# British add an "r" sound **URL:** \ **Category:** Factual Questions\ **Created:** [February 13, 2011, 5:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/british-add-an-r-sound/571223 "2011-02-13T17:41:34Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 11
**Author:** ![Acsenray](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/acsenray/32/4519_2.png) [@Acsenray](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Acsenray)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2012, 2:09pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/british-add-an-r-sound/571223/201 "2012-08-29T14:09:53Z")
Could you elaborate a bit? I don’t think I’m grasping the point. ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2012, 2:26pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/british-add-an-r-sound/571223/202 "2012-08-29T14:26:14Z")
Let me see if I can puzzle it out. **Inner Stickler** are you saying that the “r” in “I sawra film today” is John Lennon overcompensating for an American accent, and throwing in too many "r"s, because in his non-rhotic accent "r"s are usually dropped? Or something like that? One thing, though, that’s not an “intrustive intrusive r.” That’s just a standard linking “r” going from one vowel sound to the next in “saw a.” ---
**Author:** ![Inner\_Stickler](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/inner_stickler/32/318_2.png) [@Inner\_Stickler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Inner_Stickler)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2012, 2:28pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/british-add-an-r-sound/571223/203 "2012-08-29T14:28:12Z")
Oh, when did we switch from “I never sawr them at all”? ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2012, 2:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/british-add-an-r-sound/571223/204 "2012-08-29T14:33:55Z")
> [@Inner\_Stickler](#): > > Oh, when did we switch from “I never sawr them at all”? Well, the post you quoted had the “I sawr the news today example,” so I assumed that’s what you were referring to. The other example “but I never sawR them winging” is several posts up from that. (And that does have what we’ve named the intrusive instrusive r.) ---
**Author:** ![Inner\_Stickler](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/inner_stickler/32/318_2.png) [@Inner\_Stickler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Inner_Stickler)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2012, 2:36pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/british-add-an-r-sound/571223/205 "2012-08-29T14:36:47Z")
“I sawr the news” would still be an intrusive intrusive R but I agree that “I sawr a film” is a standard intrusive R. ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2012, 2:45pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/british-add-an-r-sound/571223/206 "2012-08-29T14:45:25Z")
> [@Inner\_Stickler](#): > > “I sawr the news” would still be an intrusive intrusive R but I agree that “I sawr a film” is a standard intrusive R. :smack: I meant “I sawr a film.” Sorry, was conflating two lines. (“I read the news” and “I sawr a film.”) Of course, “I sawr the news” does not exist in the song, and, if it did and was pronounced that way, would be an intrusive intrusive R. ---
**Author:** ![Siam\_Sam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/d78d45/32.png) [@Siam\_Sam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Siam_Sam)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2012, 2:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/british-add-an-r-sound/571223/207 "2012-08-29T14:51:19Z")
> [@hibernicus](#): > > Would you pronounce “tuna oil” the same as “tuner oil”? If so, it’s fairly undeniable that you are adding an r sound to the former, even if you don’t perceive it as such. And that’s why it’s called an intrusive r. “You can tune a piano, but you can’t tuner fish.” Nah, it’s just not the same. ---
**Author:** ![SciFiSam](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/47e85d/32.png) [@SciFiSam](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SciFiSam)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2012, 3:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/british-add-an-r-sound/571223/208 "2012-08-29T15:35:04Z")
> [@Siam\_Sam](#): > > “You can tune a piano, but you can’t tuner fish.” Nah, it’s just not the same. Well, you’ve changed the sentence so that there’s no intrusive r, but in RP yeah, actually, “tune a” and “tuner” do sound the same unless you for some reason overemphasise the a. ---
**Author:** ![Irishman](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/i/b487fb/32.png) [@Irishman](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Irishman)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2012, 8:56pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/british-add-an-r-sound/571223/209 "2012-08-29T20:56:30Z")
> [@Ashley\_Pomeroy](#): > > Fascinating topic. As a British person I don’t often contemplate the way that British people speak the language that my ancestors gifted to the world, because I am one of _them_ and I do it naturally, even when I’m typing. Which gives me a massive and unfair advantage over 99% of the Earth’s population, A fair percentage of the world’s population speak English naturally and are not British. Of course, there are as many dialects as there are people (or nearly so 😉 ), so there’s that. > [@](#): > > There’s a class thing, though. A posh person would say “tuna (tiny pause) oil”, or more likely “olive oil”. It just feels more natural to say “tuna roil”, because otherwise I would have to say “TU-NA-O-YLE” in a kind of staccato way. “Tunaroil” just rolls off the tongue. Eww. “Who were better, Erasure ROAR The Pet Shop Boys”, etc, and the answer is of course The Pet Shop Boys. Obvious. I would say Too nuh oil. There is a slight discontinuity in the vowel sound between the end of tuna and beginning of oil. It’s not a hard stop intrusion, but it isn’t a voiced glide, hitting all the noises between. There are two distinct vowels. Also, the “Erasure ROAR” example has a flaw in that Erasure ends in an “r” sound already, so it already sounds like “Erasuroar”. > [@Ximenean](#): > > Pretty difficult to glide between those two sounds without a _slight_ stop, no? While making it distinct from “toonoil”? And what about the Captain Pickard example, “Data and I”? There has to be some kind of gap between the two words, a slight interruption of breath. “toonuhoil”. You dropped a vowel. “Da’tuhund I”. (“Uh und”, not “yu hund”). Sometimes the vowels do run together, sometimes there’s the faintest pause. > [@Ximenean](#): > > Not intrusive, then. It’s “intrusive”, in the sense that there is no letter “r” on the end of the word China, but there is a pronounced “r”. It does not conform to the description that it is only used between two vowel sounds. Unless the next sentence starts with a vowel, which was overlooked by the observer. > [@Siam\_Sam](#): > > I lived in Texas for 24 years and did hear “earl.” Where in Texas? Texas is a big place. It’s like all of New England. Hell, New York City to Chicago. I’ve been to East Texas and now live in southeast Texas (Houston), never heard “erl” for oil. Haven’t spent much time out west or in the panhandle. > [@Inner\_Stickler](#): > > The intrusive intrusive R is not generally a conscious decision on the part of the speaker beyond a desire to compensate for a known non-rhotic accent. So they throw random r’s in everywhere, on the off chance it will sound like a rhotic? ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2012, 9:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/british-add-an-r-sound/571223/210 "2012-08-29T21:04:59Z")
> [@Irishman](#): > > So they throw random r’s in everywhere, on the off chance it will sound like a rhotic? I don’t know about “everywhere,” but there does seem to be some overcompensation, at least by the Beatles, in imitating the American accent. What other explanation is there for “but I never sawR them winging”? That’s not how someone in any of the dialects on the British Isles would pronounce that, is it? This is a serious question–if there is a dialect where that pronounced it this way, I’d be interested in knowing that. ---
**Author:** ![Inner\_Stickler](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/inner_stickler/32/318_2.png) [@Inner\_Stickler](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Inner_Stickler)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2012, 9:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/british-add-an-r-sound/571223/211 "2012-08-29T21:14:52Z")
> [@Irishman](#): > > So they throw random r’s in everywhere, on the off chance it will sound like a rhotic? [Hyper-rhoticity](http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=390) on the part of British speakers attempting to sound American is a recognized linguistic phenomenon. I’m afraid the exact cause of this tendency is unknown to me. ---
**Author:** ![Fake\_Tales\_of\_San\_Francisco](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/8491ac/32.png) [@Fake\_Tales\_of\_San\_Francisco](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fake_Tales_of_San_Francisco)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2012, 9:57pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/british-add-an-r-sound/571223/212 "2012-08-29T21:57:29Z")
> [@pulykamell](#): > > I don’t know about “everywhere,” but there does seem to be some overcompensation, at least by the Beatles, in imitating the American accent. What other explanation is there for “but I never sawR them winging”? That’s not how someone in any of the dialects on the British Isles would pronounce that, is it? This is a serious question–if there is a dialect where that pronounced it this way, I’d be interested in knowing that. No, it’s not. At least, it isn’t a Liverpudlian accent you’re dealing with there. Peter Trudgill wrote about this phenomenon in his paper ‘Acts of Conflicting Identity: The Sociolinguistics of British Pop-song Pronunciation’. Singing is never a good example for accents. Many dialects in Britain would normally use a glottal stop in words such as ‘better’, but that can’t be done in singing. So much of the original accent is lost anyway. Trudgill actually showed the non-prevocalic /r/ decreased in frequency as time went on with the Beatles. This is probably because (he suggests) in their early years they were definitely in the rock and roll style, whilst as time went on they branched out, genre wise. The American accent, and rhoticity in general, seems to be a key factor in the rock and roll sound. As for the BBC reporter adding an /r/ - yes he is - but he’s not adding it to ‘Gaza’. If you asked him to say this world independently there would be no trace of the /r/, similarly if you asked him to say it before a word that doesn’t begin with a vowel, or at the end of a sentence. It’s a feature of connected speech when one is attempting to avoid [hiatus](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiatus_(linguistics)). - same with the ‘tuna oil’ thing. In most British accents you’d avoid hiatus and use an intrusive /r/. But say ‘tuna’ by itself and it’s not there at all. ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2012, 10:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/british-add-an-r-sound/571223/213 "2012-08-29T22:20:32Z")
> [@Fake\_Tales\_of\_San\_Francisco](#): > > As for the BBC reporter adding an /r/ - yes he is - but he’s not adding it to ‘Gaza’. If you asked him to say this world independently there would be no trace of the /r/, similarly if you asked him to say it before a word that doesn’t begin with a vowel, or at the end of a sentence. It’s a feature of connected speech when one is attempting to avoid [hiatus](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hiatus_(linguistics)). I agree. But that point has been made throughout this thread. It’s only used in intervocalic locations. ---
**Author:** ![JohnB\_Melb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/7ea924/32.png) [@JohnB\_Melb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnB_Melb)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2012, 11:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/british-add-an-r-sound/571223/214 "2012-08-29T23:02:21Z")
> [@hibernicus](#): > > Would you pronounce “tuna oil” the same as “tuner oil”? If so, it’s fairly undeniable that you are adding an r sound to the former, even if you don’t perceive it as such. And that’s why it’s called an intrusive r. Hmm, good question. I did try it, and I would be more tempted to insert a glottal stop for clarity in the case of Tuner Oil. Although I am not sure everyone would. Back to the “intrusive R”, while I do accept that the term describes the phenomenon perceived by, particularly, rhotic speakers, I think that if you asked those who pronounced it in this way, why they were inserting an “R” sound, they’d think you were imagining things. It’s not a conscious or deliberate addition of a sound at all. It is a byproduct of the changing of the mouth/tongue position while maintaining voicing. I can say “tuna oil” while maintaining voicing without the “intrusive R” but it requires a little more deliberate control of mouth/tongue. As I said, I believe it’s people pronouncing it the “easy” way, possible the same reason some pronounce Tuna as “toona”. Cheers! ---
**Author:** ![JohnB\_Melb](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/7ea924/32.png) [@JohnB\_Melb](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/JohnB_Melb)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2012, 11:13pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/british-add-an-r-sound/571223/215 "2012-08-29T23:13:38Z")
> [@Inner\_Stickler](#): > > [Hyper-rhoticity](http://languagelog.ldc.upenn.edu/nll/?p=390) on the part of British speakers attempting to sound American is a recognized linguistic phenomenon. I’m afraid the exact cause of this tendency is unknown to me. I think it’s because the “hyper-rhotics” are not properly thinking about what they’re doing. They are simply exaggerating tongue/mouth positions and so when the “intrusive R” arises, it too is exaggerated. Yet they would know full well that there is no “R” between “tuna” and “oil”. ---
**Author:** ![pulykamell](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/pulykamell/32/3166_2.png) [@pulykamell](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/pulykamell)\ **Post date:** [August 29, 2012, 11:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/british-add-an-r-sound/571223/216 "2012-08-29T23:20:04Z")
> [@JohnB\_Melb](#): > > I think it’s because the “hyper-rhotics” are not properly thinking about what they’re doing. > > They are simply exaggerating tongue/mouth positions and so when the “intrusive R” arises, it too is exaggerated. Yet they would know full well that there is no “R” between “tuna” and “oil”. That’s not an example of hyper-rhoticity, though. ETA: Unless I’m misunderstand your point, which very well may be the case. ---
**Author:** ![eschereal](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/eschereal/32/18939_2.png) [@eschereal](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/eschereal)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2012, 12:06am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/british-add-an-r-sound/571223/217 "2012-08-30T00:06:36Z")
I get this nagging feeling that this British habit must have some vague, remote Norman origin. Like how modern French has a lot of words ending in consonants that are silent if the following word starts with a consonant but are enunciated if the following word starts with a vowel. ---
**Author:** ![LC\_Strawhouse](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/l/e19adc/32.png) [@LC\_Strawhouse](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/LC_Strawhouse)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2012, 12:22am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/british-add-an-r-sound/571223/218 "2012-08-30T00:22:16Z")
A good example, from the Notting Hill movie : in [this clip](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTjIRQU_HdM), Hugh Grant’s friend calls Anna “Anner” at the 25 second point. ---
**Author:** ![Fake\_Tales\_of\_San\_Francisco](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/f/8491ac/32.png) [@Fake\_Tales\_of\_San\_Francisco](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Fake_Tales_of_San_Francisco)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2012, 12:25am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/british-add-an-r-sound/571223/219 "2012-08-30T00:25:05Z")
> [@JohnB\_Melb](#): > > I think it’s because the “hyper-rhotics” are not properly thinking about what they’re doing. > > They are simply exaggerating tongue/mouth positions and so when the “intrusive R” arises, it too is exaggerated. Yet they would know full well that there is no “R” between “tuna” and “oil”. It’s not really a case of ‘properly’ thinking about what you’re doing. If you’re consciously selecting each sound you’re going to make, you’ll end up sounding like a robot. Language becomes a natural thing, like walking. I don’t know what your accent/dialect is, but I imagine you do similar things. When speaking in conversation do you add a /w/ in ‘two eggs’? (note - ‘two’ does not have a /w/ in it normally, it is /tu:/ (too)) Do you add a /j/ (yuh) in ‘three eggs’? Most people do, but they don’t even realise it’s happened. Maybe you don’t do those, and they’re bad examples for your accent, but I imagine if you recorded yourself speaking I’d be able to spot many ‘accidental’ features of connected speech. It’s not because you’re not ‘properly’ thinking - to me that sounds you’re saying people who use an intrusive /r/ are not quite as competent as you at the language. I assure you they most certainly are. If you didn’t mean it like that, then disregard this post! ---
**Author:** ![Colophon](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/c/f05b48/32.png) [@Colophon](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Colophon)\ **Post date:** [August 30, 2012, 12:31am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/british-add-an-r-sound/571223/220 "2012-08-30T00:31:55Z")
> [@LC\_Strawhouse](#): > > A good example, from the Notting Hill movie : in [this clip](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PTjIRQU_HdM), Hugh Grant’s friend calls Anna “Anner” at the 25 second point. To me it sounds more like he says “Anna ragain” - the intrusive “r” attaches to the begin of the following word, rather than to the end of the name. My own accent is pretty similar to this one (I’d pronounce that phrase in exactly the same way), and if I stop to analyse it, that is what’s happening. It just feels much more comfortable to start the vowel with an “r” sound. If I pronounce “Anna” on its own, it’s not “Anner”. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/british-add-an-r-sound/571223.md?page=10) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/british-add-an-r-sound/571223.md?page=12)