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Researchers fear the British spoken 'r' is ready to roll away from the last bastion of rhoticity (phys.org)

submitted 10 months ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

17 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Traditionally, parts of Lancashire have very clearly articulated "r"s, similar to the stereotype of Cornwall and the West Country. The pronunciation of these "r"s towards the ends of words is called rhoticity.

In fact, historically, hundreds of years ago, people throughout England used to pronounce strong "r"s. But now, says the research paper, these strong "r"s are definitely dying out.

In Blackburn, young speakers do mostly say their "r"s, but they are, according to the research team, phonetically very weak and often difficult to perceive. And they pronounce them less frequently than older speakers.

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[+] [email protected] -15 points 10 months ago (2 children)

Wait, is this the accent where they pronounce "water" like "wadugh"? Because they sound ridiculous. And I live in America where we have just so damned many stupid accents.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 10 months ago

Not quite - though I'm not sure what you mean exactly. It's about "ar" being pronounced either like "ah/uh" or "aRRR!/uRRR!" (Like a pirate, or breakfast cereal Tiger).

If "Baa" like a sheep and "Bar" like where you order drinks in a pub are pronounced the same, like "bah" = non-rhotic.

A pirate, or farmer from cornwall saying "Arr!" is very Rhotic.

As far as I'm aware, the majority of American accents are rhotic

[–] [email protected] -2 points 10 months ago (1 children)

It's a nationwide thing which to be honest I have not noticed with R's.

However, you are correct in the dropping of T's where preceded with a vowel. The T is pronounced from the back of the throat like the smallest of coughs or throat clearing. I'm not even sure how to phonetically spell it but the closest is "up" without the p. It's crap, silly, lazy.

Wa(u)er Bu(u) Ye(u) I(u)...

... and so it goes. It winds me up when I hear it and correct them with "There's a T in water... tttt". Petty but annoying.

Don't get me started on "like", that's another awful habit.

[–] [email protected] 8 points 10 months ago

I can only apologise that myself and the entire Northern half of the country offend you so much, though I'd call that a glottal stop, rather than a "lazy dropped T".

I guess it cropping up unexpectedly in some accents/dialects might seem lazy, but in the North, where we talk proper (as opposed to talking "properly" down South), that's how those words are meant to sound :)