staying with /eə/ and contrasting with the long vowel /ɜ:/, which we looked at back in season 1, episode 5 “Work work work”, and it’s time we came back to! The contrast between /eə/ and /ɜ:/ can be tricky, including for some English from England speakers or in some regional accents. In general, my learners can struggle with keeping the /ɜ:/ sound really central (go back and listen to that episode 5 if you need to, and review the schwa episode 4 too), instead making it more at the front of the mouth, sounding more like /eə/. The silent ‘r’s in English from England words can prove tricky with both of these sounds, too, so we’re linking back to episode 2 of this season, too. If you are a person who pronounces those ‘r’s, make sure that you’re not shortening these vowel sounds.

Let’s start by reviewing some of the common words and sentences with both sounds. We just reviewed /eə/ last week, so we’re going to go straight in with the sentences: 

•        The hilarious hairy librarian is downstairs.

•        The affair involved various millionaires.

•        Don’t swear anywhere in the square!

…And now for some words with /ɜ:/. We’re reviewing quite a few of these, because it’s been so long!

1.   bird

2.   certain

3.   circumstances

4.   dirty

5.   early

6.   earn

7.   emergency

8.   expert

9.   first

10.heard

11.interpret

12.journalist

13.journey

14.learn

15.nervous

16.observe

17.perfect

18.prefer

19.return

20.shirt

21.skirt

22.third

23.word

24.work

Well done! Now let’s try some sentences with a lot of /ɜ:/

·       I was nervous early in the journey

·       You can’t go to work in a dirty skirt and shirt.

·       I observed the journalist expertly interpreting the emergency circumstances.

And now for some minimal pairs. Again, there aren’t many of these, just because of the typical position of the sounds in the word. We are stretching into some very high level vocabulary this week, so dictionaries out if needed!

We’ll read the first four together.

1. blur – blare
2. burr – bear/ bare 
3. curd – cared
4. err – air

For the next four, I’ll say the /ɜ:/ word: can you say both? We’ll do the first one together as an example.

1. fur – fair
2. her – hair
3. herd/ heard – hared
4. per/ purr – pair

Now listen to both, repeat again, and see how you did.

And for the last four, I’ll read the /eə/ word: can you say both? Again, we’ll do the first one together as an example.

1. spur – spare
2. stir – stare/ stair.
3. were – wear/ where
4. whirred – where’d

Now listen to both, repeat again, and see how you did.

Finally, let’s finish with some sentences with some of those pairs.

• Where were you?
• Her cat has fair fur, like her hair.
• The pair of cats purred as they stirred on the stairs.