horse-hoarse merger

/hoɹs ˈhoɹs ˌmɝdʒɚ/

Word Rarity Rare

Frequency: Zipf frequency 2.64 in modern English

Scrabble Score

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Meaning

noun

A phonemic merger of /ɔɹ/ and /oɹ/, so that pairs of words such as horse and hoarse, war and wore, for and four, etc become homophones.

"Among the changes, which took place in Dublin English in the 1990s (Hickey 1999), are the following four which are also found in general forms of American English: (a) use of retroflex /r/, in fork [fo:ɻk]; (b) use of an intervocalic alveolar tap, for example in water [wɑɾɚ]; (c) the horse/hoarse‐merger and (d) the which/witch‐merger."

Questions

How do you pronounce horse-hoarse merger?

The recorded pronunciation is /hoɹs ˈhoɹs ˌmɝdʒɚ/.

What does horse-hoarse merger mean?

A phonemic merger of /ɔɹ/ and /oɹ/, so that pairs of words such as horse and hoarse, war and wore, for and four, etc become homophones.

How to pronounce horse-hoarse merger

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