(North) American vs UK accents: does word-final /r/ really sound this different?

In My Humble Opinion
61

  1. This video—if it is meant to be serious advice at all for someone trying to learn an accent—is terrible. It won’t help anyone produce a more authentic-sounding American accent.

  2. This video—if it truly reflects the views of British people trying to learn American accents—also explains in part a lot of bad American accents by British actors going way overboard on their Rs.

  3. This video is a very bad way of explaining the difference between rhotic and non-rhotic accents, largely because it take the position that the absence of an R sound is a type of R sound.

Like others in this threat, I have never heard an American accent with R sounds in these words. Please explain.

Yes, it is pretty common in some English-English accents for word-final R to be pronounced when it links two vowel sounds. In fact, this linking-function often happens even when there is no R there, and in that case it’s called an “intrusive R.” The intrusive R can become to ingrained that some people will deny they’re doing it, even if it is perfectly clear.

Only for people with an attitude problem concerning IPA. The IPA has clear one-sound-to-one-symbol correspondence, and it avoids statements like these, which will make half your audience think you’re out of your mind:

62

Also classic Pennsylvania and “Merlin” English, I understand.

(Merlin=where they live in Ballmer and root for the Oreos)

Sent from my SM-G900P using Tapatalk

63

Is it a simple lengthening of the vowel sound, as pronounced in some American dialects? I’ve seen dictionaries favoring Received Pronunciation that “pronounce” syllable-final /r/ in just that way.

For example: the pronunciation of “are” is given as a:. So if a BBC-accented Londoner hears extra vowel lengthening in another dialect, might that not sound to them like intrusive /r/?

Sent from my SM-G900P using Tapatalk

64

Syllable final /r/ is pronounced farther back in the throat in AmE. I never thought about it before sering the video and reading all the replies here, but it does seem accurate to me, now. I don’t believe this applies to initial /r/, however.

Sent from my SM-G900P using Tapatalk

65

My grandparents, on both sides, said “warsh,” “errl,” and “thar” (for “there”). They had accents/word pronounciations typical of older Utahans, especially those from Southern Utah – there are many fascinating sites about the unique accents of Utah.

My maternal grandmother’s parents were from Amsterdam and she grew up in a Dutch-speaking home. Often, when I hear Dutch speakers speaking English, I hear some of grandma’s pronounciations.

When I first moved to New Jersey it took me a while to get used to hearing “worder” for “water” :smiley:

66

No, it isn’t. The final R is all in the tongue. If you try to form the sound back in the throat it won’t sound at all the same. If I switch back and forth between uhhhhh and rrrrrrr the only thing that moves is the tongue.

67

You’re in the ballpark – see post #35 of this thread for more detail – though it’s not merely lengthening that’s happening. The “short a/flat a” diphthongizes in some words in many American dialects, including my own.

Consistency of this diphthongization is another matter. In the local dialect (and in a lot, but not all, of the U.S.), “bath” and “math” are pronounced with different vowels: in IPA, [beəθ] and [mæθ] respectively. Similarly “path” [pʰeəθ] vs “wrath” [ɹæθ].

Note that in my post you quoted, I took care to specify that from the perspective of an American English-speaking listener, no /r/ would be present in “bath” or “past”.

68

It feels more like someone who always, always, always has tea with their crumpets. Always. And then one sees a plate of crumpets and insists that there must be a cup of tea (because that’s how crumpets always arrive) despite photographic evidence to the contrary.

But back to the other point - people who say “r” in the back of their throat - what part of the US are you from?

69

Clearly this video isn’t meant to be serious.

In RP, they are, at least qualitatively. There’s a P.G. Wodehouse story in which Bertie, talking to a former headmaster, says something like, “No wonder you’re sore” (angry). The HM is unfamiliar with that usage and asks “Saw whom?”.
Can the IPA truly capture all the variations of liquid sounds (/r/ and /l/)?

70

That’s not clear at all. It’s clearly meant to be humorous, in part, but the rest of it seems to constitute advice meant to be instructive.

I know that, but that’s not the point. The point is that most of your audience will not know what you’re talking about, which is why whenever there’s a thread about pronunciation on this board, half the posts are confusing to about half of the participants and the other half are confusing to the other half.

It depends on how granular you want to be. If your purpose is to notate exactly the sound any individual is actually making, that might be impossible, because in truth no two people speak exactly the same way. If your purpose is to notate distinctions among variations of the /r/ and /l/ phonemes, you can certainly do that, but for the most part in a forum like this, you won’t need to make such fine distinctions.

Generally, you can get by with knowing just a handful of variants. Here are the most common, but you will rarely need to know more than a few of them:

[r] for the alveolar trill
[ɹ] for the post alveolar approximant most common in American and British English
[ɻ] for the retroflex approximant
[ɾ] for the alveolar tap or flap
[ʀ] for the uvular trill
[χ] for the voiceless uvular fricative
[ʁ] for the voiced uvular fricative

And for the kind of very general discussions we have here, you can usually just use [r] for all of them.

Similarly, you can get very general or very specific for the laterals:

[l] for the alveolar lateral approximant
[ɫ] for the velarized alveolar lateral approximant
[ɬ] for the voiceless alveolar lateral fricative

Again, you will rarely need to know all these, but Wikipedia, for example, lists about 30 different IPA notations for various kinds of lateral consonants — Lateral consonant - Wikipedia

For the most part, for the purposes of the SDMB, the vast majority of posters can get away with knowing just [r] and [l] and maybe if a topic gets very detailed, they might want to be able to use about two more Ls and two more Rs, but that would be an unusually high-level discussion about pronunciation.

What Dopers in general could really stand to learn are the eight primary cardinal vowels [i e ɛ a ɑ ɔ o u], two of the 10 secondary cardinal vowels [ɒ ʌ], plus [æ], and the associated dipthongs. Just that would make all the “how do you say that in your accent” discussions so much more smooth.

71

It really makes one appreciate the struggles of ESL speakers. In one part of the country, you might hear “berl him in erl!” while in another part, the sounds swap, where you might hear the bad karaoke “The boid, the boid, the boid is the woid”.

I have still not figured out how some Brits and Strayans have managed to turn “no” into a three syllable word. I tried to pronounce it that way and sprained my tongue.

72

Why just ESL speakers? Almost every language I’ve heard being spoken is subject to a wide variation in pronunciations by native speakers.

73

Well, it is a good point. But I have spoken English all my life, so it can be hard for me to identify with those people who have difficulty with it. I mean, it is the normal language, all those other ones are just messed up.

74

[quote=“antechinus, post:26, topic:783062”]

What to one is “a” is to another “ar”. What to one is “a” is to another “ah”. It’s just a matter of perspective.

Pronunciation of coffee. She says the “o” is pronounced “ar” as in “lar”.

[/QUOTE]

Is there a difference between the sound “aw” makes and the sound “ar” makes to you?

75

The idea that IPA would clear things up is based on the premise that the person speaking is willing and able to learn it. This is probably one of the worst situations to try and teach it, since British English realizes the /r/ phoneme differently. If someone can’t figure out that Americans say /aw/ and /ar/ differently, they probably aren’t going to figure out how to represent what they are saying in IPA.

As for the video, no. The American final /r/ is not made in the back of the throat. It can be made by the middle of the tongue or the front, which raises and colors the vowel. The mouth is not as closed as it is for the syllable initial /r/.

I’ve heard two British initial /r/s before: the front of the tongue up method, and a labiodental approximate, sorta like /v/. The tongue may also be raised a bit for that. To a lot of people, it sounds like /w/.

The IPA I’ve used in this are pretty easy to understand. They are the phonemes usually represented by those letters in English. I specifically avoided the fancy symbols that cause more confusion.

76

The thing about IPA is that for those of us who don’t know it, it’s as much a foreign writing system as Pinyin or Cyrillic, and those who use is are just as annoying as posters conversing in a foreign language.

Also, the American “r” is not pronounced in the back of the throat; those of us who can speak Hebrew or Arabic know exactly what a back-or-the-throat “r” sounds like, and it’s not that.

77

Thesis: “You should learn IPA because it will make discussions about pronunciation much easier.”

Response: “I don’t understand IPA because I haven’t learned it.”

Can you guess what my response is?

IPA is easy to learn. It will take a small amount of effort. In exchange for that effort, it will vastly improve your ability to participate in discussions about pronunciation.

78

מצטער, אבל לי זה דווקא נראה די קשה.

79

Make the case that my assertion that learning how to use IPA in order to participate in discussion on English pronunciation has the same cost-benefit calculation as my having to learn not only he to read the Hebrew script but also having to learn the Hebrew language in order to read that sentence.

In fact it’s probably possible to learn basic IPA simply from reading all the DMDB posts over the years by IPA users. Can you say that about Hebrew?

80

Did you, personally, learn IPA in order to take part in online discussions on English pronunciation?