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ɴᴇᴀʀ vowel phoneme /ɪə(r)/

From Teflpedia

The ɴᴇᴀʀ vowel phoneme is a vowel phoneme traditionally described as consisting of the vowel sound used by English speakers with non-rhotic accents in its keyword, near.[1][2]

The existence of /ɪə/ as a separate phoneme is questionable.

Referring to it as ɴᴇᴀʀ implies the /r/ is always present in rhotic accents, but that is not the case. It’s also impossible to characterise as being rhotic or non-rhotic.

It occurs in the following situations:

John C. Wells identified a ɴᴇᴀʀ lexical set, to be pronounced with this phoneme.

Its traditional representation is as /ɪə/ or /ɪər/.

In received pronunciation (RP), the traditional pronunciation is as a diphthong with the diphthongal nucleus a near-close near-front unrounded vowel [ɪ] and the diphthongal glide the schwa sound [ə]. This has a tendency towards smoothing towards a longer near-close near-front unrounded vowel [ɪː] sound, especially in modern RP.

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