26 The lettER Lexical Set
The letter lexical set is a part of the group of Weak vowels that are only found in unstressed syllables, and in all cases it is spelled with ‹r›. In most rhotic varieties of English today, letter is an r-colored mid-central vowel, right in the middle of the vowel space known as rhotic schwa, /ɚ/. In non-rhotic accents of English, letter is merged with the comma lexical set, so there is no /r/ sound associated except when linking into another word, or a suffix, that begins with a vowel, as in the letter ͜ is, or lettering. Wells focused his weak vowel lexical sets (comma, letter, happy) on the environment of the final weak vowel of words like media, after, privacy. However, many linguists and accent trainers use these lexical set keywords in initial and medial (i.e. non-final) environments, too.
- 🕊 Free: apart from ‹r›, letter does not require a following consonant.
- Weak: in unstressed syllables only. (For the stressed version, see nurse.)
Spellings
-er, -ar, -or, -o(u)r, -yr, -ure, -ir, -air, -Cre
As originally conceived by Wells, where letter is in final position, there are many spellings: essentially any vowel letter before ‹r› as in stellar, better, elixir, actor, sulfur, zephyr or before ‹re› as in metre, culture. In initial settings, there are almost no words whatsoever, apart from urbane and Urbana; in a rhotic accent, if you are dealing with a Weak Vowel merger, initial ‹er› as in erode, erase, erupt is also possible. In rhotic accents, in medial settings all the vowel letters are options, ‹er›, ‹ar›, ‹or›, ‹ur›, as in terrain, marine, memories, luxury, and even ‹ir› and ‹yr›, as in inspiration and labyrinth. In non-rhotic accents, these last two are Weak kit, [ɪ], unless there is the Weak Vowel merger, in which case all spellings can be comma/letter.
Spellings include: accelerate, restaurant, amateur, cedar, cover, anchor, endeavo(u)r, anger, pursue, nature, acre
Pronunciations
In the vast majority of mainstream accents of English, the letter lexical set is pronounced with some variation of either the non-rhotic schwa [ə] or the rhotic one [ɚ]. However, there is a limited range of alternate pronunciations, ranging from a high/close pronunciation with [ɘ/ɘ˞], to a more open centralized vowel closer to [ɜ/ɝ ~ ɐ/ɐ˞].
Personal Pronunciation
This is the moment where we focus in on how you say letter. If you have a non-rhotic accent, you will mostly likely have letter merged with comma: compare vesper/Vespa, tuber/tuba, pastor/pasta, pander/panda. If letter is merged with comma, be sure to review that set’s Personal Pronunciation section before moving on to Alternate Pronunciations.
Note that for many rhotic speakers, the vowel quality of letter is similar or even identical to nurse, though it is weak, always found in unstressed syllables. In the past the symbols [ɚ/ɝ] or [ə/ɜ] were seen as being identical in terms of vowel quality, and different only in terms of stress, upholding the statement that “schwa is never