Talk:Rhoticity in English/Archive 1

This page is an archive of past discussions. Do not edit the contents of this page. If you wish to start a new discussion or revive an old one, please do so on the current talk page.

Pronunciation is the correct spelling whether you are British or American. Please check your dictionary before deciding to change it to Pronounciation. As a matter of interest this word is widely mis-spelled on Wikipedia pages.

Shouldn't the "postvocalic" qualifier be further qualified with "final or preconsonantal", as the double R in corridor indicates?

--Ben Brumfield

I'm probably going to rewrite the sentences on compensatory lengthening.

Post-vocalic is not the correct condition. It's really pre-vocalic. Non-rhotic accents pronounce R before a vowel, as in red or torrid or water is. The written R is silent before a consonant (hard) and finally (car).

Do you mean correct condition for pronouncing the R, or for not pronouncing the R? I think the article is referring to the latter. I think we're talking about hte same thing, though. -Ben Brumfield

Corridor is a misleading example because the RR is pre-vocalic and therefore pronounced, while the final R is silent. Whoever originally used it, were they thinking it could be divided cor-ri-dor with one pre-consonantal followed by one pre-vocalic? This doesn't accord with English phonology. It's a single /r/ despite the spelling. (Contrast with a double /r/ in car-racing, which is pronounced using two applications of the rule: [ka:-reIsIN].)

I totally agree about corridor. We should ditch it and come up with something else. -Ben Brumfield

Compensatory lengthening doesn't occur with the neutral vowel of water. The vowels of car, fur, bore etc are long, but remain long when the epenthetic [r] is added in car is, fur and etc., so it's not synchronically compensatory.

I could edit the text but I'd rather leave these remarks for you who've already thought about how to phrase it. I'm new here. :)

- Gritchka

I have read that compensatory lengthening varies among different non-rhotic accents. I'll admit that I (a rhotic speaker) am most familiar with closed syllables like "Carl", and "corn", so will take your word for it on unstressed syllables. Why don't you go ahead and edit the text, as I'm pretty unsure of myself on this? - Ben Brumfield

---

Regarding New York: A lot of texts speak of New York City English as non-rhotic. In fact, this has gradually ceased to be the case. New Yorkers born before (approximately) the time of World War II are uniformly non-rhotic, those about my age (I was born in 1942) are mixed (I myself am mainly rhotic but when tired lose some of my /r/'s, but not all), and the younger they are, the more they tend to be rhotic. It also ties in with class, and William Labov's pioneering study of class dialects focused on /r/ in New York City. I think this needs to be attended to in this article.

---

Okay, I've largely rewritten it. It wasn't intended to be a complete rewrite, so I apologize for stepping on toes. I've used what I hope is a fairly neutral SAMPA transcription, which covers modern southern English and Australasian. Does SAMPA have to be mentioned each time it's used? And I agreed the Labov study deserved special mention.

I am a Connecticut native, and I can tell you firsthand that English as it is spoken in Connecticut is most certainly rhotic. - User:Juuitchan

Why is New England mentioned as being non-rhotic?? Connecticut is a New England state, and it is as rhotic as can be. Or is the "New England is not rhotic" obsolete information? --User:Juuitchan

Correct me if I'm wrong, but isn't the entire remainder of New England non-rhotic? --Brion 08:45 Sep 24, 2002 (UTC)

Depends on which part of Connecticut. I believe there are lots of non-rhotics in the eastern part of the state. Michael Hardy 01:35 Feb 15, 2003 (UTC)

I have the impression that, in the Southern US, many "high-class" dialects (idiolects?) do not have intrusive R, e.g., "Weah ah you?" (transcribed crudely). Can anyone with more systematic knowledge clarify that? Mark Foskey 21:37 Apr 14, 2003 (UTC)

Whence this notion that Norfolk English is rhotic? (I have amended the page.) It turns up so frequently that I'm beginning to think it must constitute an urban myth. Non-rhoticism is one of the main things distinguishing Norfolk English from other "rural" dialects. Are the "linguists" who perpetuate the myth of rhotic Norfolk speech on the same level as those visiting football fans who (imagining presumably that they are in Dorset) taunt Norwich City supporters with chants of "Ooh-arrr, ooh-arrr"?

i agree, i've been to norfolk and although to an untrained ear there may be similarities to a west country accent, norfolk english is very much non-rhotic

I was wondering what the source is for the claim that non-rhotic speech started in England around 1600? I had always understood that it was at least fifty years later. Traditionally, the speech of the Americas has been used as a yardstick for measuring changes in British speech. The areas of non-rhotic speech in the USA --- (shrinking) parts of New England, and the coastal South --- were in more regular contact with England, and subject to influence from English speech trends. The inland Americas were not subject to that influence, and spread rhotic English across the rest of the continent. A date of 1650 or even 1700 is a likelier beginning for the trend. Smerdis of Tlön 15:13, 20 Jan 2004 (UTC)

I can't disagree with you there, but at least one other variable is the location in Britain that the colonists in different regions came from. David Hackett Fischer's excellent book Albion's Seed points out that the Appalachians were settled by people from northern England, southern Scotland, and North Ireland between 1700 and 1770 -- much later than the trend you mention (which also probably didn't occur homogenously). Also, he claims that the coastal South was settled in the 1648-1660 timeframe, by people from Southern England. So there are a lot of variables there. Ben 20 Jan 2004

I've just been wondering whether this page should be titled "rhoticism" or "rhoticity" since it feels odd with an adjective as a name. The related terms such as "rhotic" and "non-rhotic" would of course redirect here. Opinions? Hippietrail 12:41, 28 Mar 2004 (UTC)

Personally, I think Rhoticism would be better. A while back I made it so "rhoticism" and "rhoticity" would redirect here, because I wasn't sure which title would be better. --Evice 19:17, Nov 9, 2004 (UTC)

OK, I moved it to Rhoticism. No offense to anyone, but having an adjective for the name was really bugging me. --Evice 02:39, Nov 27, 2004 (UTC)

IPA

Could someone please replace the sampa with proper IPA pronunciations. Thanks.

Done. --Evice 04:44, Dec 21, 2004 (UTC)

Areas with non-rhotic accents include...the southeastern United States.

Should this be "northeastern"?

The deep south's prestige/lowcountry dialects are non-rhotic. Think of a caricature plantation owner saying "Aftuh the waah" or "in Vuh-gin-ya". Some northeastern accents are nonrhotic too, and should be mentioned. Ben 16:30, 29 Oct 2004 (UTC)

`

The name

I see there's already been discussion about this page's name, but I want to bring it up again. I've never heard the word "rhoticism" used with this meaning. I've heard "rhoticity", but as a phonetic term meaning the same thing as "r-coloring" (I've also heard "rhotacization" for that). This article is really about the difference between rhotic and nonrhotic accents, so if no one objects in the next few days, I would like to move it to Rhotic accent, leaving a redirect here. --Angr 15:06, 17 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I concur with the proposal. Nohat 17:30, 17 Mar 2005 (UTC)

I'd move it to something like Rhotic and non-rhotic varieties of English, and make rhotic, non-rhotic, rhotic accent and the rest all redirect to it. It does need to stay neutral and not assume that non-rhotic English is standard or commoner. "Rhoticism" means something else to me: the frequently observed sound change in which /VsV/ > /VrV/. This has happened many times in several different languages: compare German hasse to English hare, or Norse kyrja to English choose; Old Latin Valesius, Latin Valerius, and so forth. It probably deserves its own article. -- Smerdis of Tlön 17:39, 17 Mar 2005 (UTC)

That's rhotacism, with a, not i. How about the simpler Rhotic and non-rhotic English? Nohat 18:05, 17 Mar 2005 (UTC)

That's fine, except then we have to decide whether to use "nonrhotic" or "non-rhotic". I prefer the former, since dictionaries prefer no hyphen after "non" (unless the word it's prefixed to is capitalized). But I realize that normal people (as opposed to lexicographers) often prefer hyphens. Does the MoS say anything about this? --Angr 18:17, 17 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Well, both spellings get less than 1kgh, but non-rhotic gets about twice the hits of nonrhotic. [1] [2] Nohat 18:34, 17 Mar 2005 (UTC) Also, I just picked up the dictionary that I had sitting here, Jones' English Pronouncing Dictionary, and it has non- words both with and without hyphens, without any immediately discernible pattern: non-combatant, non-conducting, non-delivery, non-interventionist, but noncompetitive, noncorrosive, nonentity, nonrestrictive. So, who knows? Nohat 18:38, 17 Mar 2005 (UTC)

kgh=kilogooglehit? American dictionaries only hyphenate after non if the word it's prefixed to is capitalized. Collins (which is British) hyphenates after non if the word it's prefixed to is capitalized or begins with N. OED hyphenates after non unless it doesn't. OED gives anti-convulsant but anticonvulsive, so there goes any hope of consistency. --Angr 19:00, 17 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Twice the hits? By my count, "non-rhotic" gets more than 12 times as many hits as "nonrhotic", which only means it's more popular, not that it's right. Another interesting search is <non-rhotic nonrhotic> to see how many people are inconsistent about it. I get the exact same number of hits as for "nonrhotic" alone. --Angr 19:07, 17 Mar 2005 (UTC)

"Right", "more popular"--what's the difference? :-) There doesn't seem to be agreement even among dictionary-makers about which non- words to hyphenate, so I don't think there's an a priori reason to include or exclude the hyphen. Given that, I don't see why not to go with what we can determine to be more common. I don't think there's any reason to believe that non-rhotic is British and nonrhotic is American, because plenty of the hyphenated examples are from American sources.

Those links give me 733 and 325 gh, respectively. What numbers are giving you the 12 times statistic? Nohat 19:33, 17 Mar 2005 (UTC)

They give me 5540 and 444 gh, respectively. Maybe your Google is better at filtering out pages that are copied from each other, because with mine I get pages with the identical wording but at different addresses over and over again. "Non-rhotic" may be more popular and may not be wrong even in the U.S., but it just looks so friggin' ugly! I hate unnecessary hyphens (which for me is almost tautologous). --Angr 19:59, 17 Mar 2005 (UTC)

FWIW, 6 pages link to the non-rhotic redirect, only one to the nonrhotic redirect. small n, I know. Joestynes 03:10, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Okay, okay, non-rhotic wins. But I reserve the right to grumble Marge-Simpsonesquely about it. *grr* --Angr 05:35, 18 Mar 2005 (UTC)

Okay, here's the deal. As you can see, I've changed this page's name to Rhotic and non-rhotic accents. I've written a new article on R-colored vowels, because that term formerly redirected here, but it shouldn't. An r-colored vowel is a kind of vowel which occurs in other languages too, a rhotic accent is a kind of accent of English. And I've made Rhotic a disambig page that points to Rhotic consonant and R-colored vowel as well as this page. And there's a whole host of redirect pages involving "nonrhotic" with and without a hyphen and "r-colored" and "r-coloring" with or without the Commonwealth <u>, as well as "rhotacization" and "rhoticization" (which redirect to r-colored vowel). Let me know what you all think, and feel free to edit all those pages and redirects! --Angr 12:35, 22 Mar 2005 (UTC)

The new name is better. I didn't think of the name at the time, but it's a lot better. About redirects, a bit ago I noticed a page linking to the old-fashioned rhotic, but I forgot what it was. At least the "What links here" link exists. --/ɛvɪs/ 04:51, Apr 16, 2005 (UTC)

Well, anything linking to rhotic will take you to a disambig page that will give you the option of coming here, so it's not a problem. --Angr/_comhrá 08:33, 16 Apr 2005 (UTC)

[ɹ] versus [r]

If you are going to use IPA transcriptions for English words in this article, do not use the [r] symbol. That is a trill consonant, not the symbol used for English R, which is a turned [ɹ]. Denelson83 04:42, 11 July 2005 (UTC)

Strictly speaking, you're right. However, the use of the symbol [r] for the English R-sound is extremely widespread, even among respected phoneticians. Kenyon and Knott, Alfred C. Gimson, John C. Wells, and Peter Ladefoged all use [r] in their transcriptions of English. By all means use [ɹ] in your own writing if you wish, but insisting on it from others is hopeless and editing pages only to make that change is pedantic. --Angr/_{tɔk tə mi} 14:02, 27 July 2005 (UTC)

I find the rhotic section hard to read because I don't know what "[?]" means. As a non-linguist and a casual reader, /r/ or [r] is more useful to me. The [?] looks like this page is incomplete with placeholders for future expansion. --67.117.147.244 16:18, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

If it's appearing as a question mark for you, there's a problem with your display. Maybe you don't have a font installed that includes IPA characters, or maybe you're using Internet Explorer instead of a real browser. The character is supposed to be displaying as an upside-down r, which is the phonetic symbol for the English r-sound. Angr (talk) 19:21, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

Homophone pairs

In which non-rhotic accents are batted and battered, and boxes and boxers homophones? I think these pairs are distinct in RP ([ˈbætɪd] and [ˈbætəd] or something like that), and I see from a comment in the page ("") that someone else agrees with me. ☺ If they are distinct in RP, would it be sensible to stick with examples of more nearly universal homophones in that section?

—John Mark Williams ❲⌂|☏❳ 13:34, 27 July 2005 (UTC)

I believe they're homophones in Australian English: batted and battered are both /ˈbætəd/ and boxes and boxers both /ˈbɔksəz/, because of the Weak vowel merger in Australian (Wells 1982, p. 601). --Angr/_{tɔk tə mi} 13:55, 27 July 2005 (UTC)

I believe you're right, Angr. I speak AusE & those are homophones for me. Jimp 7Dec05

About the image in the article

I see that Charleston is circled, but Savannah is not. Surely this is a mistake. The Savannah and Charleston accent among some whites is identical (I am a Savannah native). Older whites generally *do* drop the r at the end of a word in the typical non-rhotic fassion. It's generally considered the "old southern" dialect of Savannah-southern-english.

I assume that Savannah and Charleston became non-rhotic because they are both sea ports which traded heavily with the british right up until the end of the civil war (the cotton industry here was massive then). However, lately it seems both cities have merged in with the more general southern accent. --TheNationalist 13:40, 8 September 2005 (UTC)

You're right. I'm the one who made that map, based on a map at http://www.ling.upenn.edu/phonoatlas/Atlas_chapters/Ch7/Ch7.html but now that I look again I see I made a mistake: the original map actually shows more r-dropping in Savannah than in Charleston. I should have made that little circle around Savannah instead. --Angr/_{tɔk tə mi} 15:33, 8 September 2005 (UTC)

Rhotic Wales?

People in Wales have a rhotic accent? Since when? Gerry Lynch 12:56, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

The historian Gwyn Williams certainly used to roll his Rs. I remember seeing him narrate a TV series and his fondness for the word "ruptures". Grant65 | Talk 13:16, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

Did he roll both R's in the word "ruptures" or only the first one? --Angr (t·c) 13:22, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

Both as I recall. Grant65 | Talk 23:31, 12 December 2005 (UTC)

Most Welsh people certainly do not roll their terminal 'r'. Gerry Lynch 15:54, 20 December 2005 (UTC)

I agree with Gerry Lynch here; as far as my experience goes, southern Welsh English is non-rhotic and, if such a word exists, non-chitic (omission or distortion of initial 'H'). Can't be sure about western or northern Welsh English, though. --die Baumfabrik 17:24, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

In North East Wales the dialect is fairly close to a Liverpool dialect and not rhotic. In mid, North West and West Wales the dialect is equally non-rhotic, and the dialect in Pembrokeshire 'Little England beyond Wales' it's dead strange. Listen to some of the radio and TV clips available on BBC Wales [3] to get a feel for the dialect - these are heavily dominated by South Walian accents. Gerry Lynch 19:36, 13 March 2006 (UTC)

Welsh speakers especially have strong "r"s. The strongest terminal "r"s I have heard (and I am a Scot by the way) in English were by natives of Anglesey. True, a lot of North Wales is becoming a quasi-Scouse mush, as far as accents go - due to both migration and fashion, but the native Welsh accents I can recall were all rhotic. And by the way, it isn't necessarily "rolling the terminal 'r'", it's pronouncing it. RP drops terminal "r"s just as Cockneys drop their "h"s - but because it's a prestige dialect, this isn't often pointed out. --MacRusgail 19:08, 16 April 2006 (UTC)

Further to the above, I can confirm that Welsh placenames and personal names, at least, are rhotic, e.g. "BangoR", which is not pronounced "Bangaw" traditionally. As for whether the same people would say "cah" for "car" is another matter. --MacRusgail 18:25, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

In South Wales they certainly say "cah" (Theh's a seat resehved foh booze by the boys from Abercahn). Obviously, not all rhotic accents roll - coming from Belfast I certainly pronounce my rs but never roll them - the same goes for much of rural Southern England and Barbados. Gerry Lynch 16:51, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

I remember hearing Welsh speakers around Cardigan and Carmarthen sometimes pronouncing (slightly rolled) "r"s in words like "car", "short", etc. Though they certainly did not pronounce all of their "r"s.--Unoffensive text or character 15:40, 24 July 2006 (UTC)

yo

know this stuff yall. know it. Ish ^{(shoot some)} 06:28, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

Thanks, though that list is more about the Weak vowel merger. --Angr (t·c) 07:06, 21 December 2005 (UTC)

dossier has /r/ deletion ?

"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)" -- so that means that "dossier" has an /r/ in its underlying representation which is deleted by all speakers? I don't think that is correct. I don't think there is an /r/ in its underlying representation... even in French Qaaa 01:27, 12 January 2006 (UTC)

No, it just means dossier has a written r that isn't pronounced even in non-rhotic accents. Of course there's no underlying /r/ phoneme in it. I agree it's kind of a confusing thing to say, though. --Angr (tɔk) 08:22, 12 January 2006 (UTC)

Hypercorrection

Does anyone have experiences of hypercorrection in other accents? I can cite many examples of 'rhotic hypercorrection' in some Irish-English accents, and I can dimly remember certain Scots being afflicted by the same phenomenon.

For example, my Belfast-born father regularly sweeps the hearth with a brursh (?IPA: brʌɹʃ). Similarly, when I was a boy, and until I'd seen the word written down, I believed that the Doctor's biomechanical enemy to be a darlek (?IPA: dɑɹlɪk).

I'm sure that many RP actors, when adopting Mummerset accents, also affect 'rhotic hypercorrection'; can any comrades out there supply citations?

Right: what's happening here? My browser is showing hollow squares again. What happened to the words [b][r][U028c][U0279][U0283] and [d][U0251][U0279][l][U026a][k]? --die Baumfabrik 18:22, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

Flippin' Brilliant; Internet Explorer 6.0 renders the offical Unicode IPA characters as little hollow squares, while FireFox 1.5 renders them properly. I should have known! Well, better get used to some new keyboard shortcuts, then... --die Baumfabrik 18:50, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

You gotta use the IPA template for them to show up properly in IE. Just type {{IPA| before and }} after the sections you write in IPA. (I used to think they were "Darleks" too.) --Angr (tɔk) 19:16, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

Well Done, Angr! I trawled the help pages fruitlessly for just piece of advice; thank you for making the appropriate corrections on my behalf. It's a pity, however, that IE6.0 doesn't render the characters in the symbol table at the bottom of the edit page. --die Baumfabrik 20:04, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

What's really a pity is that one of the most widely used browsers available is substandard. --Angr (tɔk) 20:25, 23 January 2006 (UTC)

I hear "idear" (idea), "arear" (area), "droar" (draw), and so on in UK and Australian accents regularly. Ian-Baker Finch (British Open Championship winner and golf commentator for ABC) does it frequently. Joe n bloe 01:55, 24 April 2006 (UTC)

The new title

...is amusing. When I think of "English liquids" I think of soid'errr or biht'err. History of liquid phonemes in the English language or something like that would be better. Grant65 | Talk 02:56, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

Well, to non-linguists maybe. When you're accustomed to talking about liquids to mean r- and l-sounds, you don't even think of other possible meanings anymore. Angr/talk 11:56, 5 March 2006 (UTC)

If I have a gripe against the new title, it's that it's long-winded. I don't like long titles on Wikipedia, for the simple reason you have to remember exactly what they were! --MacRusgail 18:27, 17 April 2006 (UTC)

Juggernaut

While the English word juggernaut may be attested from the 1630s, the existence of a language known as "Hindi" most certainly is not. Anyway, the source word "Jagannath" is pure Sanskrit, and in the early 17th century the English were more likely to have encountered it through Gujarati or Bengali than through any of the dialects which contributed to the modern Hindi language. A more specific translation is "Protector of the World." More likely, though, is that it was absorbed through Portugese or Dutch or perhaps French, thus complicating this theory of vowel changes. Either way, the Sanskrit (and Indic) vowel is much more of an open "a" than a schwa, and besides, how does the addition of an "r" sound to a word without one indicate the practice of dropping them when not followed by a vowel sound?

I think the point is no one would spell /ə/ er unless they spoke a non-rhotic dialect. The implication is that if rhotic speakers had colonized India, the word would probably be spelled jugganaut. Angr (talk • contribs) 13:58, 22 March 2006 (UTC)

I believe the first 2 vowels in jagannath are both identical schwas. Short "a" in most Indic languages becomes a more open sound only when stressed - it is a schwa otherwise. Also "jagannath" is not Sanskrit because the Sanskrit is "jagannatha". Dropping the final schwa (only in speech, never in writing) is a characteristic of modern North-Indian languages. --Grammatical error 20:51, 10 June 2006 (UTC)

Merged pages: a bad idea

I don't like the way all the separate phonemic merger articles have been merged into a few omnibus articles. Some of the old articles were quite short, but so what? Some have since been expanded, rendering the current articles quite bulky. I don't see what has been gained, as they haven't been rewritten into a chronological order, or melded in any other thematic way; they're just separate essentially unrelated sections clumped one after the other. We already have Phonological history of the English language with links to the relevant mergers; what is gained by having those linking to subsections of a big page rather than to separate pages? In the current case, it creates the ridiculous situation of having "L-vocalization in other languages" as a subsection of "History of liquid phonemes in the English language". Yuk! jnestorius^(talk) 14:15, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

I'd agree with deleting the "L-vocalisation in other languages" or moving in to another/new article. Gerry Lynch 16:53, 26 May 2006 (UTC)

Yes, it should be split. It is a contrived merger that violates the principle of least surprise. Ardric47 02:54, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

I would much rather separate L-vocalisation in toto from Rhotic/nonrhotic. L-vocalisation in English has more in common with L-vocalisation in other languages than it does with rhotic-ness in English. That is the contrived merger; before it was made there was nothing surprising about the L-voc article. jnestorius^(talk) 08:31, 2 June 2006 (UTC)

I agree that redirecting "L-vocalization" here is a perfect example of "English-speaking Point Of View". An article discussing the linguistic phenomenon should be recreated, and then link to the appropriate section here for discussion of the phenomenon in English specifically. Circeus 00:39, 8 June 2006 (UTC)

I agree, this is absurd. There should be a separate article on L-vocalization. --85.187.44.131 15:57, 9 June 2006 (UTC)

Well, the split has been made, which is fine with me, but the question is, what do we do with this title? There's no content here that isn't duplicated at either Rhotic and non-rhotic accents or L-vocalization. Shall we move everything there, make sure nothing links here, and then speedy-delete this page for lack of content? I think that's the best solution. Angr (talk) 19:59, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

Makes sense to me. I never liked merging those pages either.--JHJ 21:13, 12 June 2006 (UTC)

I also agree with Angr. jnestorius^(talk) 07:56, 13 June 2006 (UTC)

I'm either way on this. We should either merge the pages here and redirect rhotic and nonrhotic accents and l-vocalization here, or delete this, but we should have this as a duplicate of the other two articles. Voortle 16:57, 14 June 2006 (UTC)

I agree with Angr. Also, the thing about rhotic and nonrhotic accents isn't really a matter of "history". A meaningful article about the "history of English liquid phonemes" could be written - but most of it should deal with their influences on the surrounding vowels in Anglo-Saxon and Middle English, with only a brief reference to non-rhoticity and L-vocalisation in the end. The article as it stands now might as well disappear altogether. --85.187.44.131 22:17, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

trading R's...

I've noticed, particuarly with the Boston accent, that while the R is not pronounced in words like "car," which do end in R, it is pronounced in words like "idea" (becomes "ideer") and "law" (becomes "lar"), which don't.

Do you mean word-finally, or before a vowel? Many speakers of British English use so-called intrusive Rs before vowels: "The ideer is", because of a confusion with words that do end in R, which shows only before a vowel, too ("here is the cah" vs "the car is"). The other possibility would be that some Bostoners are trying to speak General American, pronouncing all the Rs, and are doing a kind of hypercorrection. --85.187.44.131 22:29, 17 June 2006 (UTC)

Worcester

could 'worcester' (and worcestershire) be added to this? In the UK, the first 'r' is not pronounced ('wuster'), whereas many Americans say 'war-cester'.

please add if suitable, i'm not sure. Saccerzd 20:15, 19 June 2006 (UTC)

I've heard many people say wur chester for worcester. Voortle 14:47, 20 June 2006 (UTC)

No, I don't think this has anything to do with accent. It's just that Americans are generally unfamiliar with "Worcester" and so try to prounounce it "the way it's spelled".--Pharos 00:00, 22 June 2006 (UTC)