merger is encountered in many varieties of American English, whose prevailing pronunciations are and ⁓, depending on whether or not the accent is rhotic. For many speakers of American English, the historical merges with after palatal consonants, as in "cure," "sure," "pure," and "mature", or in other environments such as in "poor" and "moor." In Australian and New Zealand English, the centering diphthong has practically disappeared and is replaced in some words by (a sequence of two separate monophthongs) and in others by (a long monophthong). The outcome that occurs in a particular word is not always predictable although, for example, pure, cure, and tour rhyme with fewer and have , and poor, moor, and sure rhyme with for and paw and have . merger In East Anglia, a merger in which words like fury merge to the sound of furry is common, especially after palatal and palatoalveolar consonants and so sure is often pronounced , which is also a common single-word merger in American English in which the word sure is often . Also, yod-dropping may apply, which yields pronunciations such as for pure. Other pronunciations in the accents that merge cure and fir include pure, curious, bureau and mural. – merger Varieties of Southern American English, Midland American English and High Tider English may merge words like fire and far or tired and tarred towards of the second words: . That results in a tire–tar merger, but tower is kept distinct. –– merger Some accents of southern British English, including many types of Received Pronunciation and in Norwich, have mergers of the vowels in words like tire, tar (which already merged with , as in palm), and tower. Thus, the triphthong of tower merges with the of tire (both surface as diphthongal ) or with the of tar. Some speakers merge all three sounds and so tower, tire, and tar are all pronounced . Horse–hoarse merger The horse–hoarse merger, or merger, is the merger of the vowels and before historic , which makes word pairs like horse–hoarse, for–four, war–wore, or–oar, morning–mourning pronounced the same. Historically, the class belonged to the phoneme (as in contemporary Received Pronunciation lot), but the class was (as in Scottish English go), which is similar to the contrast between the short lax and the long tense in German. The merger now occurs in most varieties of English, but the phonemes were historically separate. In