Different Pronunciation for They're and Their

[Claudio.teaching.abroad]

Hello all,

I'm a relatively new teacher, teaching in Barcelona.

A student asked me if there is a difference in pronunciation between they're and their. He pronunced they're longer and more like they + are but slightly more together (did sound like one word). He pronunced their differently again; shorter.

I said in England people don't say them any differently (which I think is true), but I said I'd check to be 100% sure.

Can anyone tell me if there is a difference in the accurate phonetics between they're and their?

Thanks so much, regards,
Claudio. :up::up:

 

[bds51]

Hello,
Re they're and their: Americans and Canadians don't make a distinction either unless they're hopless pedants.

 

[Raymott]

There's no difference in AusE.

 

[Tdol]

None in BrE that I know of.

 

[apiz]

Hi.
This might help you.

"They're" and "Their will be /ðeər/(BrE) and /ðer/(AmE).
*note that /r/ there is uppercase*

I am convinced that there are no differences between They're and Their.
But I think you can differentiate them using stress and intonation especially for They're.

-Learning Teacher from Asia-

 

[Tdol]

We're talking about whether the words have different pronunciations within one variant and not whether there are differences between variants.

 

[Amigos4]

It appears that there is no difference when pronouncing their and they're!

 

[apiz]

We're talking about whether the words have different pronunciations within one variant and not whether there are differences between variants.

Could you please explain further about this statement.

 

[Claudio.teaching.abroad]

Different varients being American English and British English.

 

[Tdol]

Are those words homophones in American/Canadian/Australian, etc English? This is not a comparison of the differences between American English sounds and British English sounds.

 

[konungursvia]

I agree with all the above experts that they're not pronounced differently per se. But this is probably because we rightly define pronunciation in terms of the string of phonemes used, along with any stressed syllable, and that's it.

However, they probably will sometimes sound different to one another, as they are unlikely to have the same stress within sentence intonation, at least not always.

Think of the difference between:

I did that.
I did that.
I did that.

So we will observe occasional differences in how they seem to sound:

They're the ones who lost their jobs.

In this sentence, the first syllable is stressed, and probably slowed, so it probably has a more fully defined panoply of sounds in it than the second-last syllable, which might in speech be rendered as something like: /ðIr/ or /ðər/....

I am just pointing this out in case a learner (rightly) suspected they had heard some sort of difference in some example, and was wondering whether they were crazy.

 

[LordJenkins]

In received pronunciation, yes, there is a difference.


There & their = th-ah & th-air

They're = th-ay-air (triphthong)



Well thats the way i pronounce them!