IPA phoneme /ɜː/

In English, both in Received Pronunciation and in General American, the IPA phonetic symbol /ɜː/ corresponds to the vowel sound in words like "nurse", "turn", "word" and "girl" (/nɜːrs, tɜːrn, wɜːrd/ and /gɜːrl/).

At the advice of Clive Upton the Concise Oxford Dictionary altered the British tradition and now uses /əː/ instead of /ɜː/; later Oxford Dictionaries Online followed the same convention. Linguist Jack Windsor Lewis said "This has the advantage of reducing the total number of unfamiliar symbols to be assimilated by the general user". However his verdict is "as things are, it doesn't now seem worthwhile changing what we have".

Some American dictionaries use /ɜ/ or /ɝ/ instead of /ɜː/. Merriam-Webster's Learner's Dictionary uses /ɚ/ both for /ər/ (unstressed) and /ɜːr/ (stressed). /ɝ/ and /ɚ/ are called r-colored vowels.

Silent /r/
In Received Pronunciation /ɜːr/ is pronounced [ɜː] or [əː] unless it is followed by a vowel, i.e. the "r" is normally silent unless it is followed by a vowel.

In General American the "r" is always pronounced, either as [ɜɹ], [ɝ] or [ɝ].

There are places in the United Kingdom where the "r" is pronounced, and places in North America where it is not pronounced.

Common words
Some common words containing /ɜ:/ include the following:
 * With "er": certain - concern - determine - her - nerve - perfect - person - service - term - verb - were
 * With "ear": early - earn - earth - heard - learn - search
 * With "ur": burn - hurt - murder - return - surface - Thursday - turn - urban
 * With "ir": bird - birthday - circle - dirty - firm - girl - shirt - sir - skirt - stir - third - thirsty - thirty
 * With "or": word - work - world - worse - worst - worth
 * Others: journalist - journey

Less common words

 * With "er": certify - fern - herb - herd - Mercury /ˈmɜːrkjəriː/ - merge - kerb - stern - thermal
 * With "ear": pearl
 * With "ur": curb - curly - fur - surgeon - urgent
 * With "ir": Birmingham /ˈbɜːrmɪŋəm/ - fir - flirt
 * With "or": attorney - worm
 * With "our": courteous
 * With "eur": connoisseur /ˌkɒnəˈsɜːr/ - entrepreneur /ˌɒntrəprəˈnɜːr/

Since in American English /ɜː/ is always followed by /r/, the pronunciation of hors d'oeuvre (appetizer) has an unwritten /r/: /ˌɔːr ˈdɜːrv/. In Received Pronunciation the /r/ is not pronounced. See for a phonetic misspelling of hors d'oeuvre.

Spelling anomaly

 * colonel /ˈkɜːrnəl/

Homophones

 * birth - berth; colonel - kernel; earn - urn; fir - fur; heard - herd; tern - turn.

These words don't rhyme

 * early - dearly; heard - beard; were - here; worm - storm;

Variant pronunciations

 * deterent: /dɪˈterənt, dɪˈtɜːrənt/

/ɜː/ and /ʌ/
When Received Pronunciation has the sequence /ʌːrV/ (with V any vowel, as in hurry), General American has the sequence /ɜːrV/ (hurry rhymes with furry). This is called the hurry-furry merger.


 * RP /ʌ/, GA /ɜː/: borough /ˈbʌrə, ˈbɜːrəʊ/ - concurrence - concurrent - courage - currant - currency - current - hurry - nourish - occurrence - thorough /ˈθʌrə, ˈθɜːrəʊ/ - worry
 * RP and GA /ɜː/: blurry - concurring - furry - occurring - preferring - referral - referring - stirring

Six ways to spell /sɜːr/

 * sermon, sirloin, search, surgeon, certain, circle

Anticipated pronunciation difficulties depending on L1
Preconceived ideas and other interferences from L1 obviously interfere in many cases with how students perceive - and pronounce - sounds/words in English. The following sections aims to point out some of the most typical difficulties teachers and students may encounter regarding pronunciation.

Spanish
/ɜː/ is completely foreign to Spanish speakers.

In the case of cognates, they often pronounce them as in Spanish. For example, urgent pronounced as virtual as  and perfect as

In the case of native English words, the Spanish adaptations normally use a spelling pronunciation, as in "sterling" translated to esterlina or "flirt" translated to flirtear. This habit is often used when speaking English, such as pronouncing "bird" similar to "beard" or "word" similar to "ward".