Cliff Richard sings the song “Donna” and adds the “r” sound, resulting in “Donner” 
Thanks for making me listen to Cliff Richard songs on YouTube 
(hereit is), but what he is doing there is not an intrusive R. I guess he was just trying to sound like an American rock & roll singer by putting heavily-enunciated Rs on the end of everything. John Lennon used to do that too. Obviously in this case Cliff got it a bit wrong.
But a Brit wouldn’t say “Donner was her name” in real life (except possibly those Cornish people mentioned earlier, I wouldn’t know about that).
Eh? Because they’re claiming that British people pronounce certain words with an r.
You’ll frequently hear reporters here (and many others) say “Oh-barma” (like karma) rather than “Oh-bama” (as in “Bam-Bam”). 'Tis the way it’s done here.
“Jag-you-ah” and “Nicker-rag-you-ah” are normal here, and if you said “Jag-wah” or “Nicker-rarg-wah” you would be looked on as weird (or pretentious).
My current boss and one former co-worker, both Brits, had this characteristic of speech. The classic arcade game was pronounced “Gallagher,” while the comedian with the melon-smashing shtick was “Galaga.”
The one I react to most is in Asda, which is now owned by Walmart.
In their own adverts instore the announcer actually says “Asder”
I rarely notice it otherwise.
How would you say, for example “Data and I” without the epenthetic R?
Would you merge the two As into one sound, insert a glottal stop between them, or stop for a breath between them?
In my neck of the woods, it would either be two As as one sound, or a glottal stop.
More than likely, the first choice.
For me, when I’m saying it, it’s a glottal stop (or similar), but not one long sound, and not a breath in between.
day-tuh-en-eye
No glottal stop.
Oh-bama as in “Bam-Bam,” rhyming with “clam,” isn’t correct, either. A friend of mine complains endlessly that his mother pronounces it that way.
The standard pronunciation of the middle syllable in Obama’s name seems to rhyme with “Tom.”
My bolding - no it’s not. It’s a peculiar (not unpleasant, I hasten to add) mixed accent. It’s very definitely not British of any flavour.
Sigh. We go around and around on this every six weeks, it seems like. You cannot use the letter R to indicate a vowel change if there’s any chance that someone in the conversation has a rhotic accent. And since the vast majority of posters on the SDMB are Americans, there are a lot of people here with rhotic accents.
*I plead with you non-rhotic speakers. Just, please stop. Find another way to indicate vowel changes. Or you’ll be talking in circles with us the rest of your lives.
*
If you really don’t want to use I.P.A., why not use AH? See, you can write “pahm” to indicate the pronunciation of “palm” without muddying everything up by sticking R in everywhere.
In General American accents –
Pam is [pæm]
palm is [pam] or [pɑm] - no Rs in sight
parm is [paɹm]
tack is [tæk]
tock and talk are [tɑk] or [tɒk] - no Ls in sight
torque is [toɹk] or [tɔɹk]
Again, this statement makes no sense when there are rhotics in your audience, because we never, ever hear anyone pronounce “Obama” to rhyme with “karma.” And no one here pronounces it to rhyme with “Bam-Bam” either.
I have a different accent from my sister and we grew up in the same house. We lived in Kenilworth, on the border between Warwickshire and the West Midlands. She has a Coventry accent whereas mine is more South Warwickshire.
Nothing to do with our parents either. One is from Scotland and the other from Yorkshire. Accents are weird.
So your room was in Warwickshire and her room was in West Midlands?
Supposedly (and this is through the haze of my memories of a linguistic class in university some fifteen years ago), accents are not generally passed down from parents, but rather picked up from the speaker’s peers. So, if your sister had a set of friends/peers where the Coventry accent was well-represented, and you have a group of friends with mostly South Warwickshire accents, that would explain the difference.
Hehe. That’s the best explanation I’ve heard yet.
Yep. That sounds right. I think the only thng I have picked up from either of them is the northern-English short a in bath, grass, path etc. Even then occasionally the ‘other way’ slips out.
But I would not pronounce “pahm” in the same way as “palm” or “parm”
You should read acsenray’s post very closely. Mk VII was NOT saying that reporters say the word with what you would call an “r” sound in it. Notice that he’s from England, and when they say “karma,” they don’t pronounce what you would call an “r” sound.
To translate into 'merkin, he was saying “You’ll frequently hear reporters here (and many others) say ‘Oh-bahma’ rather than ‘Oh-bam-a’ (as in ‘Bam-Bam’).”
I used to hang out on alt.usage.english, and one lesson I learned is that you can’t communicate how you pronounce a word by comparing it to how you pronounce another word - your audience member likely will assume that you pronounce that other word like he does, and it will likely be different.