David Madore's WebLog: Results of my pronunciation poll

This pair is homophonous in all English accents I know of. It was included to test the effect of spelling differences, and as a possible comparison with the farm / form question.

This pair is a test of the Mary–merry merger (merger of SQUARE and DRESS vowels before intervocalic ‘r’) which occurred in North American accents. Of the 40 native respondents reporting from the US, 70% reported identical, 12% reported unclear and 18% reported distinct for this question.

This pair was included as a test of the a merger of KIT and NEAR vowels before intervocalic ‘r’ (sometimes know as the mirror–nearer merger, and analogous to the Mary–merry merger discussed above) which occurred in North American accents. Of the 40 native respondents reporting from the US, 65% reported identical, 10% reported unclear and 25% reported distinct for this question.

This pair was included as a test of vowel smoothing: it is expected that in some English accents, [faɪə] can smooth to [faə] or [fɑə] or even monophtonged to [faː] or [fɑː], which could then make it homophonous with far. Upon documentation, it seems a front vowel (closer to [a]) is to be expected in this word, and tire / tar would have been a more plausible test; see also tower / tar below.

This is classical test of rhoticity. As expected, while 98% of the native respondents reporting from the US marked this pair as distinct (the last one as unclear), 80% of the (15) respondents from England said these were identical (the other 20% called them distinct).

I was also interested in knowing whether the non-native respondents would report the words as identical, especially given that most English teachers in France are presumably from the UK; I suspect, however, that ‘r’-dropping is not really covered in English classes in France.

These words are distinct in RP (following the TRAP and BATH (or PALM) vowels respectively) and identical in American; there are, however, a sizable number of Americans who pronounce aunt with the PALM vowel, and there could be some variability in English accents as well. Of the 40 native respondents reporting from the US, 58% reported identical, 25% reported unclear and 18% reported distinct for this question; while of the 15 native respondents reporting from England, 73% reported distinct (leaving only three identical and one unclear).

This is a merger (between the FOOT and GOOSE vowels) expected to occur in Scottish accents, but as was pointed to me, the example is perhaps badly chosen given that postvocalic ‘l’ tends to alter vowel quality significantly (especially in Great-Britain); maybe look / Luke would have been better.

I was also interested to know how French respondents would do on this one, since the FOOT and GOOSE vowels seem to merge in French accents in English (in much the same way as KIT and FLEECE). Of the 117 non-native respondents reporting from France specifically, 32% reported identical, 10% reported unclear, 56% reported distinct and one (1%) not knowing.

I was surprised by the results of this one: as far as I can tell, sun and son are homophonous in every accent of English. (It is worth recalling that they had the same vowel in Old English and that the distinction in spelling is a historical artifact due to the way the minime script was written to avoid some ambiguities.) And I didn't expect such common words to cause so much problem. I am tempted to say that one of the lessons here is that one shouldn't expect learners of English to just pick up these things: they need to be pointed out explicitly.

This is a classic merger between NORTH (horse, morning, for, short, fork, corn) and FORCE (hoarse, mourning, four=fore, sport, pork, torn) which is reported to be complete in almost every accent of English, and the distinction between these two sets can be considered mostly dead. The two native speakers who reported the words as not identical were from Yorkshire (distinct) and South Australia (unclear / varies). See also morning / mourning and for / four below.

This merger (between earlier /ɛi/ and /ɛː/) has been complete since just after the Great Vowel Shift (the long mid mergers, around the 16th century), and people making the distinction are expected to be long dead.

The main issue here is the number of syllables: is the word analysed as a single syllable with the PRICE vowel followed by ‘r’ (a syllable which could then undergo smoothing); or is it disyllabic, having one stressed syllable with the PRICE vowel followed by a weak one with a (possibly rhoticized) schwa sound? Or is the distinction meaningless? And if not, is the disyllabic version more likely to occur in higher where it is suggested by the morphemic analysis high+er? The results are unclear and may warrant further investigation (a related issue is whether idea and I, dear are homophonous in RP).

This question tests a split of Middle English short ‘u’ into the STRUT (/ʌ/, as in luck, putt, rush) and FOOT (/ʊ/, as in look, put, push) vowels; this split did not occur in Northern England (one of the two native respondents who reported these words as identical did indeed indicate North-West England as origin; the other just wrote United Kingdom).

The STRUT–FOOT distinction is thought to be unproblematic for French speakers (who rather tend to conflate FOOT with GOOSE, see above).

This is a mess, and this pair was included more or less by mistake. There are two issues here: one is the tendency for the CURE vowel to merge with the NORTH (and hence FORCE) vowel in English accents in general and perhaps even more so on the word poor, or sometimes with the NURSE vowel; the second is the possibility of yod-dropping (here yod refers to /j/), which should not occur here; so the two words are distinct, but this tells us little about the vowel, which is a mess anyway, and this question is useless. Sorry about that.

This is a fake test (a kind of trap, if you will) against the mirror–nearer merger mentioned above, as non-natives may fail to realize that stirring has the NURSE vowel (not the KIT vowel which may be merged with NEAR). I'm not sure there's anything intelligent to conclude here.

The two words should, of course, be unambiguously different in rhotic accents; I thought some speakers with non-rhotic accents might perhaps fail to note the difference (even if they were pronouncing it themselves). This was included as a baseline against which to compare the fairy / ferry question, but it appears to have been useless as such. The one native respondent who reported the distinction as unclear was from New Zealand.

Compare with horse / hoarse above and for / four below. Here, three (8%) of the 40 native respondents from the US reported the distinction as unclear, none as distinct; the six native respondents who reported the words as distinct were four from the UK, one from Australia, and one from an unspecified location.

I thought that vowel smoothing (see above) might sometimes make these words homophonous as [taə] or [tɑə].

This was mostly included as a comparison baseline for the warn / worn question for non-native speakers.

This was included because German speakers seem to have problems distinguishing the DRESS and TRAP vowels. But there were few responses from Germany, and the only two respondents who reported the words as identical were from France and Finland.

The LOT vowel is identical to the PALM vowel in American accents (this is the father–bother merger); since the PALM vowel is rare, it is not easy to give minimal pair examples of this: maybe it would have been better to ask about [f]ather / [b]other, because the pronunciation of the foreign name Dali is, of course, of little value as a reference. Of the 40 native respondents reporting from the US, 42% reported identical, 12% reported unclear and 45% reported distinct for this question; the 15 native respondents from England all reported the two words as distinct.

French speakers (among others) have considerable difficulty keeping the KIT and FLEECE vowels separate. Of course, whether they claim to hear a difference and whether they actually do pronounce one are different matters. Here, of the 117 non-native respondents reporting from France specifically, 14% reported identical, 9% reported unclear and 77% reported distinct.

The two words are expected to be homophonous, as bury unexpectedly has the DRESS vowel. I know that there are exceptions, though, because my own father (who grew up mainly in Ontario, Canada) pronounces it with the NURSE vowel. In this poll, of the 40 native respondents reporting from the US, 70% reported identical, 8% reported unclear and 22% reported distinct for this question (this does not tell us, of course, whether they use the NURSE vowel or something else, or were simply misled by the spelling).

This should be compared with luck / look above as the distinction should be the same (STRUT–FOOT). The fact that a considerably larger number of non-native speakers reported the words as identical suggests that they take clues from the spelling.

Yet another test of smoothing (there are too many of these): see above.

Both words should have the NURSE vowel. I expect that Irish accents may tell the two apart, but my poll does not seem to have gotten any responses from Ireland. The five native respondents who reported the words as distinct, and the two who reported them as unclear, were all from North America (plus one who did not report a location).

This merger between the STRUT and NURSE vowels before an intervocalic ‘r’ occurs in North American accents (and I expect, others as well). Of the 40 native respondents reporting from the US, 90% reported identical, 2% reported unclear and 8% reported distinct for this question; while of the 15 native respondents reporting from England, all reported the words as distinct.

Compare with spear it / spirit above. Of the 40 native respondents reporting from the US, 75% reported identical, 8% reported unclear and 18% reported distinct for this question; while of the 15 native respondents reporting from England, all but one (93%) reported the words as distinct (and the last one as unclear).

This was a test to see if non-native speakers, who might have learned about ‘r’-dropping, were led to conclude that the two words would sound identical. Not a very interesting test.

The word poor takes the CURE vowel, which has a tendency for to merge with the NORTH (and hence FORCE) vowel especially in England; the word pour takes the NORTH vowel (or perhaps FORCE, but the distinction has become essentially non-existent, see above). So I expected a certain amount of confusion. I am slightly surprised, however, to see that the percentage of respondents who report the words as identical is the same (67%) among natives from England as from the US.

This pair is a test of the (Mary=merry)–marry merger (merger of the already merged SQUARE and DRESS vowels with TRAP before intervocalic ‘r’) which occurred in some North American accents. Of the 40 native respondents reporting from the US, 72% reported identical, 5% reported unclear and 22% reported distinct for this question; while of the 15 native respondents reporting from England, all reported the words as distinct.

Compare with earn / urn above. Both words should have the NURSE vowel. Again, I expect that Irish accents may tell the two apart, but my poll does not seem to have gotten any responses from Ireland. Three native respondents reported the words as distinct, one from North-West England, one did not specify beyond UK, and one did not specify at all.

Compare with horse / hoarse and morning / mourning above. Here, three (8%) of the 40 native respondents from the US reported the distinction as unclear, two (5%) as distinct; the four native respondents who reported the words as distinct were two from the UK and two from the US.

The (tonic) vowel in surely seems to be either that of CURE, which has a tendency for to merge with the NORTH (and hence FORCE) vowel, or, at least in the US, that of NURSE. The (tonic) vowel in Shirley is unambiguously that NURSE. Of the 40 native respondents reporting from the US, 65% reported identical, 15% reported unclear and 20% reported distinct for this question.

This is a merger occurring in many areas of North America (broadly speaking, much of Canada and the Western United States). Of the 40 native respondents reporting from the US, 42% reported identical, 10% reported unclear and 48% reported distinct for this question; while of the 15 native respondents reporting from England, all reported the words as distinct.

This is the FLEECE merger, which took place after the Great Vowel Shift, around the 17th century, between the /iː/ and /eː/ vowels resulting from the Great Vowel Shift (from earlier /eː/ and /ɛː/ vowels). This merger is reportedly not complete in some parts of Northern England, but this does not show up on this poll.