American English Sounds - UR [ɜ] Vowel - How to make the UR as in BIRD Vowel

In this American English pronunciation video,

we’re going to learn how to make the

UR as in BIRD sound.

I sometimes say this is the vowel version

of the R consonant. It's always followed by R,

and there's no distinction between the

sounds in American English. This sound

will always be written with two different

International Phonetic Alphabet, or IPA,

symbols, but will be pronounced

rrrrrr, just one sound, bird.

To make this sound, the corners of the

lips come in, pushing the lips away

from the face. The middle part of the

tongue lifts towards the roof of the mouth

in the middle. The front of the tongue hangs

down, but it's drawn back a bit. So, it's not

touching anything.

As the tongue lifts in the middle, it may be

close to the roof of the mouth without

touching it, or it may touch the sides of

the roof of the mouth, or the insides or

bottom of the top teeth, here, ur, ur.

This, along with the R consonant, is one

of the hardest sounds to make in American

English. It’s especially hard because the

lip position hides the tongue position.

Let’s take a look.

From the side, we can’t even see the

tongue. The front view doesn’t help

much either. This is because the

tongue goes back, but the lips flare

forward.

Here’s the word ‘hurt’. Watch the

tongue pull back and up

before coming forward for the T.

In a stressed syllable, the UR vowel curves

up then down. Hurt, ur. In an unstressed

syllable, it’s lower in pitch, as well as

quieter and quicker, ur, ur. The vowel

is unstressed in the word ‘research’, ur.

Let’s look at this word up close

and in slow motion.

The lips flare, but the jaw doesn’t

drop as much.

Let’s compare the stressed UR in

‘hurt’, on the top, with the unstressed

vowel in ‘research’, on the bottom.

The lips flare for both, but in this case,

there was much more jaw drop for the

stressed version of this vowel.

This is typical. Unstressed vowels are

shorter, so there isn’t as much time to

make the full mouth position.

The UR vowel, stressed: hurt, UR

Unstressed: research, ur

UR, ur, UR, ur

Example words. Repeat with me:

Earth, search, circle, thirteen, return, outburst.

I hope this video helps you understand

this sound. That’s it, and thanks so much

for using Rachel’s English.