PHONETICS: /ɜ:/

In British English, the phonetic symbol  /ɜ:/ corresponds to the vowel sound in words like "turn", "word" and "girl". It is called a long vowel.

Some common words containing /ɜ:/ include the following:

• With "e": her - herbs - nerves - kerb - verb - were;
• with "ea": early - earn - earth - heard - learn;
• With "ur": burn - turn - curly - curb - Thursday - hurt;
• With "ir": circle - bird - birthday - dirty - firm - girl - sir - shirt - skirt - stir - third - thirty;
• With "or": word - work - world - worse - worth - worm.
• homophones: birth/berth - earn/urn - heard/herd - tern/turn.

Some curious words:

sir - circle - search - surgeon - sirloin - sermon - surplus - certain - survey.

Many Spanish speakers, seeing the letter "o" in "word", will try to bend over backwards trying to get it to sound like /ɒ/, which is very similar to the Spanish letter "o". On the other hand, when they see the "i" in words like "bird", they end up pronouncing that particular word something similar to "beard".

Written by Victoria Overton

Native English Spain is dedicated to make learning English simple, fun and affordable for Spanish people.