I have noticed that some British speakers of English insert an “r” in words like “vodker”, or “Canader” (for “Canada”).
A few moments ago I heard Rod Stweart sing, “You came you** sawr**, you conquered my heart.”
In “Goodbye Yellow Brick Road” Elton John says “It’ll take you a couple of **vodker ** and tonics. . . . .”
And then there are words like “drawring” for “drawing”. I would seriously advise non-Brits to have their jaw insured before attempting that one!
Another amazing fact is that I have a friend in Boston who speaks pure Bostonian who also says “vodker” and refers to her friend “Lynder” (Lynda). But I have never heard that anywhere else in the US or Canada.
Is it a class or cockney thing in Britain? I note that the Queen does not say “Canader”.
Is there a name for it in linguistics? Has anyone heard it in other English-speaking countries? Australia maybe?
I don’t know about the English, but Bostonians have left over r’s from words like cah and pahk, so the stick them on the end of words like “drawr”, as in, “Do you want be to drawr you a picture?”
It’s just an accent. I would say “Vodker”, “Canader” and “drawring”.
You can’t really seperate all British accents by class - sure there are accents associated with rich toffs and your average man on the street, but the biggest differences are from location. If it helps at all, i’m a Londoner, but not a Cockney.
To my recollection from Linguistics courses taken almost 10 years ago, the going theory is that this aspect of certain dialects results from a sort of overcorrection. At some point, people tended to see the dialects that pronounced their r’s as being somehow more standard or worthy of emulation than those dialects that did not. But in trying to be sure to pronounce all their r’s, these guys started pronouncing r’s that weren’t there. Specifically, they would insert r’s at the ends of words ending with vowels. This is because all the r’s they knew themselves not to be pronouncing in their own dialect in fact came at the ends of words after vowels. (In other words, they knew they knew there should be an r at the end of “star.”)
Supposedly, people would usually try to be the most pronounced about the “corrected” placement of an r sound when it came both before and after a vowel. Hence Picard’s “Datar and I” though he would only say “Data can speak” rather than “Datar can speak.”) Why this took place, I don’t know.
This was how this feature of the dialect got started, but as it became a feature of a dialect, it took on a life of its own independent of its origins. It just became a new way to speak the language–insert an r sound at the end of a word ending in a vowel, especially when the next word begins with a vowel.
The linguistic term for this is “rhotic” (though my professor called it “r-full”). There are also “non-rhotic” accents. Wikipedia discusses them here: Rhoticity in English - Wikipedia
I did notice that a group of kids who spent some time in the Baltimore area said “soder” for soft drinks.
For purposes of elision at word boundaries, also known as sandhi. Consonants followed by vowels present no challenge. But in many languages it’s felt to be a problem if two vowels wind up bumping together, so either they get smooshed together (as in Sanskrit) or you insert an extra consonant to separate them (as in Turkish).
The intervocalic intrusive rhotacization that you’re asking about takes the latter approach, inserting -r- between vowel sounds. Arabic, Hebrew, and French do this too, when they’ve lost the pronunciation of a final consonant, but stick a word after it in certain constructions, and the lost final consonant magically reappears!
In this case, they’re “replacing” an /r/ sound that never was. I call it hyperrhotacism.
I’m from Boston but been in Oregon for 25 years. I still say “eye deer” for idea but have lost most other aspects of my accent. I used to say “dater” for data.
The British have a heck of a lot of regional accents, and there is a ‘class thing’
Actually quite a lot of people adjust their accents and vocabulary depending on who they are talking to - ‘the telephone voice’ is an example (people often use a different accent on the 'phone)
One of the most amusing of these (at least to me) is when Brits say “brar” for an item of feminine underclothing. That always cracks me up; I think I first noticed it on Monty Python.
If you’re thinking of the Lumberjack song ("…suspenders and a bra") that was Michael Palin’s dismal attempt to sound American (or, I suppose, Canadian) - put an exaggerated “r” after every vowel and hey presto, American accent.
I don’t think we pronounce it “brar” in our native accents, do we? Unless we’re employing, ahem, Intervocalic Intrusive Rhotacization (thanks Johanna ).
Actually, I’ve noticed it among several friends after moving to university here in London. The most obvious case is a Welsh friend, but there’s a hint of the R when several other British people speak too (possibly enhanced by it being a late-night-somewhat drunk party when I first noticed it). But there are so many British accents that I suppose it’s quite possible that it’s restricted to just a few pockets.
Interesting. Can you hear the difference between “bra” and (as you call it) “brar” if someone says the word on its own? To me there is no difference, unless the word is followed by a vowel. For example, I would say (perhaps ) “Take your bra(r) off” and you’d hear the “r” sound. But if I just said “bra” then to me there is no “r” on the end. It’s more as if the “r” is attached to the vowel at the beginning of the next word. “Take your bra (r)off”.
Car. Bar. Bra. All are pronounced exactly the same to me apart from the initial consonants, but I wouldn’t say I pronounce an “r” at the end of any of them, unless there is a vowel afterwards, in which case the “r” meakes it much easier to say.
