• force@lemmy.world
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    11 months ago

    Spelling-wise? Depends on what you mean by “vowel” and “word” – vowel isn’t really a term for letters/spelling, it only really makes sense in a phonemic/phonetic context. So, phonetically? Yes – i.e. words that only have a rhotic in the nucleus like “curd” which is just [kɹ̩d] in many rhotic dialects like most American English, “and” is often pronounced [n̩], “can” can be [kn̩]~[kŋ̍], “full” can be pronounced [fʟ̩] in some dialects (includinɡ mine). You can also include paralinguistic words like “shh” [ʃ̩].

    • JackGreenEarth@lemm.ee
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      11 months ago

      In these examples such as curd and full, isn’t shwa the vowel? You can’t actually not have a vowel if you pronounce it.

      • force@lemmy.world
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        11 months ago

        /ɚ/ as in “nurse”, “curd”, “certain”, is usually labelled a “rhotacized vowel” in a phonemic context but it’s more precisely described as an approximant. And as I said, “full” is pronounced with no vowel in certain varieties.