Not just the Brits… certain American accents do as well. I’m listening to a blog series on history right now, and I cringe every time I (in my hearing experience) hear “idear.” And I’m usually pretty good at accepting accents, so I guess over time I’ll start cringing less.
CRSP:
I should have said that my point of reference vis “accent” was “Coronation Street”. 
I now remember once having asked her about the r thing and she said that She didn’t do it, but her relations who lived close to Manchester, did.
Oh, I wouldn’t have the confidence to say what “most” Brits do or don’t say–the UK has an amazingly dense myriad of accents. It’s incredible to me how much the accent can change in a small geographic area. That said, as I hinted above in my notes about the intrusive-r, Americans overestimate its prevalence (there are rules to when it is used in accents that use it), but I think it’s much more common than UKers might think.
I suspect you have a non-rhotic accent if you describe the way you hear Americans say “palm” and “talk” as “parm” and “tork.”
“Palm” is pronounced completely differently from “parm” (as in “chicken parm”) in most American accents. One has the definite presence of a rhotic, the other does not.
Remember, in the US, the vast majority of British English that we hear is BBC RP or accents from the south of Engand. The only “non-standard” accents we’ll encounter with some regularity is cockney. (I’m not including areas outside of England proper; Scotland, Wales, or Ireland/Northern Ireland.) I wouldn’t expect a Brit to be familiar with Midland Northern (the nasal Great Lakes eyacksint), Yinzer, or Tidewater, just as Americans aren’t going to be intimate with Scouse or a Yorkshire accent.
This could account for the “Well, I’m British, and I’ve never heard anyone use a terminal R” responses. Go to my hometown, and people deny up and down that they speak with a regional accent. Still, I’ve had conversations like this to disprove it.
“How many syllables does this word have?” (Show them a piece of paper with the word “and” written on it.)
“One.”
“Say it.”
“eee-YAND.”
:smack:
Similarly, I (native Brit) would pronounce “talk” and “torque” quite differently (at least, it sounds different to me).
Whereas I, another native Brit, would pronounce talk and torque exactly the same. Different regional accents, I’m guessing. (What’s your accent, Malacandra?)
Sure, no major disagreement here from me.
Interesting stat from the Wikipedia article about the “intrusive r”:
Absolutely, and this is completely natural. Not everyone is as in tune with it as others, but a lot of folks will spot me from a mile away as either a Chicagoan or possibly Cleveland based on my accent. I personally don’t think I have a strong Chicago accent by any stretch (and I like the working class Streets & San[itation] type accent), but it’s obvious from my interaction with others and their ability to spot me as a Chicagoan, that it is. I like to play the same game with “spotting the Canadian.” Like that T-Mobile commercial with the cute woman in the pink dress. Spotted her as a Canadian the first time I heard her by the raising in her accent, but I’m sure plenty of Canadians would have no idea what I’m talking about and swear her accent is the same as a typical US accent.
I think you may well be right there.
Interesting fact. I come originally from a rural area of the North-east of England and though my wife was born only 5 miles away from me, when I first met her (20+ years ago)I knew her accent and dialect was different and had a good idea where she came from.
I didn’t even know “parm” was a real word.
Yeah, I think people don’t even know they’re doing it. The intervocalic R has come up a few times before in threads, and the first time I heard about it I was a little mystified. “I don’t do that!”, I thought, but when I paid close attention to some examples people gave (the one I remember is Captain Jean-Luc Picard saying “Data and I”), sure enough there was a R sound there. It sounds a bit like “Dater and I”. And I realised that I do indeed insert intervocalic Rs. I think most British English speakers do.
I think it’s a bit like the cot/caught and marry/merry debates that rage around here sometimes. Some people pronounce those words the same but can hear the difference in other people’s pronunciation, but some people pronounce them the same and cannot hear the difference even when people pronounce them differently.
All I can think of is a West Country accent, although even people in the recesses of Cornwall and Devon don’t generally add "r"s, but overemphasize the ones that are already there.
What do you mean, “why”? Your question appears to be “Why do some people have a different accent to me?” The answer is that they are not you, and don’t speak with your accent.
Same reason that every difference in every accent, such as your own, exists.
“Champagne supernover in the sky.”
When I brought this particular example up in a thread about this phenomenon a few years ago, Johanna identified it as a “postvocalic intrusive rhotacization.” So now you know what it’s called.
For an example from this side of the Atlantic, I can think of Billy Joel singing about “Brendar and Eddie” (in, IIRC, “Scenes From an Italian Restaurant”).
I wish Cecil would do a column on this; it comes up at least once a month and Oasis and the Beatles are are always cited as examples.
Still, this one’s going a little differently, with lots of Brits claiming that the intrusive R doesn’t exist (er, it does in pretty much all non-rhotic accents in England), rather than Americans vehemently claiming that Brits add an r to the end of every vowel even after the ‘only when there’s a following vowel’ rule has been explained.
I’ve lived on both the East and West coasts, and have relatives who live in the South, and I’ve travelled a bit in the Midwest. I can’t think of an American accent that would insert an /r/ sound into “palm” or “talk.”
Most Americans would pronounce “palm” so as to rhyme with “Tom.” Even in Boston, where “Tom” is pronounced “Tawm” (or, more often,“Tawmee”) “palm” would rhyme with the standard pronunciation of “Tom.” (Am I right, John Mace?)
With a New York accent, “talk” becomes “tawk.” I’ve occasionally heard it pronounced as “tock.” Most Americans pronounce it somewhere in between, but I can’t figure out a way to render it in print. Maybe like this: Say it like “tall,” except end with a /k/ in place of the /l/.
I will now step down and stop speaking for all 300 million of us.
And even there, he pronounces it both ways. When there’s a bit of a break, he sings "a champagne supernova [breath], a champagne supanova[r] in the sky.
“Parm” is the shortened usage for “Parmesan” (the hard-grating cheese) or “Parmagiana” (adjective describing dishes made with that cheese, or with an origin in Parma, much as “Florentine” means either “made with spinach and cream” or “originating in Florence”.
Oh we know it exists, just not everywhere in Britain. Remember the fun of listening to Thatcher or one of her lot going on about some woman apparently named “Laura Norder”?