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Hello,this is from the online Cambridge dictionary.
What I wondered is that why the vowel in bird and the second vowel in wonderful are different from each other?
What I think is that the vowel should be the same in the two words.But according to the dictionary,it is /ə/ "wonderful" while /ɜ/ in "bird".Why?
In standard Englishes, the vowel qualities of the SCHWA and NURSE vowels, /ə/ and /ɜ:/ respectively, are virtually identical as shown on this vowel diagram:
However, although these vowels are very similar in quality they are different phonemes. The NURSE vowel that we find in the word bird nearly always occurs in stressed syllables. SCHWA, on the other hand occurs exclusively in unstressed syllables. It will usually be much shorter in duration than an occurrence of the NURSE vowel.
If you tried to pronounce wonderful with a sustained second syllable, for example if you made the second syllable two or three seconds long, you would find the vowel to be indistinguishable from the vowel in bird.
The word bird and wonderful both make use of centering vowels but the only difference is in the length of the two vowels.In comparison to 'wonderful', the word 'bird' had a long centering vowel.wonderful has a schwa in it
