English Variations: Rhotic vs. Non-Rhotic
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?
I pronounce every letter I see, unless it's opposum and pnemonia. (I even say the O and P to ensure I spell them properly...did they work?)
Interesting to know there's a word for the difference, and nice to know it doesn't paint southerners as total ninnys with below 100IQ points as standard.
You're right of course that in ths country people with southern accents are treated like they're stupid. Same for lots of other accents. It's extremely common in all languages: certain dialects, accents, and ways of speaking are considered a mark of stupidity. It's one thing speakers of AAVE have in common with most rural southerners (one of many things).
Now when my mother comes to visit, I subconsciously revert back to my Georgia accent (my mom's accent is so strong it's funny sometimes). I'll pay attention this weekend to see how our R's are handled since she's coming down for my daughter's birthday.
Very interesting post, Dean. Thanks.
Actually you can tell it fast enougH: just ask them how to pronounce their home state.
This may be a silly question, but do linguists use "Alphatic", "Betatic", "Gammatic", "Deltatic" ... to differentiate the swallowing of other letters? Or am I overgeneralizing?
Now, the word 'pie' for me is pronounced 'pah'. That with a few others are words I cannot, regardless of how hard I try, not put an accent on. I wonder what terminology that falls under?
Yeah, well in Texas you deal with other things. I don't know if you've ever dealt with it, but I have to use a Castillan TH when I say 's' in Spanish. If I don't I get the 'gringa speaking spanish' look. As soon as a hispanic or Mexican hears the TH they don't look at me like I'm an anomoly, and Angla that can understand them. I suddenly get the 'OLD COUNTRY' look, and they're more likely to listen and help me when I need it. Hey, if I gotta play up to their sterotype to get my tasks accomplished, th, Th, THat's fine with me. :)
How about T's? I also noticed that Brits have a strong T (liTTle, wriTTen) as opposed to lit'le and writ'en pronounciation used in much of the US. I always figured that strong T went with weak R and vice versa.
Though there must be something distinctive about my accent: more than once over the years, traveling around the country, I've met people who identified me, simply by the way I speak, as being from the Madison area.
Note that the syllable-initial (or vowel-preceding) r, which as you rightly noted is pronounced in all dialects of English, is a separate sound from the syllable-final one. The latter is arguably a vowel in its own right, and clearly is in some contexts. In the second syllable of water, for example, we may think we're pronouncing three sounds, (a t a schwa and an r) but we're not. Rather, we're pronouncing only two sounds, an initial t and a sound linguists sometimes call an r-colored schwa, often transcribed as a schwa with an r-like outgrowth in the upper right hand corner. Or in this case, by an upside-down r. So in this instance, the only real difference between the rhotic and non-rhotic dialects is which vowel sound we pronounce when all falsely imagine we are pronouncing an r consonant.
Even where the r (or schwa-r, or upside down r) is preceded by a different vowel, the non-rhotics don't ignore it altogether. Rather, they pronounce the preceding vowel different because of the silent r than they would if it weren't there. If, for example, there were no r in "park" and "car," New Englanders would "pack" their "cazz" rather than "pahking" their "cahs," and the Brits would get crapped on by "bids" flying overhead rather than by "buhds."
So while the non-rhotics don't actually pronounce the r itself, they certainly take it into account when deciding how to pronounce what surrounds it. That's why I suspect they if they self-administer their test, they'll falsely conclude they are pronounced all the rs after all.
Born in Kennewick, WA, and raised in Monmouth, OR, I must have what sounds to you back East like a weird Pacific North-Western accent. E.g., we pronounce Oregon "Ore-gun" (as in we respect the Second Amendment) while Easterners often pronounce it "Ore-gone" (as in "begone!") Yes, I'm completely rhotic. I pronounce "North" as "North", "rhotic" as "rotic", "There has to be a start*" as "There has to be a start". (*i.e., a God, a First Cause -- a Conservative friend of mine once put it that way refuting Communism.)
Non-rhotic dialects have always been presented to me as alien in different ways in cartoons and such.
There was the "highbrow" accent of the English lord and his emulators ("Veddy good, old chahp. Now, be so good as to bring the cahhh around so we can take a drahve in the countrih.")
There was the "lowbrow" accent of the South-Eastern "hillbilly" ("Ah done gone an' heerd thet ol' Jimmuh done gone got hisse'f a Vahce-Prez'denshul candit name Airdayy-ul." "Nahh, a Airdayy-ul's a dawg." "Ever knowed a lab'ra thet wuhhzn't?")
There was the exotic, sinister accent of the Oriental ("Pow-ah frows from the ballul of a gun! Be-well of the Yerrow Pellil!")
And then there was this dialogue between Professor Willmoore Kendall and the Negro janitor who was cleaning his room in the early 1950s:
"Professah, is it true -- is it true dat -- dat dere's people in New Yo'k who want to -- to destroy de guvamint of de United States?"
"Yes, Oliver, that is true."
"Den -- den why don't we jus' -- lock 'em up?"
There was more wisdom in that Negro janitor, said Willmoore Kendall, than in all those other political science professors and civil libertarians he had been arguing with.
Of course, those are all strange stereotypes drawn from cartoons and such, and I doubt that that many people of those nationalities really talk that way. There are also what might be called "hyper-rhotic" dialects. I remember that old commercial: "Rrrrruffles have rrrrrrrridges!" Rrrrand often spoke of Rrrrussia zat way. Peikoff loves to pronounce his ssssibilantssss at times, as, e.g., when he mentioned the case of the man who:
"....went to Safeway, bought a quart of milk, went home, had a stroke!, and -- ssssued Ssssafeway for sssselling milk that had FAT in it!"
And then there is that "lithp" with which "thome Thpaniards thpeak". Male "homothexualth" are "thtill thtereotyped ath thpeaking that irritating way" -- "ath wath" that other minority in the 19th and early 20th centuries. In one of G. K. Chesterton's stories, a character remarked: "There'th a lot of prejudith againth my raithe." Sorry to frighten you again with those Ominous Parallels, but I can't help noticing it.
And there there are the many nations who do not pronounce "th" at all. Zey say "sat", "zat", or "dat" instead. "Sh" was also exchewed in some languages, such that the ancient Hebrews of the Old Testament invented the "shibboleth" to discriminate between themselves and their surrounding enemies, who pronounce it "sssibboleth" or "sssibboless".
I make fun of the way I talk, too. I notice that, when I'm in either a hilarious or an angry and contemptuous mood, I tend to exaggerate my vowwwels. When I'm in a sexy mood, I tend to exaggerate certain ccckkonsonanntts. Much of the time, in conversation with others, I often sound like "Mumbles", a criminal adversary of Dick Tracy.
We all talk funny, I guess. The Tower of Babel?
-H. L. "Bill" Richardson, Slightly To The Right! (1965)
I must mention that I have an old book on foreign dialects, mainly for the stage. I'll have to re-read it.
They say that men and women talk differently, too. I have often thought that certain words in our language sound intrinsically masculine while others sound intrinsically feminine, juat from the sounds of those words. Perhaps that's why French and other languages assign "gender" to certain nouns.
The pronunciation of "nuclear" has become a shibboleth for many of our "intelligencia*" today. (*Bishop Fulton J. Sheen once defined "intelligentsia" accurately as "those who have been educated beyond their intelligence.") They treat it as tantamount to an impeachable offence that President Bush pronounces it "nucular". The real point, however, always missed, is that Bush has done more than any of his current Democratic opponents to prevent our terrorist enemies from detonating either a "nuclear" or a "nucular" bomb over one of our cities. The "
Walter DurantyNew Yawk Times" wouldn't be around to be printing anti-Bush or anti-American propaganda if, under a Kerry Presidency, New York City was blown up by a "nucleah" bomb.Dean, is there a name for that one?
If you want to learn more about it I suggest picking up a book on basic linguistics, one that examines the many different tongues that go by the name "English." Despite what they told you in "English" class, there is no one "proper" English.
Rhianna: The "th" for "s" in Spanish may be a pretty close cousin to the rhotic vs. non-rhotic distinction in English. In any case, it's fairly obvious why you get treated with more respect when you speak this way: you're white. You thus face racial prejudice whenever you speak Spanish here in the Americas. However, if you use the lisping "th" you sound like an old-country Spaniard and somewhat aristocratic. Since many Spaniards are as white as Englishmen, Spanish speakers subconsciously cease to see you as a hated white American and instead more as a mildly aristocratic Spaniard--and thus more "in the club" and not so much a gringo. (And they say white people never face racial discrimination--pah!)
XRLQ: I never proposed it as a scientific test. Self-tests rarely are scientific. However, a person who's self-aware enough and observant enough will probably be able to tell in fairly short order which category they or their family and friends generally fall into.
I don't disagree with anything else you said, it all looks pretty accurate to me.
McKiernan: Yes, some non-rhotic speakers will have the "r" pop back in at unexpected places. A common one is after mid-word "w"s, so for example they might refer to a "drawring" instead of a "drawing." Or at the end of some words ending in vowels, like "Florider" instead of "Florida." However, in most places that's considered casual, informal, or improper. Cultivated speakers don't do it, or strive to break the habit.
Cynical: More likely you're just from an area of the south where it's disappearing; there are other areas where it's still quite alive and well. I've heard it myself travelling in the south in recent years, such as in tidwater Virginia. Funny thing is, I really don't hear the non-rhotic southern drawl that often in Hollywood these days much.... or I haven't noticed. I'll have to look for it.
Steven: Yes, in America we tend to assign character traits to non-rhotic speakers, although it goes all over the map. Mostly we seem to associate it either with being illiterate or with being high-class. Not much in between it seems.
Actually, I do tend toward mirror-speaking; over the course of a conversation, my speech will tend to pick up little bits from my conversational partner. It quickly goes away in absence of the accent; my default acccent is a lazy broadcaster. IOW, I have been educated in good diction, and when I am acting or speaking in public it becomes very precise and clear, but when I'm just talking I slur a bit, stutter a little, use pause fillers (you know) and mumble the ends of words.
Oh, and if you're wondering, it's soda.
A lot of us who grew up like that have seem to have a tendency to mirror whoever we're talking to.
"Born in Kennewick, WA, and raised in Monmouth, OR, I must have what sounds to you back East like a weird Pacific North-Western accent."
To us, it's pop. And we used to play by the "crick".
Here's another type of Englishman:
"If the blarsted rites keep goin' up, I'll be in the work-house m'self, mite!"
I like this kind od New Yorker:
"Da noive o' dat guy!"
"Yes, some non-rhotic speakers will have the "r" pop back in at unexpected places. A common one is after mid-word "w"s, so for example they might refer to a "drawring" instead of a "drawing.""
Archie Bunker spoke of "lawr an' order".
I once invented a character (Mr. Aykermeyer, an old friend of Mr. Bricker, who reminds me of Arnold Harris) who likes to speak of 'conservratism".
Dean wrote:
"Steven: Yes, in America we tend to assign character traits to non-rhotic speakers, although it goes all over the map. Mostly we seem to associate it either with being illiterate or with being high-class. Not much in between it seems."
True. And yet some of the smartest people I have known spoke in that Southern (South-Eastern) dialect, and some of the stupidest people have spoken with a phony British accent.
I often tend to imitate the speech of interesting characters that I read about or people such as Peikoff that I listen to. All of our speech to begin with involves imitating the speech of our parents, so I guess that shouldn't be too surprising.
The Castiallian "th" does not cause any two separate sounds to get folded into one, so at most it should be considered a mere dialectal variation, not a lisp. In fact, contrary to Rhianna's post, it doesn't even replace the "s" sound completely, as it attaches only to the letters c and z, and not to s, which Castillian speakers pronounce roughly like the English "sh." By contrast, all three letters are pronounced indistinguishably as a soft s in most other dialects of Spanish, including Mexico and other parts of Latin America, so if anyone has a lisp, it's the non-Castillians, who fail to distinguish the c/z sound from the s.
The ultimate in making fun of the way foreigners talk is this:
"Bar-bar! Bar-bar!"
That's what Hellenes thought people sounded like who didn't speak Greek.
You are correct most Castillan speakers don't use the "th" to substitute the "s" sound. However, if you're 5'11", Blonde haired, greenish-grey eyed, and white skinned in South Texas, using a "th" versus the true Castillan "s" is but one way to avoid the constant desire of some of your fellow Texans to degrade us. You may disagree with my usage of it, but I assure you it is worth doing in my case.