English Variations: Rhotic vs. Non-Rhotic
by Dean
Have you ever heard the terms "rhotic" and "non-rhotic?" They're fairly obscure linguistic terms that probably ought to be better known, because they describe the two largest and most common variations of the family of languages known as "English." The funny thing being, almost everyone speaks one or the other, but almost everyone has heard the other variation. Yet most people don't have a word for it. Funny huh?
In rhotic variations of English, the letter "r" is almost always prounounced in a hard and distinct fashion. This is the most common variant found in Canada and the United States, although there are regions in each where it isn't so.
In non-rhotic variations of English, the rule is that the letter "r" is not pronounced unless it is immediately followed by a vowel. Non-rhotic variations are the most common in the UK, New Zealand, and Australia. There are some exceptions; the Scots, for example, mostly speak rhotically.
Do you speak rhotically or non-rhotically? Here's a simple test. Say this sentence out loud:
I got into my car, drove to the store, and bought some bottled water and some watery ice.
If you are a rhotic speaker, you fully pronounced the letter "r" in every word it appeared in. If you're a non-rhotic speaker, you probably did not prounounce the "r" in "car," "store," or "water," but you did pronounce it on "drove" and "watery."
It gets a bit blurry only because in some variations, the rule changes if a word ends in "r" and the next word starts with a vowel. For example:
I got into my car and drove to the store.Some non-rhotic speakers pronounce the "r" in car here because it's followed by the vowel in "and." But others won't. You'll pretty consistently do it one way or the other, though, depending upon your dialect. Either way, the "r" in "store" probably won't be there.
It's pretty funny where the non-rhotic way of speaking pops up. Americans pretty instinctively associate non-rhotic speaking with the English and the Aussies, but you also hear it in parts of Mississippi, Alabama, Georgia, the Carolinas, and all along parts of the northeastern seaboard from New York up into Maine.
Around New York City, people from the Bronx and Long Island are usually non-rhotive, but from places like Manhattan they're rhotive. Also, most--not all but most--variants of African American Vernacular English are non-rhotic.
Here's one of my favorite cartoon characters, Foghorn Leghorn:
Fortunately I keep my feathers numbered for just such an emergency.
That's a Georgia accent in the best southern gentlemanly tradition!
If you're a rhotic speaker it just means you always say your Rs, and if you're a non-rhotic speaker, you skip it a lot, especially if a consonant comes after it.
Of course what you do with the "r" tends to vary. I believe most Englishmen would say: "I drove to the staww." Someone from Boston would probably say "I drove to th' sto-ah." A black cat from the south side of Chicago would probably say "I drove to de stow."
And so on and so forth. Cool huh?
