Plenty of British newscasters seemed insistent on adding an “r” at the end of “Obama,” so that letter seems to be a universally inserted sound in English. It’s just a matter of where.
That makes plenty of sense. Thank you so much, bordelond! (I didn’t watch the video and from the reviews here, I don’t think I’m inclined to either.)
The where is in between Obama and any immediately following word that starts with a vowel. It’s just to fill up the vowel hiatus, nothing else.
[quote=“antechinus, post:26, topic:783062”]
Pronunciation of coffee. She says the “o” is pronounced “ar” as in “lar”.
[/QUOTE]No, she doesn’t pronounce any “r” in coffee. Not even a hint of the sound. I suspect you pronounce “car” as “cah”, and so you’re hearing YOUR version of an “r” sound where there isn’t any. So how do you differentiate between “fa” and “far”? Do they sound the same to you? Is your “r” sound simply the absence of a sound?
And as a former New Yorker, I have never heard an “r” in coffee.
Oh, and the “warsh” thing is from St. Louis, through the southern parts of Illinois, Indiana, Ohio and Pennsylvania.
Not even on a bad day.
Not even if it’s a pickup.
Wa-ush the car?
Yes.
Warsh it?
Hmmm. No.
We’ll add extra syllables, but we’re more likely to drop an R than add it.
They must be using all of the "r"s scorned by New Englanders.
I don’t know why I didn’t pick up on this before, but in what alternate dimension does the US “R” sound originate down the throat? Even if I do the exaggerated RRRRRR at the end of a sentence like Kevin Cronin does, it’s all in the tongue, not the throat.
Am I the only one who thinks that her “American R” doesn’t even sound that American? Why is she exaggerating it so much? I’m assuming she can pronounce words that begin with an /r/ sound without vomiting.
‘aw’ and ‘or’ are the same sound.
Is this a whoosh, or are you actually serious? Does the letter “r” literally have no sound at all to you?
Only in certain dialects.
Now I’m imagining Elmer Fudd eating an awange.
This would explain how New York cauwfee got an R in it.
That is correct. Say hello to non-rhotic dialects, where no /r/ sound can be syllable-final.
Non-rhotic English abounds in most of England (and growing), all of Wales, and coastal areas in the northern US from Maine to New Jersey and in the coastal South from South Carolina to Louisiana (currently shrinking). Also Australian and New Zealand English and various other world Englishes in former British colonies.
The rhotic lands are Scotland, Ireland, the Isle of Man, Canada, and the United States apart from the 2 coastal non-rhotic areas. Texas, please note, although Southern, is rhotic, one of its distinguishing features.
Sometimes, although it isn’t pronounced, the phantom of the final -r that used to be there affects the sound of the preceding vowel. The ğ in Turkish works the same way. It hasn’t been pronounced in over a century or more, but its presence affects how the vowels around it sound. This is how they stuck phantom rs into Sadé and Myanmɑː – making rhotic populations go around speaking of “Sharday” and “Myanmar”.
But the flip side of that is that people with non-rhotic dialects hear an “r” where none exists? Like in “coffee”?
Yes. I.e corffee or carffee
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Yes. As i said, it’s all a matter of perspective.
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No.There is no similarity between “aw” or “ah” and"or" or “ar”, and she doesn’t claim there is.
That… could be one way to put it. In terms of phonology, it’s what I described above, how the ghost of the former [r] still haunts the vowel it left bereft when it departed. The vowel wears an r-colored shirt in memory of its late companion. By that I mean the vowel takes on the sound it used to have when the r was pronounced next to it (“r-coloring”).
In English in both Britain and America, the sound of o before r is lax and rounded: [ɔ]. For an Englishman to hear that particular vowel in coffee, it will awaken in his mind the association of that sound with the (ghost of) /r/.
I never understood how, in rural Ohio, “Cora” is pronounced “Cory” and “Naomi” is “Naoma”.
I used to marvel at how in American Naomi became pronounced as Naiomi, with the vowels of Nairobi. I think I know why that is.
At first we were used to hearing the usual English pronunciation [neɪˈoʊmiː]. At some point we began to feel it should be pronounced with a more European quality of the letter a, like “ah.” But then when we pulled out the [e] to replace it with [a], the diphthongal [ɪ] glide became separated and was left in the name. When combined with the new [a] sound, we got [naɪˈoʊmiː] sounding like Nairobi.
I think the, again, vowel hiatus between [a] and [oʊ] would have felt like it needed to be filled in, and the [ɪ] glide was already conveniently there. So it got to keep its job when the [e] was laid off.