“Learn” and “bird” are pronounced very differently depending on the accent of English. Wiktionary has “learn” RP pronunciation listed as lɜːn and American as lɝn, although personally I don’t believe in ɝ so I would write it as lɹn and bɹd.
Slight rant about American English IPA, but Wiktionary even has American “bird” listed as bɜɹd, which is frankly ridiculous. Say bɜɹd out loud and it sounds absolutely insane. Be’rd. Nobody says bɜɹd, it’s gotta be bɹd. English spelling treats R as a consonant, but American English functionally treats it like a vowel. If we spelled with R the same way it’s pronounced, it would be brd, lrn, teachr, wrking, etc. Not suggesting a spelling reform, because the current system works so well for uniting different accents of English, but it seriously bugs me when people talk about how American R (ɹ) is a consonant. It’s not!
“Learn” and “bird” are pronounced very differently depending on the accent of English. Wiktionary has “learn” RP pronunciation listed as lɜːn and American as lɝn, although personally I don’t believe in ɝ so I would write it as lɹn and bɹd.
Slight rant about American English IPA, but Wiktionary even has American “bird” listed as bɜɹd, which is frankly ridiculous. Say bɜɹd out loud and it sounds absolutely insane. Be’rd. Nobody says bɜɹd, it’s gotta be bɹd. English spelling treats R as a consonant, but American English functionally treats it like a vowel. If we spelled with R the same way it’s pronounced, it would be brd, lrn, teachr, wrking, etc. Not suggesting a spelling reform, because the current system works so well for uniting different accents of English, but it seriously bugs me when people talk about how American R (ɹ) is a consonant. It’s not!