The Truth about R (and why you're wrong about pirates)
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- Опубликовано: 29 сен 2024
- The letter R is a whole lot weirder than we give it credit for. Linguists can't even nail it down. In this video, I talk about all the ways accents that delete r and accents that don't lead to layers of mutual confusion.
Patreon: www.patreon.com/languagejones
Honorable mentions:
"moggin hoss" (Morgan Horse) - Joel Chandler Harris
"jorb" (job) - Coach Z
"ter" (to, pronounced "tuh") - J.K. Rowling using eye-dialect for Hagrid
Okay, I've GOT to jump in again on the pirate controversy. We think of pirates as saying "Aaaarrrr" or even "Aaaarrrghhh" because of Robert Newton's portrayal of Long John Silver in Disney's Treasure Island. It was a furiously over-the-top act, and had a lot to do with Newton's drinking problem, but the important thing is *he got it RIGHT*! It's the Devon and Cornwall accents, which like a lot of rural English accents are most definitely rhotic. A lot of Cornishmen and Devonians were sailors. Some of them were pirates. And yes, they did say "Aaaarrr". In fact, they still do.
And the Cornish still mean it in the same way. "Arr" is "Aye".
I was about to say this. People with West Country accents sound like stereotypical pirates.
A friend refers to Sep 19 as “Speak like a Dorset Fisherman Day”
As a native of Somerset, I second this comment.
Exactly right! In fact, here's the opening of the show _Long John Silver_ with Robert Newton himself.
ruclips.net/video/4K3vAKk63N0/видео.html&ab_channel=MetalTigger
I appreciate how you are righting our wrongs, readily reinterpreting our readings, and rectifying our rhostisms. You're no rookie, not relying on rhetoric or rivalry to wring richness from your recorded recitations. A right raconteur, you regularly recount remembrances to relate to your receivers.
Now say it with a speech impediment
@@MiKenning I appwethiate how you awe wighting ouw wongth, weadiwy weintewpweting ouw weadingth, and wectifying our whothithmth. You'we no wookie, not wewying on whetowic or wivawwy to wing wichness from youw wecowded wethitationth. A wight waconteuw, you weguwawy wecount wemembwantheth to wewate to youw wetheivewth.
I love this comment thread
@@christianstainazfischer I wuv it too
@@tebby24 yo what I play snare too
this danish guitarist jens larsen pronounces ‘idea’ as [aɪdiɻ], which is coincidentally the same kind of pronunciation you often get from a native-mandarin english learner
This explains why the BBC has the strangest phonetic version of Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau (Welsh national anthem). They add about 50% more Rs in places that don't have an R sound.
Welsh:
Mae hen wlad fy nhadau yn annwyl i mi,
Gwlad beirdd a chantorion, enwogion o fri;
Ei gwrol ryfelwyr, gwladgarwyr tra mâd,
Tros ryddid gollasant eu gwaed.
Gwlad, Gwlad, pleidiol wyf i'm gwlad,
Tra môr yn fur i'r bur hoff bau,
O bydded i'r heniaith barhau.
"Phonetic":
My hair-n wool-add ver n-had eye
Un ann-will ee me
Gool-ard buy-rth ah chant-or-yon
En-wog-yon oh vree
Eye goo-rol ruv-elle-weir
Gool-ard garr-weir trah-mahd
Tross ruh-thid coll-ass-ant eye gwide
Gool-ard, gool-ard
Ply-dee-ol oiv eem gool-ard
Trah more un veer eer bee-rr hore-ff buy
Oh buthed eer hen-yithe barr-high
The Dutch R is very unique too
Which one? ;)
Not really. Depending on accents there are a couple of different Rs. Some people have a throaty R like in standard German or French, other people have a tongue tip R like in Spanish or Italian and then there is one region that has an English rhotic type R that is only used at the end of words and at the end of vowels if it is inmediately followed by a consonants. The main TV studios happen to be in that region, which made that accent kind of influential.
What amuses me is the bizarre contorted sound that comes out of rhotics when they meet two Rs in a row, viz 'mirror' and 'stirrer'. And how they make 'orange' into a single syllable.
There is definitely some link between alveolar and uvular ... uh ... spanish and french type R. French went from alveolar in baroque era to uvular now (some dialects and accents never followed or went back again). German is doing it right now. As a kid, I knew other kids havin trouble pronouncing the alveolar, as it is standard in swiss german. Some pronounced it "l", but others pronounced it like the french. So, there is something there...
Hebrew did it as well, independently, between the 2nd and 8th centuries, according to a recent masters thesis I read
1:08 Another commonality.
In related languages and accents, with different actual sounds for R, they occur _roughly speaking_ in same places in same words (English has at least two or three obvious exceptions : word final or syllable final R in general, word final R before a following vowel, intrusive R between vowels).
My grandma’s George Warshington warshrag in the warshing machine.
My MIL says "warsh the dishes". Not totally uncommon in certain US accents (though she is Canadian). What's odd is that she seems to have generalized the pattern, so she also "wartches TV".
Yeah, rho-tic. And if you electrify that somehow it gets an e- slapped in front of it…
Let's not forget the 8 years where BBC presenters were often saying "Barack Obame(r)"
Getting the 'r' right is often key to a convincing accent impersonation.
Yes! And British actors often overdo their American rs!
@@languagejones6784 On the other hand, have you ever listened to Scarlett Johansson speaking?
@@languagejones6784or their American “aa’s”?
English people doing non-rhotic Irish accents... Just no
It's my nemesis in German. If I'm really paying attention, I can do a German r, but when speaking quickly, I very quickly slip into an American version.
My daughter's favorite joke:
Ardith: What's a pirate's favorite letter?
Me (feeling smug): Arrrrr!
Ardith, You'd think so, but his first love is the "C"!
Actually, "pirate voice" is sort of heavily accented West Country English - otherwise used as farmer voice (ooo-arrr) - because those southwestern ports were where ships departed for the Americas. And they arrrre rhotic accents. So when the English actor Robert Newton played Long John Silver in Treasure Island, all that "Arrr, Jim laaad" stuff he did was overblown West Country. And that's pretty much the pirate voice that everyone does - the Robert Newton voice. When Brits do pirate voice, they say "arrrr" too - it's not rhotic Americans missing the point.
As far as I know, Cornish (aka Kernewek) is a rhotic language. I wonder if the "oo arr" didn't come from something like : "it is so".
Fun fact, is Cornish for "Pirates" - literally something like "Sea-thieves". And the Rs are definitely pronounced.
@@johntrevithick5900 also fun fact, Welsh for Pirates (môr-ladron) means the same thing.
'Oo-arr' is certainly the stereotype, but I have never heard it in real life. Plenty of 'oo-aah' though. (Important note: The Wurzles do not count as real life!)
@@peterw29 It is also a stereotype that comes from a movie from 1950 based on a book that was written in 1883. Plenty of time for the actual spoken language to have drifted to me more in line with standard British English.
I came here to post this
As a native Farsi (Persian) speaker who is now living and working in Australia, I gotta say I always thought that our language was not too hard to get right in terms of pronunciation. However, hearing you, as a language expert, sort of find it hard to pronounce Fekr is more evidence towards my new stance which is that no language is easy to get right for a non-native speaker.
oh man, a voiceless alveolar tap for an r? As the second consonant in a coda cluster? That's, if not hard, then definitely cross-linguistically marked.
@@languagejones6784 fair enough 😅 I suppose you never think of this stuff until you hear about it. Also something to consider is that Fekr is an Arabic loan word.
My wife and I did a non-expert attempt at analysing our R and came to the conclusion that depending on the its place in a word, etc. it can be a voiced or voiceless alveolar tap or a rolling one closer to the Spanish example you provided. So all the more fun! 😀
And talking about R weirdness, I thought you would mention Brazilian Portuguese R:
In the beginning of a word (r-) or doubled between vowels (-rr-) or before a consonant (-r-) it is pronounced as the French R of the English H.
In the end (-r) of word it has the sounds above or may be silent. And in some dialects it may have the American R sound.
And lastly, between vowels (-r-) a single R has the sound of the Spanish R.
it would be necessary an entire video to delve into the Brazilian Portuguese R. Imagine asking for somebody to say 'porta' or 'carne' from the North, Northeast to the South, SE, and find out the different sounds it can pop up.
The R of Portugal Portuguese is also interesting.
You forgot at the end of a syllable but not at the end of a word (porta, for example), which might sound as any of the other variants depending on dialect.
He's probably too much of a hack to even know about Brazil. This guy doesn't strike me as a real linguist. You can't believe these people, they are just trying to make an easy paycheck by making videos about something they barely know anything about but which they know will receive a lot of interest.
when a Brazilian I know says Rock & Roll it sounds to my UK ear like Hockey hole (obviously they are not saying 'and' and are instead saying 'e' the Portuguese word for 'and')
A pirate's favorite letter isn't " R " though, it's " P ", because it's like an " R " but it's missing a leg
You say that. But a pirate's first love is the C...
Well, without the P they are irate, so I understand that the P is important.
But the C is always the first love. And of course a pirate's favourite element
No, no, it's gold!
Joke, but the Latin alphabet added the leg to the letter R when loaned from Greek rho... The letter pronounced in English like a pastry looks different which makes it's latin equivalent weird (also it looks like cursive latin r...)
@@adrianblake8876
Π π
Ρ ρ
Southern Standard British English speakers use their "trap" vowel in words like "pasta" because their "trap" vowel is /a/ instead of /æ/. This sound is closer to the Italian "a" sound than Southern Standard British English's "palm" vowel (/ɑː/)
I will include this in a future video; that makes a lot of sense!
@@languagejones6784 This is true. I'm from the north of England where we don't even make the trap/bath distinction. We pronounce both with the short /a/ - (tɹap /baθ). As this is a very common vowel sound in English in most areas of the UK, this is the vowel we use in both pasta and taco.
I don't think /æ/ is that common in Modern British English anywhere and /ɑː/ isn't that common in the north.
We Aussies often talk about the American TV stah: Pamela Randasson.
As a British person, I can confirm that that is her name.
@@omp199 Just think, we could write the 90s British TV presenter Anna Ryder Richardson's name as Anna Ida Ichardson and it would sound exactly the same! 😂
@@zak3744 I don't remember her, but yes, you are right!
@@zak3744 I always wondered about the Australian actress Indiana Evans and whether she called herself Indiana Revans. Since @noelleggett5368 is Australian, he might know.
i havent finished watching the vid but here's a lil funfact for people scrolling in the comments: you can pronounce every trill (bilabial, alveolar, uvular) at the same time
it sounds like the gurgling vocalizations of an undiscovered species of dragon !! its hard. i think im not doing the uvular well enough. but i think its neat. you should try it !!
In a future video, I will have another linguist do so. She's the one who first showed me that. It requires some serious lung capacity and pressure, though!
Lol this is hilarious. I feel like if I do it too much though, the neighbors are gonna call the cops on me for suspected murder or something. ^^
I like to do a uvular trill at my cat when I hold her cause I think it sounds like purring.
I cant do the tongue trill but I will learn just to try this!!
I think it sounds like an outboard motor for a boat
Can confirm, I can pronounce all at once.
In second grade, we were presented with a task to color in a sheet of paper with the letters of the alphabet partitioned off into regions such that vowels would now be in red (I think?) regions and consonants in blue (?) regions. When I came to the letter "r", I was completely stumped. So, apparently somehow not knowing better, I glanced at a friend's sheet. He'd colored it in as a vowel. This seemed plausible to me, so I then did too.
This was the only one I got wrong, and was tremendously embarrassing. I've carried that lesson to never cheat again for the rest of my now quite long life.
When I was in graduate school in the mid 1980s, however, I worked in a phonetics lab that had a gizmo for recording FFT's of speech. I kinda half learned Victor Zue's technique for reading the FFT's (of English) by eye. I found that "r" looked more like a vowel that a consonant (though with "important" differences, I think).
Was that much belated vindication?
The "ir" in bird could be seen as a kind of vowel, although I believe it's usually considered an approximant.
@@tedonica "approximant", eh? New concept! Thanks!
Turns out you cheated off a trailblazer
The all-time best intrusive R is the Homestar Runner "Great Jeeoorrb" episode.
As well as a host of intrusive random vowels.
or South Park going gradually from "They took our jobs!" to "Dey turk err jarbs!" to "derturrkerjurrrrrrbs!" 😂
Another fact in a similar vein. One of the most influential mathematicians of the 20th century was named Shiing-Shen Chern. Which is romanized from Mandarin Chinese using a system called Gwoyeu Romatzyh which uses the r to represent tone because in a nonrhotic accent it wouldn't affect the pronunciation. Unfortunately in the US that means that his name is routinely mispronounced to the point that people probably wouldn't understand you if you pronounced his name properly and you didn't have a non-rhotic accent yourself.
In the West Country of England we have "Don't talk like a Pirate Day"
I'm from west-central Indiana, and I've noticed that the further south you go in Indiana, the more intrusive rhoticism you'll hear, particularly from older rural Hoosiers. Unless she's consciously focusing on enunciation, my mother usually pronounces "wash" as "warsh", and sometimes I hear her pronounce the word "oil" as something that to my ears sounds like a mumbled "oral". Along with the intrusive R, she also sometimes drops a terminal consonant in words with an O vowel like "coal", which in her rapid speech sounds something like "koh".
On a tangential note, my mother was brought up calling starlings "spatzies," which I later learned is a direct Anglicization of the German word for sparrow. We have German ancestors several generations back on her side of the family, but how their word for sparrow got applied to starlings and transmitted through several generations of exclusive English speakers is a mystery to both of us. I wonder too sometimes if she might not retain some family vestige of German-language grammatical gender, because my mother subconsciously refers to every cat she meets as a "she," even if she knows full well it's a tomcat.
I was coming to mention warsh as well. My grandma was from eastern Missouri, also of German American descent. Warsh for wash and zinc for sink were the two word pronunciations that always stood out to me as strange.
Western Kentucky mom, said warshrag, but the neighbor was around the cahner.
Another fun example of this is the Korean surname 박 romanised as Park. There's no rhotic in the original Korean.
Korean "romanisation" really sucks
WHAT
Yes, well. They write it Park in English, because it's pronounced park ... the way British would pronounce it, eh. Makes total sense, but also shows that shortcuts commonly end in disaster. 😅
Another fun example: "K" in front of a vowel is pronounced "sh" in Swedish. So the spelling Peking makes total sense. 🤣👍
@@simonspethmann8086 K in front of a front vowel is actually pronounced like the CH of ICH in German. If you were going to approximate it, it would be closer to English CH than SH. However, there are exceptions, like KILLA (lad) or KÖ (queue) where the K is pronounced hard as in English.
@@egbront1506 How and in what Swedish dialects would k be pronounced like English ch? The German ch in ich is pretty similar to English sh in my book (there is no 100% equivalent to ch)...
The thing about that intrusive R is that most people who do it have no idea they are doing it. They just don't notice that R sound either when they speak themselves or when they listen to other people who do it.
I remember someone asking British people on the Internet why they do it, and several of the replies said they don't and they've never heard anyone do it. But it's just not really possible to live in Britain and have never encountered an intrusive R. They might live in area where the local accent is rhotic so the locals don't do it, but if they've watched basically any British media they've almost certainly heard an intrusive R.
I live in the extreme north of the (non-rhotic) East Midlands, where intrusive r is a way of life. As elsewhere, the word 'of' often loses its final f in casual speech - "a pint o' milk". But unlike everywhere else, the f is not reinstated before a vowel. Instead we get an r - "a pint o'-r-ale". People here are so fond of their r that they often substitute it for other consonants too, so that "Has he got them?" can become "Arry gorrem?" Add to this an endemic disdain for superfluous syllables and "the top of the hill" becomes simply "toporill". I've lived here for 30 years but still struggle to understand what some people are saying.
@@peterw29 I enjoyed this
You mentioned that the only linking feature of the different R's is that they are all written with R or something similar. I agree that there doesn't seem to be anything common between a uvular French R and an alveolar tapped R...yet some dialects of French (i.e. France) use the uvular R while others (like Algerian) use the alveolar tap. I'm sure there's an interesting history in the development of Algerian French that led to the alveolar R (my guess is it was caused by Arabic and Berber influence), but it's interesting that the alveolar R was able to so effectively take the place of the uvular R. If you can't pronounce the uvular R (or don't want to), why would you replace it with an alveolar tap as opposed to some other sound? Makes you wonder if there's something connecting the two sounds after all.
Well the French R used to be an alveolar R not too long ago (you can still find videos of rural people using it in the 2000's, though it's incredibly rare nowadays). Knowing algeria was under french rule since 1830, when most french people didn't have french as their first language and used an alveolar R anyway, I don't think they replaced anything.
btw, I've never personally heard a maghrebi person speak french with alveolar Rs 🤔 Most arabic dialects do include both sounds to begin with so it would be kinda weird that they'd have trouble pronouncing it. It is more often the case with subsaharian people, like in Congo or Cameroun for example.
"The tunar is delicious" is a disturbing thing to hear if you've had your piano tuned earlier in the day.
As an American who listens to UK panel shows I was so confused by how a Korean car was running for office (Kia Starma).
very good
Loving your channel, Dr. Jones! My ex-stepmom grew up in English schools in the middle east, so she’d always refer to my ex and me as ‘PatriciarandDave’. 😁
5:16 actually, it's because the british "a" is closer to the italian "a" than the british "ar" is. the canadians who say pasta with a short a (i'm canadian and i don't) probably borrow from the british. the american "a" is farther from italian "a" than american "ah" is though. watch the video by geoff lindsey on foreign words, it's pretty interesting
That doesn't explain why the British "a" in Spanish words like "tacos" isn't closer to Spanish though, which supports the "otherwise it would be tarcos" hypothesis
(Edited to add missing word)
@@sam927 I don't quite understand that comment. I'm English and I say tacos with a short a like in Spanish. I also speak Spanish btw. To my ears Americans say 'taahcos'.
@@sam927 the british short "a" is closer to the spanish "a" than british "ar" is. the american "ah" is closer than american short "a" is though. to be more precise, british and spanish "a" are some form of /a/, while american "a" is some form of /æ/. (for any brits who do say tacos with a long "ar", it's just because americans are more familiar with tacos than brits, and say it with a long "ah".)
I actually put a link to Geoff Lindsey's video as it was very relevant but my comment was deleted.
@@sam927 Im a Spanish speaker and let me blow your mind.
Every Spanish vowel is short. All five of them.
In classes on German as second language my students often ask for the correct way to pronounce the "R". I tell them not to worry, because for almost every conceivable way to speak the letter there is a place in the German dialect continuum, where this is standard 😁
(Obviously a bit of an exaggeration, but still...)
That's great and amusing, but, if I was aiming for any kind of "standard" or common regional accent, I'd still want to know which one I was aiming for. Or at least which one went with the other sounds I was learning to pronounce. (Not interested in German, specifically, though. Maybe someday.)
I've never had my mind blown this much by linguistics before. O.O
Also, this explains some stuff I've been wondering for years that ironically can be summed up by a particular app I use. The important thing about the app is it primarily takes the form of an audio story that takes place in Britain and the characters come from lots of places therefore have lots of accents. The first thing is that I've wondered for a long time why certain British accents seem to add an R to the ends of names that end in vowels. It must be the linking R. Also, there's one particular character who's supposed to be from the USA originally and has a non-regional rhotic accent that I wouldn't expect to use intrusive Rs but every so often she does and it's always been kinda jarring to me. The voice actress' native accent must be one with intrusive Rs and even thought her US accent is usually flawless occasionally she slips up. (To be honest I expected something like that but I didn't know the terms and it's good to have intrusive Rs explained.)
I'm from Washington state and the "intrusive r" finally explains why folks from outside the state sometimes call it "Warshington". I've always been curious where that came from. Thank you!
"Warsh"
And "Chicargo?
As someone who speaks a dialect that has 'warsh" instead of "wash", it just sounds much better in our accent. The flow of words with "wash" in them improves and is easier to distinguish from other words when the "R" is added. At least that is what it sounds like to my ears.
Even the most rhotic of English dialects usually use a non-rhotic pronunciation for 'arse'. (Yes, I know, it's different around Bristol, guv'nor!) The Americans drop the 'r' even when spelling it.
I remember when the singer Sade first came on the scene, the pronunciation of her name was always given in a form created by a nonrhotic speaker, "shar-DAY", so Americans all dutifully pronounced it with an r. I don't understand what nonrhotic speakers have against writing "ah". It would work just as well for them but also work for everyone else.
On the pirate point, I thought the stereotypical pirate accent was supposed to come from the actor Robert Newton, who did use a rhotic accent in his portrayal of Long John Silver. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Newton
Yeah, that pirate accent is specifically an English West Country accent because Newton happened to be from the West Country. He was just speaking in his own accent but it became associated with pirates as a result. In reality there's no real reason to think pirates would have sounded anything like that; I mean they came from all over and would have all had different accents so it doesn't even make sense to think there was a specific "pirate accent" at all.
what if someone with an accent pronounces the h at ah then? that's not working, i believe English needs more letters to represent its vowels
@@pooyatiquairequrious4186 not calling w, y, r and l vowels and not using diacritics on vowels are my English orthographic pet peeves.
We're in a world where English speakers see foreign text on the internet daily, we don't even need to learn the languages to learn from their orthographic insights.
@@ethanpintar5454 The West Country was known for having pirates, though. There were sea-going pirates and there were land pirates too. The latter were known as the Wreckers. They would walk along the shore at night carrying a lantern and lure ships onto the rocks. It's no coincidence that one of the Gilbert and Sullivan operettas is called "The Pirates of Penzance".
Newton as Long John Silver: ruclips.net/video/6TktTeF3PaY/видео.html
I think the 'pasta' thing is just different perceptual divisions of the vowel space. Show Brits and Americans an *Italian* pronouncing pasta and ask them how they're saying it - /pasta/ or /pɑstɑ/ - and it usually lines up with how they'd pronounce it themselves. My impression is that GenAm /a/ is more raised and /ɑ/ is shorter compared to Southern British English counterparts.
I'm reminded of the fact that there's a Korean name that gets transliterated as either "Pak" or "Park" depending on whether the writer thinks their audience is Rhotic or non-Rhotic, and it means that it gets pronounced incorrectly if someone of the opposite persuasion reads it. As the "pasta" example, I don't think it has as much to do with thinking there should be an 'r' there than with a general complete difference in approach in pronouncing words from a foreign language. Commonwealth speakers will generally pronounce it was though it was always an English word, while American speakers will generally follow the rules from Spanish or Italian, where most such words some from.
"Terlet"
That is all.
Okay, I lied. Also "warshroom". Incidentally, where you find the terlet.
I chose to speak British English because American is too full of rrrrrrrrrrr.
I am a Dane and our R is a grovelly throat sound.
It is the sound that often gives away people as foreigners, even if they speak good Danish (not Dutch and German people though, they can do it too).
When I was a young Canadian back in the 50s, I often heard "khaki" pronounced as "karky", which fits with your speculation about "pasta" and "kebab". I don't know if this pronunciation is still used. Oh -- and at Canadian racetracks the exacta was an exactor into this century, and spelt that way. The tracks I used to go to seem to have adopted exacta, but I don;t know if others have, or if the bettors (bettas?) have. Another oh -- a very helpful video.
"Car key" is how we still say it in the UK. Whenever I hear the American "cacky" pronunciation, it always takes me a moment to process and then it sounds like a judgement.
Intrusive R! Thank you. I've been wondering why certain words (like "law") somtiimes had an R tossed in at the end. Now I know.
English as a whole generally avoids vowel hiatus, so in many non-rhotic dialects, rhoticity is kept when removing it would leave two adjacent vowels across a syllable barrier. The intrusive r is what happens when you generalize this rule so that you insert an r whenever you would otherwise have a vowel hiatus.
You might be able to call this an example of morphological leveling or an early phase thereof.
@@godowskygodowsky1155 Laura Norder
Excellent!
Brilliant! Disagree on pasta though. There's a US English phenomenon whereby /ɑː/, /ei/ and /oʊ/ are used to exoticise foreign words with , and in their spelling. E.g US /ɡə'lɑːpəɡoʊs/, UK /ɡə'læpəɡəs/ for Galápagos ES /ɡa'lapaɣos/; US /rɪ'zoʊɾoʊ/,UK /rɪ'zɒtoʊ/ for risotto IT/ri'zɔtːo/ and US /'beiɾə/ UK /'biːtə/ for beta (βήτα) GR /'vita/.
more like /ɡə'lapəɡəs/, and also i think we got it from the ancient greek too, which was βῆτα, pronounced [bɛ̂ːta]. so that's closer to the american /bejtə/, but would be closest to "betta" or something
The modern Greek pronunciation of beta isn’t where we get our pronunciation of the letter from.
Every thing i think about the letter "R" is that it represents a group of sounds that i have a very hard time pronouncing, and i don't think you're gonna change that 😂
5:11 uh, no? As a Canadian i can say i have not, i have heard some _Americans_ say that tho? I think i've heard about as many brits say that as not so i think it's more regional there, might be here too, but certainly not in Ontario, maybe out west?
Probably awriddy been there but my wife, after many years of hearing me kvetch about it, no longer says she’s gonna warsh the dishes.
Al Bowlly singing Ray Noble's "The Very Thought of You" has my favorite Intrusive R in it because it's essential to the rhyme scheme:
"The mere Idea[r] of you
The longing here for you
You'll never know how slow
The moments go till I'm near to you"
Mr. Bowlly was born to a Greek father and Lebanese mother in Portuguese Mozambique in 1898 and raised in British South Africa. I sing this song to my girlfriend often and I absolutely include that intrusive R, every single time. I am from Georgia, United States. 😅
great example, what a loving embrace of the intrusive R
Saying R in a particular way is important to convey your snarky level of culture, pompous superiority and class.
BRUH!!! You just broke my brain with Bruh Rabbit!
I only realized the full extent and ridiculousness of this when I started studying Tlingit history and place names. The Tlingit language has no R sound whatsoever, but when Americans started recording Tlingit names in the 19th century, they often wrote the Tlingit “ah” vowel as “ar.” To take one example, there’s a place in Alaska called “Sarkar” and everyone now pronounces the R’s in English, but the original Tlingit name is S’a.àa Ká.
The "r" in Scots is totally different from the "r" in England.
A boyfriend (from Boston) upon meeting my mother (from Baltimore), within 5 minutes of meeting her exclaimed, "So that's where all our Rs went!"
My grandmother was from Hoboken, NJ and had the craziest use of R's. My dad called it an "R Warehouse." She would take the cah to bah to have pizzer and soder.
To R is human 😄
This reminds me of one long video where someone explained the Rammstein R and how most Germans don't pronounce R like Till Lindemann does. :D
5:24 kebard 😂😂😂 doctor jones you need to resuscitate me
Another regional rhotic amusement which you didn’t mention is the old Brooklyn accent which flipped the “r” sound and the “oi” sound. So my working-class grandfather, born in Brooklyn in the mid-1890s, said “Thoisday” and “terlet” his whole life. I’ve read that a similar regional accent exists or existed in some social strata of New Orleans, but through a different a different pathway of language influences.
@paulweiss2720 I know "Thoisday" is real enough, but I thought the other side of the flip was a fabrication in the film "The Odd Couple" (Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau), where they ordered ersters.
@@peterw29 I remember my grandfather making sure that I had peed before we got in his car to drive from Flatbush to Sheepshead Bay to go out on my great-uncle's fishing boat when I was still a little kid: early 1950s, probably. “Yauhw shauw you don’ need to go to the terlet?” My family lived in a small town in the Catskills during the school year, and on a three-family farm in NE Pennsylvania when school was out, and I thought that my grandfather’s speech was unimaginably exotic. Later, I thought it was embarrassing, but that was at an age where everything adults did was embarrassing.
I’ve been thinking about how I wrote those sounds, and I think that I capitulated to the conventional “Hollywood Brooklyn” representation of Thoisday. That’s not actually the way he sounded, though. The first vowel of the diphthong was lower - closer to a schwa. So maybe /əi/ , or even lower like /ɔi/ instead of /oi/ ?
@@paulweiss2720 Sorry, I don't speak IPA or high/low/front/back, but I agree that oi is a distortion, and a schwa would be closer. I imagine it to be rather like the -euil in the French word fauteuil.
Interesting… I was familiar with hearing the “oi” (instead of “r”), but I had no idea that “oi” would be pronounced as “r” in exchange
I don't think the "pasta" and "kebab" situation have anything to do with Rs, they're just a result of applying English pronunciation conventions to the spelling. Kebab gets pronounced like other words ending in -ab like stab, flab, grab, etc. Pasta is trickier because we have faster, plaster, blaster. But we also have plastic, drastic, fanastic. Pronouncing it "pahsta" seems to be an attempt at a more "correct" pronunciation. But in Italian it starts with a short vowel, and pronouncing "ah" as a short sound doesn't come naturally to English speakers, so I think both are equally valid ways of Anglicising it. Alternatively, it could be spelled "pusta", but that would look gross. :-)
I'd pronounce "pusta" as a Hungarian landscape.
nothing annoys me more (certainly overexaggerating) than people (mostly Americans) saying British accents are non rhotic, cuz I'm from the south west of England originally (Wales too) and my accent is rhotic, including accidently saying "pasta" like "paster" and getting confused by other Britfolk using R to represent long vowels
I should be more careful about that - the stereotype Americans have of British English is RP and it helps to clarify what a non-rhotic accent is, but I shouldn’t give the impression all British accents are
Yes, we Canadians do say "pæsta" rather than "pawsta." We also say "foyé" rather than foyur" for foyer. We do pronounce our R's in car and park. We don't insert R's between words.
I'm an Aussie, years ago I was in the states in some big box store trying to get my phone fixed or replaced and I had to tell them my email address. It had an r in it and the exchange went like this "r", "a?", "no r", "e?" "Arrrrrrrrgh" "oh you mean r" "yes"
I'm an Australian lawyer. I have a typical South Australian Adelaide accent. English is my first language. Anyway, I use non-rhotic english except when I'm on the phone and I'm spelling something out and I need to say R. I always say R like an American would and say ARR because if I say R as I normally would people would get confused.
I find it so weird and unnatural to say ARR though. Like my mouth is telling me I'm being pretentious or eccentric.
I plan to imitate you during the next Talk Like an Australian Lawyer Day.
This video made me think of when I was in Navy ROTC and it was explained how the British pronounce colonial and lieutenant compared to how we pronounce in the US (and some other words we just don’t use, like quay versus dock)…
Oh, I have heard people in the South and Southwest, including Texas and Oklahoma, use short A as in apple, cat, ash, in words like pasta and casa, and don't get started on jalapeño. But you forgot the wash vs. "warsh" intrusive R or the R Americans added to "schoolmarm" (which should've been school ma'am). I've heard "er" in addition to "uh," but I'd agree "erm" is "um." Side note: yes, long I/Y can reduce to "ah" in some accents, but closer to short A as in apple, cat, ash in other accents. I wonder also if that /Æ, æ/ + /ee/ = /æ-i/ is or was a variant for ai/ay and long I/Y before or after a divergence.
When I worked in customer service, I talked to a man who was in an absolute rage because we had shipped his item "in the original cotton." Over and over, he just kept screaming "WHY would you ship it in the original cotton?!"
At the time, I was training some new agents so they were "splitting in" on the call. Their headsets were connected to mine so they could listen in. We were all looking at each other with puzzled expressions. Why indeed? Why would we ship something in cotton? And what item would be in "original cotton?"
The man was belligerent. There was no way to ask him to explain what he meant, so I started looking over his account for clues. That's when I saw it. He lived in Boston. Aha! He was angry that we had shipped his order in the "original carton" AKA the manufacturer's box, instead of putting that box inside another box. This was almost a decade ago and I still laugh whenever I think about it.
Thai has a real love hate relationship with R. In educated and official speech, it's trilled as in Spanish but it can also morph into an L sound, or, amomgst friends, be casually dropped altogether. 2 consecutive written R's are pronounced as /a/ and final written R's of course are pronounced as N's. Quite a versatile letter, and it's not alone in its overachiever status in the Thai abugida. No wonder it gets dropped out of speech so often.
Watching this video makes me wonder if I might somehow be wrong about R pronunciation.
I grew up in Vancouver, British Columbia and I pronounce every R, especially the final ones. On the other hand, I spent almost a year in Oz (Australia) where they avoid Rs and drop word endings as much as possible. Could I possibly be 'wrong'? Is the word beer really supposed to be pronounced 'beah'? And is a car really a 'cah'?
In any case, I am surprised that you never mentioned Parkyakarkus the father of Albert Einstein (aka Albert Brooks)! en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Parkyakarkus
I had to learn French in my 50s in order to find out that the "English" dictionary defines the pronunciation of certain words to have the feckin' "r" missed out completely !
Coming from North of the Scottish border, where we do tend to pronounce this little letter, it's infuriating to be told in print that I cannot speak correctly.
It's also hilarious that the English have, as part of their royal family, The Prince of Whales (or Wales). The English also cannot pronounce "wh", as demonstrated by Stewie in Family Guy.
I've yet to see Eddie Izzard as Silver. Newton gave us "Yarrr". Izzard gave us "yeah".
😹
As far as I can tell, everybody in the world pronounces pasta like "pasta" because that's how it is pronounced. It has nothing to do with it not getting confused with "parsta", doctor. Sheesh!. It's only the yanks who pronounce it like "posta". It drives me nuts. They also call Las Vegas, "Los Vegas", and say "montra" instead of mantra, etc etc. It's a pet peeve of mine.
Oh, and you're also wrong about pirates. The West Country accent is "excessively" rhotic and people do, in fact, talk like that.
this was all so fascinating, my jaw kept dropping after every mindblowing revelation ("wait that makes so much sense!") great video!
The r being equivalent to h thing threw me into a deep visceral rage.
Honestly, we should just be doubling the vowel instead of adding silent consonants.
@@languagejones6784 you're 20% right
This is the kind of thing that makes me realize that while i love languages, i was definitely right not to choose linguistics. History comes so much easier. I just don't hear all the nuances in speech without great effort
What up, doc? Maybe someone pointed it out already, but to this English ear it sounded like you said 'widows' when pronouncing the non-rhotic 'weirdos'.
The OED would have it we stick a schwa in there for shits and giggles: /ˈwɪədəʊ/
I-monothongization? R-deletion? Yup, can attest.
My name is Michael, and I’ve lived in the mountains in north Georgia for 40 years. I learned to speak in Missouri, so my Appalachian accent is not very strong, but it’s apparently strong enough. Several years ago, I made several business contacts via phone, a few of which were in New York. After introductions via telephone, I began to receive multiple faxes daily from each contact, but I noticed that all the faxes from New York (3 separate individuals) were addressed to Marko (not even Marco, which would seem to be a more suitable spelling). I still don’t know where the “l” went, but now I know why the “Mic” became “Mark”.
I don't know if it's been mentioned, Chinese-American mathematician Shiing-Shen Chern's surname is 陳 (Chén in pinyin, IPA [tʂʰən]). This R is from some older type of transliteration of Mandarin Chinese, where it was used to denote the second tone. Apparently, even Chern himself pronounced his name in English as 'churn', so it's an accepted pronunciation nowadays.
One of my old coworkers moved to Switzerland a while back. When he was visiting, I asked how long he'd been there (since I can't keep track of time) & he said "Long enough to pronounce the R!" & laughed at the apparently obvious hilarity of his own joke. I had NO idea wtf he was talking about. Then YEARS later I was on a plane & they had a documentary about a French chocolatier (which has locations we've been to in Tokyo) and after several iterations of "Pierre Hermes Paris" (w/ the guttural French ʁ) I was like "oohhhhhhhhh THAT's what he was talking about!" 🤣
I didn't really understand the anecdote about hearing Canadians say 'pasta' and 'kebob'.
It does remind me of a question that I'd love to hear feedback on.
I'm a Lifelong Torontonian. I've lived in The Greater Toronto Area for my entire life.
Every now and then, an American 'Friend or Aquaintence' will tell me that I or all Torontonians have a distinct accent.
I always thought that we speak the dialect of English commonly refererred to as 'Hollywood English' or 'California English'.
If anyone's unfamiliar with the aforementioned, we're basically talking about how every 'DEFAULT' Actor / Actress is instructed to speak if the character is to sound 'generic'.
If the actor is playing character from New Jersey, he'll likely be told to use a New Jersey Accent.
Same Thing goes with an actor portraying a guy from Newfoundland / 'Newfie Accent'
Or...
The armpit of America, Buffalo NY / that unbelievably irritating 'Barfalo Accent'.
If the actor / actress is to portray a 'generic type character' from 'Anytown, USA', they'll be instructed to speak like Californian's (Hence the Moniker 'California English'.
I ALWAYS THOUGHT that my fellow Torontonians and I also speak 'Hollywood / California' English.
Is it possible that I've been under a misaprehension for the majority of my life.
Tell me what you think?
Also, if you believe that The Toronto Accent deviates from 'California / Hollywood English'... how so, exactly?
*Note* Here in Toronto, we have an unbelievably 'cringy' brand of 'Slang' which only recently began garnering major attention.
This 'T Dot Slang' (so to speak) has been the bane of my existence for a long, long time.
It's beyond ridiculous.
It's similar to British Slang insofar that both dialects are spoken by 'Non Jamaicans' who are blatantly and desperately 'Jafakin' it'.
I think the Toronto brand of 'Jafakin' Slang' is even worse than its Brittish Counterpart though, 'innit'?
So, when I ask 'do you think that Torontonians have an accent that deviates from 'Hollywood / California' English, I'm not referring to our ridiculous 'T Dot Slang'.
I'm just referring to conventional Toronto talk, eh?
Thank you. The one that drives me mad is the rendition of the name the Little Women called their mother. I'm fairly certain they were calling her Mah-mee non-rhotically in their New England accent, but LMA chose for somecreason to denote the long A by inserting that R. I don't know of any dialect accent where Marr-mee is used.
The worst part about rhotics is that L-sounds, D-sounds and sometimes N-sounds I think? are also rhotics. After all, the difference between a spanish tapped r in between two syllables and a d in between two syllables is significantly smaller than the difference between the short spanish r and the english vowel-ey r.
3:49 “Fahvel”
Being originally from New York, I would have _definitely_ thought his name was “Farvel” or close to it-or at least not “Faivel.”
Before I left New York for college, I had _no_ idea that I dropped my “r”s because, well, I was indicating “vowel length and color”-I knew the difference between “far” (as I pronounced it non-rhotically) and “fa” (supposedly a long, long way to run). I wonder if you asked people from the New York City area if they pronounced their “r”s what kind of response you’d get.
What's funny is when you transliterate names back & forth & get something completely different. I knew someone named Laura, which is written as ローラ (roora) in Japanese (katakana), and someone reverse-transliterated it back to "Roler" & she thought it was so hilarious she used it as her screen name. XD
Alright, smaht arse. But, two things: firstly, the final vowel / glide in the Aussie "no" is the french "u" sound. And secondly, as a Canadian, we don't say "pasta" like the Brits. We spell words like them, sure, but we talk like you. For instance, when we go out to the movie theatre, we might grab an order of french fries. When we play soccer, some of us will play offence and others will play defence. As for Pasta, Dr. Geoff Lindsay has an excellent video on the "aw" v.s. "ah" sounds. He suggests that Brits have a tendency to nativize pronunciation of foreign-sounding words, while Americans have a tendency to give them this foreign "aw" vowel sound. In North America, we tend to pronounce 'Milan' like 'lawn,' but they say it more like 'lan' or 'pan.' ruclips.net/video/eFDvAK8Z-Jc/видео.html
I appreciate the mention of vocalization of R in non-rhotic dialects. Usually it's described as the R just being gone, but I (rhotic American) definitely hear something that my brain hears as equivalent to an R in some of those spots.
I was hoping that you might have included the odd slender R sound in Irish in your list of diverse R sounds.
Shared with Czech!
People think pirates use hard R's because of actor Robert Newton. He played Long John Silver in the 1950 Disney live action movie of Treasure Island. The character of Long John is introduced as a ship cook, who you would never expect had a secrete past with piracy. To support that misdirect, Newton employed an accent that he thought would sound far too ordinary and working class to be associated with the flamboyance and viciousness of pirates. He chose the accent of the British Midlands, which is super rhotic (yarrr). Americans seeing the movie were not familiar with the accent and came to associate it with all pirates, simply because it was distinct.
I think your little theory about why British people say “pasta” and “kebab” that way is hilarious and ingenious. I have no idea how to test for it, but if it were correct it would (for me at least) have interesting implications for Paul Hollywood’s famous pronunciation of “salsa.”
“Sarlsa” is such an awkward word and (I believe?) not in keeping with Spanish morphology at all - even if it is still a possibility in English! Do you think this notable /æ/ adaptation is mostly unique to borrowed words? Hollywood kept talking on and on about his trip to Mexico for research on Mexican cuisine, and so it puzzled a lot of people (and me) as to why he would pronounce salsa so badly, but it it’s an unconscious desire to make sure no one thinks he’s putting an “r” in there, then maybe that makes more sense. Kinda? Then again, with his particular Liverpool accent, he might have heard /salsa/ and thought his pronunciation was closer to the real thing than the Texan /s…. dangit phone keyboard. You know what I mean. And so I guess he’s mispronouncing it just as much as Americans do, just by backing the vowel instead of fronting it!
It feels like there must be other examples of this with other British English speakers, but it was genuinely surprising to me how very little the bakers in BBO knew about Mexican food, or even Tex-Mex, so maybe British people very rarely have a reason to say salsa. I think most of the other bakers said it with a low /o/ and at least partial deletion of the /l/, but I could be wrong. I’d have to go back and watch… but it was so dang cringe 😔
Then again maybe I’m cringe for over analyzing 😂
Geoff Lindsey has a good video on the pasta/kebab thing (which is a sharp turn in North American English from nativization into everything-is-Spanish).
When I lived in Saint Louis, I found a lot of speakers pronounce a fourth of a dollar like “quah-ter” This added to my astonishment at how much Great Lakes Vowel Shift had encroached into Eastern Missouri.
My American grandmother in Philly would say, "burl" and "earl" (boil, oil) on occasion.
Whenever Americans comment on how the British pronunciation of words of foreign origin doesn't closely match the original language, I bristle slightly at the implication that the American pronunciation is meaningfully closer. To my ear, Italian /ˈpa.sta/ sounds closer to RP /ˈpæstə/ than to General American /ˈpɑstə/. I find the same with "taco", as ridiculous as Americans find our pronunciation of it. American matches the vowel length, but I hear /a/ as much more similar to /æ/ than to /ɑ/. Perhaps that's just due to the linguistic context I'm coming from?
This is a really great point
Given how diverse the sounds considered "rhotic" actually are, I'm surprised how universal the existence of the speech disorder known as rhotacism is. Like, while people can't agree what an r even is, there are always people who can't pronounce it. Maybe that's how we should define rhotics? ;D
that's very very interesting but sadly very difficult to follow. interesting fact about R in French (my native language): I seemed to have discovered there are only two types of R's in French, the voiced and voiceless gutural R. I think how I use them depends on where it is situated in relationship to the surrounding consonants... basically depending on the point where you want to introduce the voice. Some people pronounce France with a "more" voiceless R but most pronounce this R with the voice, but the R in "appartement" will always be voiceless. I don't know the exact rule for that, but it seems very variable between generations and regions. Heck there's still some people rolling all R's... which is not so common anymore.
Not all versions of Australian English add "r" to "no". I suspect it's most likely in Cultivated Australian, especially for people who normally speak General or Broad but are bunging on posh (or think they're doing RP).
But I wouldn't be surprised if nearly all speakers add an intrusive-r to some words. I'll admit to saying "draw-ring", even in considered speech. I'm likely to say "faw-re-vah" with the "r" in the middle, but I know if I sing "Hallelujah Chorus" I carefully omit that middle "r" - "faw-e-vah". But that's a learned habit for me, and many people sing "faw-re-vah".
I use er/erm differently from uh/uhm and pronounce it as written. To me it's more like uh but with a corrective/judgemental tone (e.g. "er [I have been mistaken], you should change X" vs "uh [I am very confused[, you should change X(?)")
I am spanish but I watch a lot of american content and lately I was thinking some people pronounce the word “idea” as if it was written “idear” (with an accent that drops the “r”, but I kind of still felt it). Is this video an explanation for that?
All I can say is I am shocked and delighted that the voice of solid snake supports a linguistics channel. Mad props to the prof.
THAT’S where I’ve heard that name before hahaha
Here's one: "not arf" among Cockney characters in _Oliver_ and other works can be quite a mystery to Americans. It's "not half", meaning "all the way, absolutely".
'R' is indeed a tricky letter. But the Pirates?! My personal linguistic theory is that 'arrrr' comes from other Germanic languages. Dutch 'nar' and German 'narr' - FOOL - for example from expression like 'zum Narren' to '(n)arrrrrrrrrrrr(en)'. In Old Norse 'nár means 'a dead or lifeless body, a human corpse'. I would risk to say that THAT is actual meaning of the Pirates' (n)arrrr - 'you fools, you are death already!' more or less :)
My mother and an uncle (by marriage, unrelated to my mother) both add an "r" to "wash" - "warsh." "Washington" is "Warshington." They don’t do this with any other words, however. They’re pre-WW2 babies, born 1939-1940. My mother’s family was from Arkansas and Tennessean, but my mother spent most of her childhood in New Orleans and Houston. My uncle’s family was all from Houston.
I’ve never heard anyone else use this pronunciation. I always thought it must have been a Houston thing, but since others of my parents’ generation didn’t do this - and my father’s family’s roots in Houston go back to around 1900 - I’m not sure if it has anything to do with a Houston "accent."
Except pirates are typically portrayed with west country English accents. That's a rhotic accent.