Not sure I’ve ever heard what I would write out as “jag-wire,” but that could be an accent difference. It’s more like “jag-wahr,” or /dʒæɡwɑɹ/.
My boss is british and I have a great time in meetings noting his linking 'r’s. I have no idea if he’s aware that he does it.
It seems like something that would absolutely be natural and instinctive if you grew up in a dialect that has it. I’m sure there are quirks in my South Side Chicago dialect that I am completely unaware of unless it’s pointed out to me. I think such is the nature of dialects.
True, but the “oo” as “you” is universal. “It’s not a toomah!” is “It’s not a t-you-muh”
So, what do Americans do instead of this linking “r”. I haven’t ever really noticed it at all. How would they be pronouncing something like “India(r) is”
Beatles fans are nodding…
There were birds in the sky
But I never sawr them winging
No, I never sawr them at all
Till there was you
As “India is” without the linking-r. It’s just not in most of our dialects (I believe it exists in some northeast accents.) We don’t have any other linking sound that I know of, if that’s what you’re asking.
Hmm…maybe it’s in the studio version, but I don’t have it. I don’t hear it in this live take (at 0:50-ish.)
pulykamell, in this version it’s very obvious; listen to 0:28 - 0:34 for two big, juicy linking r’s: - YouTube
A Jag-wahr is encountered on the road or in the jungle. The Jag-wires play in Jacksonville.
hmm, yes, I can definitely hear that. I was curious as to how other singers handle it. I think Shirley also does it (although not as obviously as Paul) (at around 1.40-ish).
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JLDsLeVxOaU
Oh, my, yeah, that’s certainly there. Is that use of an intrusive-r common in certain English dialects? That one just doesn’t make any sense to me. I’m just wondering if that might just be affectation.
ETA: Wait a sec…now that I think about this, this is bringing back memories of maybe a thread here. I seem to recall the explanation being that Paul was trying to sing in an American accent, and somehow overcompensated by adding those "r"s where they just don’t belong (because English accents often drop "r"s where we expect them). Yes, I’m pretty sure that was the explanation, not that it was usual in any UK accent to insert "r"s in that place.
Yeah, just quickly googling it, I found this:
In the fourth paragraph, the author of that page quibbles a bit with the notion that the “sawr” pronunciation was the type of hypercorrected rhoticism to sound American I mentioned above (he says the point is “entirely plausible”) but he chalks up the extra “r” to "[being] goofy and self-mocking so that no one could tease him for singing a moldy oldie like ‘Till There Was You.’ "
In either case – whether hypercorrection or done in lighthearted whimsy, it’s not a standard pronunciation of “saw” in that context in UK English.
There’s a great clip of Daniel Radcliffe, Emma Watson and Rupert Grint trying to do their best american accents back when they were young teens and Rupert says “mozzareller sticks” because he knows that he drops R’s but doesn’t know where and when to put them back to sound American. Great example of the difference between langue and parole.
Had a friend from England, named Donna Alexander. We were all amused by the way she just moved the R: “Donner Alexandah”
The closest American speakers have to a “linking consonant” is using “a” or “an” depending on whether the following noun begins with a vowel or consonant sound. Such as “an apple” or “an honor” compared to “a day” or “a unit”.
I believe that’s a common grammatical rule among all English speakers, am I wrong? It’s just the only linking consonant I’m aware of common among American dialects.
With a glottal stop?
Sure, is there a good example on youtube to hear the difference? Anyone have suggestions, who is a good American to listen to?
A glottal stop is that pause that happens when you say “uh-oh”. Here’s Auli’i Cravalho (whose name has a glottal stop) saying some words in Hawaiian, which has plenty of glottal stops: Hawaiian Words & Phrases with Moana's Auli'i Cravalho | Teen Vogue - YouTube
For that matter, here’s how to pronounce Hawai’i, which has a glottal stop: How to pronounce hawaii - YouTube
ETA: Crap, I now realize the question was “With a glottal stop?” rather than “What’s a glottal stop?”. Oh well.
There is a big problem in some languages with pronouncing two vowels in a row without a consonant in between. This has led English to slur any adjacent vowels together, which is why almost always two adjacent vowels in English are today pronounced with a single sound or at least a diphthong, and that you’re “supposed to” (like the New Yorker) put a diaeresis over the second vowel if they’re pronounced separately. Never mind that diaeresis has three consecutive vowels pronounced as two different sounds, and has no diaeresis on any of them at Wikipedia. The vast majority of the time a diaeresis would be used in common nouns would be when you add a prefix ending in a vowel to a word beginning with a vowels, such as co-operate or re-emerge. It also occurs in proper names like Zoe. English as it is written by commoners has decided that its spelling doesn’t reflect it pronunciation very much anyway, that you need to know how each individual word is pronounced regardless, and we don’t want no diacritics never since they’re too hard to type compared to regular ol’ letters, so it’s faded away except in the most high class of publications.
Other languages have absolutely no problem with vowels butting up against each other. Japanese has basically the opposite thing going on, where two consonants next to each other is extremely rare, and only occurs in the middle of a word with the first one being an ‘n’ (also the only consonant that can end a word). And they string vowels together all the time. There’s a sumo wrestler in the top division (actually, in the second now; he was in the first for a bit though) whose ring name is “Daiamami”. The cluster of three vowels after the initial letter looks really weird to English speakers, but part of that is the Romanization process. In Japanese it’s 大奄美 Dai-ama-mi, with “Dai” being a very common prefix (meaning “big/great”) for sumo wrestlers (the other two kanji not so much). Each vowel is pronounced separately, and it isn’t all that weird when you hear it pronounced, despite looking extremely odd in Romaji. Check out - YouTube. You’ll also get to hear the the pronunciation of “Aoiyama”, which is similar but probably not as weird as the -aia- cluster in English.
Try Tagalog, where maaalaala is a legitimate word, and you are supposed to vowel distinctly - ma-a-ala-ala.