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ɴᴇᴀʀ vowel phoneme /ɪə(r)/
The ɴᴇᴀʀ vowel phoneme is an English vowel phoneme consisting of the vowel sound used by English speakers in its keyword, near.[1] It’s a rhotic vowel phoneme.
Words in the ɴᴇᴀʀ lexical set, such as deer, beard and serious are 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.