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ɴᴇᴀʀ vowel phoneme /ɪə(r)/
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:
- Over syllable boundaries, e.g. Australia, idea, Mia, etc. This may be slowly pronounced as written as two syllables, i.e. /i:.ə/. What appears to be happening here is the unstressed ꜰʟᴇᴇᴄᴇ vowel is reduced to a ᴋɪᴛ vowel before a 𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘮ᴀ vowel. Because this occurs over syllable boundaries, it probably shouldn’t be thought of as a single phoneme, but as ᴋɪᴛ+𝘤𝘰𝘮𝘮ᴀ.
- With pre- breaking:
- With pre-R breaking, with an R-ending phonogram, e.g. beard, deer, fear, near, serious etc.
- With pre-L brekaing, with an L-ending phonogram, e.g. real, etc.
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.