of the lack of nurse mergers. That means that , and can all occur before both intervocalic and coda and so fur, fern, and fir have distinct vowels: . Dialects in England, Wales, and most others outside North America maintain the distinction between both sounds and so hurry and furry do not rhyme. However, in dialects without the foot-strut split, hurry has an entirely different vowel: (in a number of those dialects, a square-nurse merger is in effect instead). General American has a three-way merger between the first vowels in hurry and furry and the unstressed vowel in letters. In Received Pronunciation, all of them have different sounds (, and , respectively), and some minimal pairs exist between unstressed and , such as foreword vs. forward . In General American, they collapse to , but in phonemic transcription, they can still be differentiated as and to facilitate comparisons with other accents. General American also often lacks a proper opposition between and , which makes minimal pairs such as unorthodoxy and an orthodoxy variably homophonous as . See the strut–comma merger for more information. In New Zealand English, there is a consistent contrast between hurry and furry, but the unstressed is lengthened to (phonetically ) in many positions, particularly in formal or slow speech and especially when it is spelled . Thus, boarded and bordered might be distinguished as and , which is homophonous in Australian English as and distinguished in Received Pronunciation as and , based on the length and the rounding of . The shift was caused by a complete phonemic merger of and , a weak vowel merger that was generalized to all environments. Mary–marry–merry merger One notable merger of vowels before is the Mary–marry–merry merger, a merging of the vowels (as in the name Carrie or the word marry) and (as in Kerry or merry) with the historical (as in Cary or Mary) whenever they are realized before intervocalic . No contrast exists before a final or preconsonantal , where merged with and with (see nurse mergers) centuries ago. The merger is fairly widespread and is complete or nearly complete in most varieties of North American English, but it is rare in other varieties of English. The following variants are common in North America: The full Mary–marry–merry merger (also known, in this context, as the three-way merger) is found throughout much of the United States (particularly the