Wikipedia:Reference desk/Archives/Language/2019 September 19

Welcome to the Wikipedia Language Reference Desk Archives
The page you are currently viewing is a transcluded archive page. While you can leave answers for any questions shown below, please ask new questions on one of the current reference desk pages.

September 19

Winston Sterzel's accent

This moderately famous vlogger is from South Africa and worked as an English teacher in China. His accent is generally what I expect from Southern Hemisphere English, but what puzzles me is that about one half of the time it's rhotic (for example the final R in 'everywhere' at 0:16 in this most recent video). I'm wondering what the reason might be. Is this a new local development in South African English (perhaps under the influence of surrounding non-native varieties of English, or of American media)? Or is it possible that he acquired this feature of his accent while living in China - say, through communicating with mostly American expats, or more or less consciously adapting his accent to make it more comprehensible for Chinese learners of English who are mostly used to American English?--87.126.23.210 (talk) 17:40, 19 September 2019 (UTC)

A person's individual speech, called their idiolect, is rarely self-consistent NOR is it slavishly exactly the same as the specific dialect represents. Indeed, a dialect should be thought of as a platonic ideal; no one speaks exactly like that, but it does give some of the trends that people of a specific population group tend to speak like. It is not surprising nor unusual that some speech pattern (such as rhoticity) may not be consistent within the same person. [This video] has a dialect expert that explains specifically this inconsistency (it's about 1/2 way through the video). --Jayron32 17:55, 19 September 2019 (UTC)

It's true that inconsistencies in people's speech occur, but that doesn't mean that such inconsistencies don't have or need an explanation. People don't just inexplicably speak in a way different from what is typical of their native dialect - they do it because they are influenced by another dialect or are switching to it (apart from speech impediments and the like). Or else the entire dialect may be undergoing a process of change. What I am trying to figure out is which one of these is true in this particular case.--87.126.23.210 (talk) 21:16, 19 September 2019 (UTC)

Japanese learners of English too are a lot more accustomed to standard US than to standard British English. They're thus a lot more used to rhotic than to non-rhotic English. I've heard speakers of non-rhotic British English rhoticize their speech in Japan to make it more comprehensible, and perhaps also because they spend more time talking with (near) native speakers of rhotic English than with (near) native speakers of non-rhotic English. I've no reason to think that such influences are peculiar to Japan. Thus your second guess looks good. (I'm not even slightly qualified to comment on your first guess.) -- Hoary (talk) 00:09, 20 September 2019 (UTC)

Thanks for these observations! It's funny that Japanese people should have a problem with non-rhotic English, because Japanised pronunciation of English loans seems to be consistently based on the non-rhotic version - some random examples I find on the Wikipedia page on the topic are konpyūtā for 'computer', kisu māku for 'kiss mark' and ōjī for 'orgy'.--87.126.23.210 (talk) 23:31, 21 September 2019 (UTC)

See code-switching. SinisterLefty (talk) 00:12, 21 September 2019 (UTC)

Well, the question would then be why he should be switching between these particular codes. That said, I don't think it's even code switching, because it is difficult to identify any chunk where he has 'switched' to a purely American accent; it looks more like a persistently mixed dialect.--87.126.23.210 (talk) 23:31, 21 September 2019 (UTC)

It's not unusual for teachers here in the UK to introduce a rhotic element for emphasis or for spelling, especially when teaching English as a second language. Dbfirs 15:19, 21 September 2019 (UTC)

Thanks to everyone for the replies! --87.126.23.210 (talk) 20:27, 26 September 2019 (UTC)