American English Dialects

Vowels Before /r/ in One-syllable Words, With all Possible Following Consonants
(New! 27-Feb.-2016)

In the following table I only include one-syllable words, arranged according to which consonant follows the /r/, if any.

r-colored vowels →	îr	âr	är	ôr	ȯr		ûr		ŏŏr	(yŏŏr)
word final:	fear, jeer	fair, mare, there, their	far, car, mar, jar	war, for, nor, or	wore, four, bore, soar, door, corps, core	her, were	fir, stir, sir, whirr	fur, cur, purr, blur	poor, tour, boor, lure	(cure), (pure), (demure)
before /d/ [d]	beard, weird, feared, jeered	[laird], scared	card, lard, marred, jarred	cord, lord, ward, warred	board, horde, hoard, soared	herd, heard	bird, stirred, whirred	curd, turd, purred, blurred	toured, lured	(cured)
before /z/ [z]	fears, jeers	fairs, mares	cars, jars	wars	bores, soars	hers	firs, stirs	furze, furs	boors, tours	(cures)
before /s/ [s]	fierce, pierce	scarce	farce	horse	hoarse, force	verse, hearse	first	purse, nurse
before /n/ [n]		[bairn], [cairn]	barn, yarn	born, horn	borne, mourn	fern, learn	—	burn, turn
before /k/ [k]			bark, lark	cork, stork	pork	clerk, perk	shirk, quirk	lurk, murk
before /t/ [t]			smart, heart	short, wart	port, sport	pert†, Bert	dirt, shirt	hurt, spurt
before /j/ [dʒ]			barge, large	gorge, George	forge	verge, merge	dirge	purge, surge
before /ch/ [tʃ]			march, starch	torch, scorch	porch	perch, search	birch	lurch, church
before /m/ [m]			arm, harm	storm, warm, form	—	term, sperm	firm, squirm	worm
before /th/ [θ]			hearth, garth	north	forth, fourth	berth, earth	birth, mirth	—
before /p/ [p]			harp, sharp	warp, corpse	—	twerp†, perp†	chirp	slurp, burp
before /b/ [b]			barb, garb	orb	—	verb, herb	—	curb, blurb
before /f/ [f]			scarf, barf	wharf, dwarf	—	—	—	turf, surf
before /v/ [v]			carve, starve	—	—	nerve, serve	—	curve
before /sh/ [ʃ]			marsh, harsh	Porsche†	—	—	—	—
before /g/ [ɡ]			—	morgue†, Borg†	—	—	—	burg†
Scottish pronunciation, not r-colored →	ēr	ār	ăr	ôr	ōr	ĕr	ĭr	ŭr	ōōr	(yōōr)
(original system)	[iɾ]	[eɾ]	[aɾ]	[ɔɾ]	[oɾ]	[ɛɾ]	[ɪɾ]	[ʌɾ]	[ʉɾ]	[jʉɾ]

† These words were recently introduced into English.

[laird] Words in brackets are of Scottish origin.

soars - Words in gray have the suffixes “-s” (always pronounced /z/ [z] after /r/) or “-ed” (always pronounced /d/ [d] after /r/).

Words with this background all have /f/ or /p/ before the vowel, raising the vowel from /ôr/ to /ȯr/ even when the spelling would indicate an original short vowel. However, seems not apply before nasals (/n/ or /m/).

Words with this background all have /w/ before the vowel, backing and rounding the vowel from /är/ to /ôr/. This restriction is active: /w/ never occurs before /är/, and borrowed words like “jaguar” are adjusted accoringly, to /jăgwôr/ [ˈdʒæɡˌwɔɹ] or even sometimes /jăgwīər/ [ˈdʒæɡˌwaɪɚ] in North America, but not /jăgwär/ [ˈdʒæɡˌwɑɹ] (British is /jăgyōōär/ [ˈdʒæɡyuˌɑː], avoiding the whole problem).

As you can see in the chart above, most of the 24 English consonants can follow at least some of these r-colored vowels at the end of a word, though they don’t occur before /h, ng, w, y/ [h, ŋ, w, j], since English syllable structure would prohibit it. Oddly enough, I can find almost no examples before /g/ [ɡ], and all of these are recent borrowings, but it turns out that there are historical reasons for this.[1] I can find no examples before /ŧħ/ [ð] or /zh/ [ʒ], which can be explained by the fact that these are extremely rare in word-final position. They do not occur before /l/ [l], at least in my dialect, because any such combination would automatically become two syllables, e.g. “curl” rhymes with “rural”.

Consonants are normally not allowed after /îr,âr,ŏŏr/, as the greyed-out cells show, except for /d/ [d], /z/ [z], /s/ [s], and (in Scottish words only) /n/ [n].