In local working-class Dublin, the West and South-West Region, and other very conservative and traditional varieties in Ireland, ranging from the south to the north of the island, the typical English phoneme actually retains an opposition as two separate phonemes: and . For example, the words "earn" and "urn" are pronounced differently in those traditional varieties: as vowel after a labial consonant, as in "fern"; when it is spelled as "ur" or "or", as in "word"; or when it is spelled as "ir" after an alveolar stop, as in "dirt". In all other cases, the vowel is then pronounced as . Examples with include "certain" , "chirp" , "circle" , "earn" , "earth" , "girl" , "germ" , "heard" or "herd" , "irk" , and "tern" . Examples for include "bird" , "dirt" , "first" , "murder" , "nurse" , "turn" , "third" or "turd" , "urn" , "work" , and "world" . In non-local middle- and upper-class Dublin and in younger and supraregional Irish accents, the difference is seldom preserved, and both variants of are typically merged as , the same as or similar to most American accents.