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English help - graphemes in the word 'bear'

I'm needing some help with English! Having a dunce moment:
Does the word 'bear' have 2 graphemes, one of them a trigraph ('ear')?
Or is it b/ea/r, with the 'ea' as a digraph (in this case, a diphthong)?
Website info is a bit conflicting and because the final 'r' in 'bear' isn't really pronounced as a definitive 'r', I'm getting a bit confused...

I feel like I'm being dumb because I don't quite get it… this is my best guess!! Please confirm if I'm right or correct me if I'm wrong… sorry to be a pain!!
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I would've thought it to have 2 graphemes, <b> and then <ear>, corresponding to 2 sounds. Some accents do pronounce /r/ after a vowel, in which case you could consider there to be 3 graphemes, depending on whether you analyse the <ear> in these accents as an r-coloured vowel or a diphthong followed by an /r/.

Are you looking at any particular accent? Many graphemes can be analysed the same way in most major dialects of English, but for some there are differences, e.g. for some <singing> will have 5 graphemes, for others 7, depending on how you pronounce <ng>.

Edit: ninja'd :smile:
(edited 9 years ago)

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