In the song Wouldn’t It Be Loverly? in My Fair Lady, why is it “loverly”? Is it because the people of Eliza’s social class say it that way? Or is it because “er” can be pronounced “eh” or “uh” and it’s there to indicate another syllable? That is, is it intended to be pronounced “love-e-ly” instead of “lover-ly”?
it’s how a cockney would say it.
but mainly, it make it fit in the song.
It’s common in some southern English (non-RP) accents for an intrusive R to appear where there isn’t any. It happens when a word ends in a vowel and the following word starts in “aw”, “ah” or “eh”.
Bizarrely, in the same accents it’s also common for Rs to vanish where they should be. Wish they’d make their minds up.
Examples would be “Lawr 'n Order” and just about any word that ends in “er”.
“Lovely” actually fits in song better than “loverly”. So it was put in there to fit the character and the essence of the film’s plot.
But would a Cockney pronounce the R as strongly as that? Is Eliza’s accent, as spoken by Julie Andrews, Marnie Nixon, or Audrey Hepburn, none of whom are Cockneys, reasonably accurate or is it cartoonish? And what about “garn,” pronounced exactly that way by thousands of American Elizas? Is that an accurate transcription?
I ask because Shaw made Higgins a linguist who was transcribing phonetically so I figure accuracy is important, though a linguist often hears with his own pronounciations and prejudices.
As Futile says, the intrusive R occurs between two vowels - thus “America is” becomes “Americar is”.
When I did speech classes, I was taught to get rid of it.
However, in the case of Liza Doolittle, I don’t believe the “R” is being pronounced.
I hear it sung as: “luv-uh-lee”. This is for scansion or is “mockney”, and there is actually no R sound.
This is how it sounded to me as well.
And what about “garn” … Is that an accurate transcription?
No. It’s commonly written that way, but it’s a condensation of “Go on” (=“you’re taking the mickey”), pronounced somewhere between “Gah-awn” or “Gow-awn”.
Condensation?
Anyone else wondered what the deal with Celine Dion’s pronouncing the word “love” as if it contains an r is?
Luv-lee Jub-lee!
<Woody Allen>
Love is too weak a word for what I feel – I luuurve you, you know, I loave you, I luff you, two F’s
<Woody Allen>
Love is too weak a word for what I feel – I luuurve you, you know, I loave you, I luff you, two F’s