|
English pronunciation is divided into two main accent groups, the rhotic and non-rhotic, depending on when the phoneme (the letter "r") is pronounced. Rhotic speakers pronounce written "r" in all positions (although many rhotic speakers omit it in French loan words where "r" is silent, such as dossier). Non-rhotic speakers pronounce "r" only if it is followed by a vowel (see "linking R"). In linguistic terms, non-rhotic accents are said to exclude in the syllable coda. This is commonly referred to as post-vocalic "r", although that term can be misleading because not all r's that occur after vowels are excluded in non-rhotic English.
Development of nonrhotic accents
Distribution of rhotic and nonrhotic accents Most speakers of American English have a rhotic accent. Outside of the United States, rhotic accents can be found in Barbados, most of Canada, Ireland and Scotland. In England, rhotic accents are found in Northumbria, the West Country, and parts of Lancashire; they were traditionally used in the East Riding of Yorkshire, although the younger generation are more likely to be non-rhotic. Other areas with rhotic accents include India (particularly in southern India and Maharashtra where the R's are rolled), Philippines, and Otago and Southland in the far south of New Zealand's South Island, where a small Scottish influence is apparent. Areas with non-rhotic accents include Africa, Australia, Malta, most of the Caribbean, most of England (especially Received Pronunciation speakers), most of New Zealand, South Africa and Wales. Singapore and Malaysia are also two examples of countries in Asia with a non-rhotic accent. In Canada, non-rhotic accents have been reported in southwestern New Brunswick, various isolated parts of Newfoundland, and Lunenburg County, Nova Scotia. In the United States, large parts of The South were formerly non-rhotic, but this is sharply recessive. Today, non-rhoticity in Southern American English is found primarily among older speakers, and only in some areas like New Orleans, southern Alabama, Savannah, Georgia, and Norfolk, Virginia (Labov, Ash, and Bomberg 2006: 47-48). Parts of New England are non-rhotic as well as New York City and surrounding areas. The case of New York is especially interesting because of a classic study in sociolinguistics by William Labov showing that the non-rhotic accent is associated with older and middle- and lower-class speakers, and is being replaced by the rhotic accent. African American Vernacular English is largely non-rhotic. There are a few accents of Southern American English where intervocalic is deleted before an unstressed syllable. In such accents, pronunciations like for Carolina are heard) In some dialects of American English, people will add an to certain words through hypercorrection, the most common examples being , , and for wash, water, idea and draw. This hypercorrection also occurs in the Canadian and British English pronunciation of for khaki, although this is fading over time and many young Canadians now use the American pronunciation of . Similar phenomena in other languages The rhotic consonant is dropped or vocalised under similar condictions in other Germanic languages, notably German and Danish. In most varieties of German, /r/ in the syllable coda is frequently realised as a vowel or a semivowel, or , especially in the unstressed ending -er and after long vowels: for example sehr zeːɐ̯}}, besser ˈbɛsɐ}}. Similarly, Danish /r/ after a vowel is, unless preceded by a stressed vowel, either pronounced as (mor "mother" , næring "nourishment" ) or merged with the preceding vowel while usually influencing its quality ( and / are realised as long vowels and , and , and are all pronounced as ) (løber "runner" , Søren Kierkegaard (personal name) ) . See also | ||||||||||
|
| |||||||||||
 |
|
| |