Unrounded half-open central vowel

IPA mark	ɜ
IPA number	326
IPA character description	horizontally mirrored Latin minuscule epsilon
Unicode	U + 025C
HTML (dec.)	& # 604;
X-SAMPA	`3`
Kirshenbaum	`V"`
Audio sample ^{? / i} [ ʔɜː ]

Phonetic and orthographic realization of the unrounded half-open central vowel in different languages:

English [ ɜ̝ː ] ( RP and AuE ): er , ir , or , ur , ear (not all of them necessarily pronounced that way)
- Examples: f ur [fɜ̝ː] , h he [ hɜ̝ː ] sh ir t [ ʃɜ̝ːt ] w or ld [ wɜ̝ːɫd ], p ear l [ pʰɜ̝ːɫ ]
Paicĩ : [mbʷɜ̄] rest
Swabian :
- [⁠ ɜ ⁠] : Pronunciation of writing German <s>
  - Examples: mach en [ 'maχɜ ]
- [ ɜi ]: Pronunciation of the Middle High German long vowel î
  - Examples: dr ei [ dʁɜi ], w ei ß (color) [ vɜis ]
- [ ɜ: ]: some words with a different pronunciation compared to German
  - Examples: M aa ("man") [ mɜː ], n aa ("hin") [ nɜː ]

See also