there
/ᴛʜâr/
adverb
- At or in that place. sit over there.
- To, into, or toward that place. wouldn't go there again.
- At that stage, moment, or point. Stop there before you make any more mistakes.
I know that the words there, their, and they're are homophones
Yes.
but I can't help but think that their has a slight /j/ between /e/ and /r/ (/ðer/).
It’s possible, but no more so than for there and they’re. I don’t think you’re imagining things, but I also wouldn’t recommend taking any special efforts to pronounce this word this way.
For American English speakers, there is generally no phonemic contrast between the vowel in there/their/they’re and the vowel in they/say/fade/male/mail. (This holds regardless of whether we’re talking about an accent with or without the Mary-marry-merry merger.)
But phonetically, you’re less likely to hear a /j/-like glide when the vowel is followed by /r/ with no intervening word boundary, and more likely to hear a glide when the vowel is word-final, followed by a vowel, or followed by most other consonants, like /p b m t d n k g s z f v θ ð tʃ dʒ/. For me, the /j/-like off glide of the vowel /e/ is also suppressed to some extent before a following /l/ (which I pronounce as “dark l”, [ɫ]), but I don’t know how common this is or the details of how it works (I do distinguish pairs like fail and fell).
Answer from herisson on Stack ExchangeSomebody told me today that these two are homophones. You must be kidding me. I consider myself pretty well-versed in many varieties of English, but would never consider them homophones. Is "ei" in "their" really not pronounced as /eɪ/ (like ate, fame), but just as flat /ɛ/?