AIR, ARE and EAR as /eər/

The vowel of chair and share. Four spellings, one sound, and the same reading-easy, spelling-hard shape as er/ir/ur.

R-controlled vowels

air / are / ear / ere R_AIR_01

Strong rule · High reliability · Common · Intermediate · Reading

• /eər/ air: chair, share, bear

Where Wiggler teaches it: Skill 8: R-Controlled Vowels

Child explanation

Chair, share, bear and there all have the same sound. Four ways to spell it, one way to say it.

The rule

Air, are, ear and ere can all represent /eər/. For reading, recognising any of the four gives the same sound.

What is really going on

A merged set like /ɜːr/, though smaller. The are spelling is the a_e pattern with r intervening, which is why care, share and bare look like magic e words but are not — a useful thing to name, because children who have just learned magic e will try to apply it.

Position in the word

• End of a word — All four spellings occur word-finally. For example: chair, share, bear, there.
• Middle of a word — Before a consonant. For example: stairs, careful, parent.

Examples

Easy examples

chair, share, bear, there, air

More examples

fair, hair, pair, stairs, care, bare, dare, scare, square, wear, tear, pear, where

Pseudo-words

Made-up words that follow the rule. A child who reads these has the pattern rather than the vocabulary.

blair, share, frear

Exceptions

• ear with three different sounds: bear, hear, earth. ear is one of the most variable graphemes in English — see its own entry.

Contrast pairs

• care versus cane — The r blocks magic e from making a plain long a.
• chair versus share — Two spellings, one sound.
• bear versus beer — One letter apart, two different r-controlled vowels.

Teacher note

Teach immediately after magic e, because care, share and bare are exactly the words a child will try to read as long a. Show the contrast directly: cane and care, made and mare. The r is doing what the r always does.

Learn these first

• a_e — a_e — The commonest magic e pattern and the most reliable. Cake, name, made, late — long a with a silent e two letters on.
• AR — ar — The /ɑːr/ of car and farm. Reliable in a stressed syllable — and reliably something else after w, and in an unstressed one.

Related rules

• EAR and its three sounds — ear — /ɪər/ in hear, /eər/ in bear, /ɜːr/ in earth. Three sounds, three common words, no clue in the spelling.
• AR — ar — The /ɑːr/ of car and farm. Reliable in a stressed syllable — and reliably something else after w, and in an unstressed one.
• a_e — a_e — The commonest magic e pattern and the most reliable. Cake, name, made, late — long a with a silent e two letters on.
• AI — ai — Long a inside a word. Pairs with ay, which does the same job at the end — ai almost never ends an English word.

• Previous in R-controlled vowels: ER, IR and UR — er / ir / ur — Three spellings, one sound. For reading this is easy; for spelling it is the hardest thing in English, and the difference should be said out loud.
• Next in R-controlled vowels: EAR and its three sounds — ear — /ɪər/ in hear, /eər/ in bear, /ɜːr/ in earth. Three sounds, three common words, no clue in the spelling.
• All reading rules

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