Oh, I have to disagree, Lyse Doucet has a most becoming accent but it’s nowhere near British, nor does it sound, (to me, an Australian) typically North American.
Hers is a strange but attractive accent, which I thought must be due to her upbringing around New Brunswick, Canada.
However the BBC does have another Canadian born journalist, Barbara Plett, who sounds similar in some ways. Barbara is originally from Manitoba.
Australian here, I agree with Quartz.
When I read about this added R business, I thought absolutely not, it’s more like an “ahh” than an “R”.
The British lass, “Donner Alexander” to which one person referred is not possessed of that extra “R”, it’s just that the pronunciation has omitted a glottal or other stop on the end of the “a” in Donna, and continued into “Alexander”.
It’s just a short cut, it happens a fair bit in speech, and as a video editor, when editing people speaking who run words together, it can be a real pain in the arse.
Oh, and one other British chap commented that he pronounces “Torque” and “Talk” the same.
While I agree that they will sound very similar, I do believe that there may be an ever so slight difference in the tongue position between the two in deference to the “L” in talk, versus the “R” in torque.
Are you denying that the linking and intrusive R exists? I’m afraid this would come as a surprise to a lot of linguists.
There’s a very clear one at 1:12 in the Beatles’ “A Day in the Life.” John Lennon says, “I sawra film today.”
I do if the vowel sounds are close enough. It’s faint and I didn’t realize it until reading this thread today, but it’s there. It feels more as being on the beginning of the second vowel than after the preceding word. So “and” becomes sort of like a Cockney “hand” where the dropped-h is replaced with a soft glottal stop.
My accent is mainly Californian with mid-western parents.
If i stop and analyse the way I pronounce phrases like that, I can definitely detect an “r” sound in there (southern English accent). I do find it slightly odd that the people who have the “intrusive r”, like me, are in general the very people who don’t pronounce the final “r” in words where it exists in the spelling! E.g. I’m sure some people would characterise my pronunciation of “water” as “war-tuh”, but “water in a cup” would be “war-ter-in-uh-cup”.
I’ve heard it described as the law of R conservation.
Actually to me it sounds like wa-ta-RIN a cup. The R gets moved to the next word over.
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, and do I care? Not a bit. Still, reading through Wikipedia’s article on the intrusive R I hadn’t realised that I pronounce “tuna oil” as “tuna roil”, even though tuna by itself is “toonah”.
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.
But then again the fad for the last twenty years or so - even amongst posh people - has been to adopt an exaggerated parody of East Lahhndahhn cock-er-ney wide-boy guvnor apples and pears right royal barrel of monkeys shut it! get your trousers on yer nicked sunshine etc type of accent. So that even though actual Cockneys no longer exist, England is full of white people who pretend to sound like them. This is fading away into an imitation of a Jamaican-style accent, although a mock-American accent seems to be popular with kids as well. The irony is that The Sweeney didn’t sound like The Sweeney at all, John Thaw spoke very clearly because he was a distinguished actor and television was still up-tight in the late 1970s. So modern Britain is basically built on a lie, a misunderstanding.
According to the Daily Mail - you might not like it, but it is England - this patois is called “Jafaican” (vomits) (commits self-harm) (anger) (tears). Apparently “the Scouse accent found on Merseyside, and the Mancunian dialect will both hold firm and swell in influence, perhaps because the area is dominated by famous footballers like Wayne Rooney and soap stars from Coronation Street and Hollyoaks.”
Ye Gods, a bleak future. Tuna roil, never thought about that before. Jesus, my own mouth turned against me. Who are you? In its charming non-offensive way the Mail has a guide to speaking Geordie, from which I learn that:
“Geordie: Eeeh man, ahm gannin te the booza.
Translation: Okay, I have had enough, I am going to the pub.”
The sidebar only has two stories about Kim Kardashian today, something must be wrong.
Which shouldn’t be too surprising, as then it appears functioning kind of as a linking R (even though there actually is an R in the word) as “watuh” ends in a vowel sound and “in” starts with a vowel sound.
I don’t think there’s any class element. The intrusive R has always been evident in all sorts of dialects. It’s more that there is no good way to transition from a word ending in a vowel sound to a word that begins in a vowel sound. You have to insert something, lest it become one long vowel. American English dialects employ a slight stop. Non-rhotic varieties of English use a transitional R sound. Perhaps the intrusive R is more noticeable to non-users than the stop is to non-rhotic speakers.
My food studies teacher did it i high school. She’d say “Thats a good idear”. It sounded like "Thats a good eye-dear.
This song has a great example of the reverse of that too; The English singer sings “dark” and “park” mostly dropping the R.
He even drops the L in sultans, and then seconds later, says it again with the L.
Nonsense. There is no reason “you have to insert something.” In my American English accent, I say “tuna oil” with neither a slight stop nor an intrusive R. It’s not an impossible feat to glide from one vowel to another without inserting anything.
Yes, that’s more like it.
“Tyoonah”, surely, unless you’ve adopted the American pronunciation?
What amuses me is the intrusive intrusive R which shows up when a non-rhotic speaker overcompensates as in this clip where Rupert Grint attempts to speak with an american accent and says “mozzareller sticks.”
Oh, yeah, that shows up all the time in '70s and '80s British sitcoms when there’s a British actor playing an American character. It’s hilarious.
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.
Grew up with a friend who’s mom, Donna Alexander, was British (W. Midlands?).
We’d ask her what her name was, and she was happy to indulge us:
“Donner Alexandah”.
rhoticization
You’ve already said that! (of course it was 557 days ago).
Except that where I from (New England) the intrusive r in a word like China will show up even when it’s the last word in a sentence and even when it’s the last word uttered.
Hm. I said “rhoticization” long after “rhotic” was bandied about. I hope no one was getting it up to point that out to me.