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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]

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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] 2 points 10 months ago

I'm all for phasing that 'r' out.