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.