Is there a difference in pronunciation between "wood" and "would"?

My friends and I were debating whether would and wood are pronounced differently. Are they?

Solution 1:

It is generally very difficult for speakers to analyse their own pronunciation of a word, native speakers or no: our image of what the letters of a word look like affects our idea of how we think we pronounce it. Introspective analysis of pronunciation is notoriously unreliable.

That said, wood and would are pronounced the same in standard English. That is, there is no meaningful distinction in how both words sound if fully pronounced; if I were to cut out several instances of would and wood from recordings in standard English, without context, there is no way anyone could identify them as woulds and woods respectively.

According to the Oxford English Dictionary, they are both pronounced /wʊd/. You can listen to both words on Howjsay.com:

• wood
• would

Edit: if you say would fast or in an unaccented position, as in that's not what she would do, where either not and do or she has a strong accent, it is often pronounced /wəd/. It is also often pronounced /d/ unaccented, or /t/ before a voiceless stop, or not at all if preceded by a word ending on -d. It is often spelled 'd when it is unaccented. But those are all variations on the standard pronunciation, as most words have them.

Solution 2:

In standard English would (the strong form, not the weak form) and wood have the same pronunciation (OALD). This does not lead to confusion as the structures in which these two words are used are totally different.

Solution 3:

In the Australian English which I know, wood and would are pronounced itdentically. The only difference that occurs to me has already been mentioned by others that would has an additional unstressed pronunciation that wood lacks.