HOW TO PRONOUNCE FUR GIRL WORK

Unlike with the spellings of other sounds I think three spelling combinations can claim more or less equal status as representing the sound /ɜ:/. I would say that ‘er’ seems the most obvious choice as in ‘jerk’ /dʒɜ:k/, but there are plenty of words with ‘ur’ or ‘ir’. Take ‘curl’ /kɜ:l/ or ‘dirt’ /dɜ:t/. I tend to assume that any of these three combinations would make the /ɜ:/ sound. Of course, they can make other sounds too, but that’s for another day. Today is about how to pronounce fur girl work and other such words.

BREAKING NEWS: ‘or’ CAN BE PRONOUNCED /ɜ:/

You may find it hard to accept that the letters ‘or’ can perform the same function. Whilst /ɜ:/ is not the primary use of this combination of letters, I can cite some very common examples: ‘work’, ‘world’ and ‘word’ itself [/wɜ:k/, /wɜ:ld/ and /wɜ:d/]. Isn’t it terrible!

SOME EXCEPTIONS THAT YOU CAN LEARN

Whenever the letters ‘ear’ are together, I don’t ever believe you can really trust them. So you should learn words like ‘pearl’ and ‘earl’ [/pɜ:l/ and /ɜ:l/] as exceptions. Other exceptions are words like ‘journal’ /dʒɜ:nəl/ and ‘were’ /wɜ:/. You’re probably going to tell me next that we rarely ever pronounce ‘were’ with /ɜ:/ and this may be true. As an auxiliary verb we often weaken it into /wə/. However, this is not the subject of today’s post.

THE ISSUE OF ACCENTS RAISES ITS UGLY YET HEAD AGAIN

I have been writing about /ɜ:/ with Received Pronunciation as that’s what I help people with as an English pronunciation teacher. All of the combinations we have been looking at involve the letter ‘r’. Various accents from around the British Isles and beyond may add that letter to the /ɜ:/ sound in different ways. Some British people may even say other sounds more like /ɜ:/.

Have a look at the infographic on how to pronounce fur girl work and have a go at the pronunciation quiz below it.

 

This post has been about spelling the /ɜ:/ sound and ‘er’ is a common way of spelling this sound. However, ‘er’ does not always make the /ɜ:/ sound, . The /ɜ:/ sound is likely to be made when the syllable is stressed, as in Germany /dʒɜ:məni/and service /sɜ:vɪs/. If a different syllable is stressed, the ‘er’ is likely to make the /ə/ or schwa sound. This is the most common sound in English and this is the case in the word ‘performance’  pronounced /pəfɔ:məns/. The stress falls on the second syllable ‘or’ /ɔ:/ and the ‘er’ is pronounced /ə/.