English actors get this WRONG when they do American accents

[@DrGeoffLindsey]

This video has been kindly sponsored by the browser Opera. You can download Opera for FREE from my link: opr.as/Opera-browser-Dr-Geoff-Lindsey

[@catmacopter8545]

For any of y'all wondering, opera is based on chromium so google still tracks you. Also search "opera predatory loans"

[@sigil5772]

Surely "Operer"

[@Seapatico]

I wonder if you could do a video on how the pronunciation of the word "women" is being, rather quickly, changed to "woman"? I have started to hear it a lot in the last few years, and I'm assuming it has something to do with the pronunciation of the O in "women" being rather odd, and with words being written into AI and speaking programs, maybe that strange pronunciation is being worn away? Curious your thoughts

[@mrkiplingreallywasanexceed8311]

OMG Geoff - the BBC spelling Gibraltar without the final "r" is absolutely mortifying. I know that's not really the point of today's video, but there is now virtually no day at all - from 365 in a year - in which I don't see a spelling error. I don't refer to, say, others' Comments on various KZbin channels - or messages sent by friends/colleagues via SMS/Wattsapp and the like. I'm talking about the places where once it would have been inconceivable to have found one - the so-called "reputable" sources like the BBC website for starters - but during the past few weeks alone I also recall being very surprised to find them variously on those of the Royal Family, the Government, Audi UK, Sainsbury's, Omega, Tate&Lyle, Wedgewood, The Telegraph and Farrow&Ball - and this is merely what I can recall off the bat as I write this, otherwise there would be many others. Even someone like yourself, an expert whose stock in trade is words, I could easily imagine shrugging and suggesting it'd prolly be better to calm tf down 😏 Yet I implore, if not you, then the Universe, to hear my pain at what I feel is a symptom of an insidious - but pernicious - phenomenon. What started as an outbreak about 25 years ago progressed, slowly at first, to an epidemic, ballooned to a pandemic - and is now endemic to the extent that leads me to make the above assumption (ie what am I worrying about?) even of a language professor! I have found as the years go by, greater and greater wisdom in every single one of the various proverbs, sayings and epithets with which we were all brought up.... Buy cheap, buy twice Look after the pennies and the pounds look.. Treat people how you wish to be treated.../leave the place how you'd want to find it... Once bitten, twice shy Neither a borrower, nor a lender, be. You get the drift. Thus I find no reason to doubt "the devil's in the detail" Well, quite. If the above mentioned organisation s are either unable to get those things right - or can't even be bothered to check - or have checked - what appears in their respective Corporate shop windows, what HOPE is there that one might reasonably expect to procure well-made stuff and/or good service from the staff? It genuinely offends me; puts me off dealing with the institutions/companies involved and causes me real concern that the basic forces which glue complex societies (like cities - or countries) together, are disintegrating and that, by the year 2124, it'll have all just reverted to a "Mad Max-" or "Brazil"-esque dystopia where the very last doctors have all been dead for 20 years, no one's running the government, so you can ride around drunk, at 11 years old, in a fire-breathing jalopy with no MOT (or brakes - I have developed an actual allergy to seeing "breaks") doing drive-by shootings with total impunity. The flat earthers, Christian and Muslim fundamentalists and conspiracy theorists will have won. If you think I am catastrophising - or even merely exaggerating - well I don't think I am, entirely. Phoning Barclaycard - or EDF Energy or the Post Office - these days it really doesn't matter who it is, it is a nightmare. The (almost inevitably south east Asian) customer service (ha!) representative has been SOOOO highly inculcated to be so overweeningly polite, they're now too busy grovelling a thousand times how they can help you to begin even listening to you. They parrot what you've just said to them - except their training manager has just taught them to do that with no understanding of why : to check comprehension and to empathise. I find myself having to raise my voice over and above their apologies when, for the fifth time, I have asked them to please stop being so excruciatingly polite for long enough so they can hear what I'm asking. What used to be merely a somewhat workaday, slightly tedious call, is more than half the time, a disturbing ordeal where you start to doubt your own sanity. Having formerly and for a long time, been in retail management myself, I am aware of what it's like to be on the receiving end and therefore go at it from that perspective: quietly, patiently, respectfully and with the understanding of precisely what it's like to be understaffed, underpaid and overworked. You won't find me railing at some hapless worker if you input "Karen" on KZbin. Yet the other day, someone in Tesco actually walked away while I was talking to them! These are all examples of the same, overarching factor - erosion of standards - of which spelling, surely, is the most fundamental? Yes, I am aware language - including spelling - isn't ossified. However, I think it's also a bit of a cop out just to cite that. Indeed Chaucer and Shakespeare, through Dafoe, via Dr Johnson, to Austen and Dickens - to HG Wells - right up to EM Forster and PG Wodehouse (both of whom, despite living till the 1970s, easily had memories of Queen Victoria) were all writing at a time when strictly standard spelling didn't exist. Salman Rushdie and even JK Rowling are comfortably old enough to have been through childhood, completed their education and got careers underway before anyone had heard about computers let alone the internet. Of course there was going to be a lot of development with so many people going at it from so many angles, for so long. That's all gone now however - no one (at least not in the developed world) could countenance life before 24 hour interconnectivity - any more than you or I could really imagine writing on clay tablets - or having to cut our own quills. Dictionaries are on-line and anyway, there's spell check. Yes, we'll get new words, undoubtedly - I'm still acclimatising to "bling". As for pre-existing words though, I just can't see how they can change nowadays? In short, any variation from standard, is wrong. I heard something interesting the other day - that there's no such thing as human error. Only people inadequately prioritising. If you REALLY think hard about that, it's right, isn't it? Spinning those final two points - one micro (spelling) and one macro (prioritising) - and all wrapped in "woke", where everyone's opinions are equally valid, where valuing self is king, where no one's stupid, thick or just wrong, you get terminal decay. No, I'm not advocating for bringing back class humiliation, corporal punishment and staying behind after school - and yes, I know every generation bemoans the lowering of standards - yet I truly feel this is different and that society already feels like Alice in Wonderland, except we're having the Mad Hatter's tea party ON the tablecloth, UNDERNEATH the table, and that the March Hare just has to swipe it away and we're all doomed to fall into an even trippier dimension than we're in now!!😂 My tongue is half in my cheek of course - but for the part that isn't, I'd be fascinated to understand any slivers of simple sagacity which may have occurred to you in the course of your travels that you might be willing to pass on and, hopefully, reassure!😏

[@sunyavadin]

Watching the whole video in bafflement as literally every example that comes up, my local English dialect uses a glottal stop for, just sitting here like, "Yes, the Germans get it!" XD

[@findmeinthefuture.]

The funny thing is that, as an American, if a non-American actor gets something "wrong" with their American accent, I hardly ever notice it, because I just assume there's some regional American accent that has that quirk. I've heard a lot of weird accent idiosyncrasies from actual fellow Americans, so almost nothing would surprise me.

[@riz94107]

This, and me too. I always thought of Gary Oldman as having pretty good American chops (the first movie I saw him in the 80s, I assumed he WAS American), but I've been noticing his slips more and more.

[@7poppiesist]

I've always thought that gives British actors doing an American accent a bit of an advantage over the reverse scenario. If an American actor is doing a style of speech that doesn't have ALL the features of a specific regional variety of British English, or has a mix of features from different varieties that wouldn't mix, it seems to become immediately apparent to most British viewers/listeners. However, a British actor doing something VAGUELY North American can sometimes have it come across slightly odd, but I usually can't put my finger on it and generally assume it's one of the many very rare N.A. varieties I'm unfamiliar with, or even that it's just an individual quirk of the character, and don't think too much about it.

[@phtown]

It never bothered me that Oldman's Jim Gordan says "carm down" because I just assumed there must be some neighborhood in Queens or something where people say that.

[@LeighMerrydayPorch]

Agreed. Other than obviously bad attempts, I don't hear the mistakes English actors make. I'm often shocked when an actor is interviewed, and I realize they're English. I'd guess most Americans are the same. But even I can usually hear a bad attempt by an American to speak with an English accent. We fail harder. lol

[@JeffreyGroves]

Americans are very used to hearing linking Rs because many of the big news and media companies are based in New York, so during national broadcasts we hear linking Rs all the time. An example: Many of the MTV VJs in the 80s were from New York where MTV was broadcast from. As a result, everyone nationwide heard the linking Rs regularly while watching MTV. Most of us didn't know why they sounded like that, but we accepted it as just another quirky North American accent.

[@marceloconceicao2587]

Vanilla Rice will never not be funny to me

[@kcsupermom51]

😅🤣😅

[@tookitogo]

So the song is actually “Rice, Rice, Baby” by Rice Pudding? 😂

[@kittycatcrunchie]

Its not exactly this rip lmao vanillar ice, its added to liase the words, like in french with dans une becoming danzune

[@The-KP]

You might be happy to learn there is a product called 'Vanilla Rice Dream' !

[@Sonny_McMacsson]

He took his dementor advisors' advice and became another soulless pop performer.

[@GippyHappy]

How to sound British: Take out some of the R’s and then put them back, but not where you found them.

[@rojax_thevoicetm2385]

That’s pretty much it lol

[@skinnyyoungjiggy4471]

you mean English lol. we don't do the R thing in Scotland

[@GippyHappy]

I just want you to now, and I say this in the most sincere way possible, no American has ever said "Britain" and been referring to Scotland. It's like when I said "American" you knew I wasn't talking about Mexico.@@skinnyyoungjiggy4471

[@AnonymousSam]

That's a great idear!

[@SeanWinters]

​​@@skinnyyoungjiggy4471No the Scottish just do whatever the hell you want to, whenever you want to, pretend it's a "regional thing", and then complain about the English while doing it. "Agh tuljuz negta kep theh durr opin when yeh gowws outseed!"

[@gerrycoogan6544]

As a Scotsman, I would like to extend my deepest sympathies to all those who still can't help making an arse of their /R/s.

[@pootzmagootz]

Unironically rolled my "r" when reading "arse" right there

[@lozoft9]

@@pootzmagootz Question though: did arse ever actually have an R to begin with? Even when I first saw that word spelled as a kid I thought it seemed like an overcorrection someone once made that just stuck around.

[@pootzmagootz]

@lozoft9 pretty sure it has. It makes sense when you remember English and Scots are Germanic languages, and "ass" in German is "Arsch"

[@davidfryer9359]

Please stop!!!! They are having to bury me.

[@aetu35]

​@@lozoft9 yeah it did, but r before s disappeared in many situations before there was a rhotic-nonrhotic distinction in english. thats why americans write ass. there was also an r in bass (the fish), it used to be written bars

[@samuelrobinson5842]

I don't know if you will see this, but there is an intrusive, unlinking R in southern US accents. It is rare and archaic, but my grandpa uses it in "Idea(r)" and "wa(r)sh". I don't know how mamy words he uses it in, but I'll hear him say "Time to wa(r)sh up" before a meal very regularly

[@JenksAnro]

I have heard this actually

[@zhazhagab0r]

It's also found in the Midwest

[@eeekityeeekeeek1778]

Older, or rural (background) people in the Midwest use it as well. Have never heard it from anyone middle aged or younger. Growing up with TV maybe stopped that up here?

[@crookedspin]

'draw' is another example of this I think. As in draw(r)ing

[@sp00kthebourgeois]

Indeed, I was surprised it was never brought up. Yellow belly, pronounced as yeller belly, which both isn't one of the par, pa, or paPa vowels, but belly doesn't start with a vowel. And this is all over the southern accent mostly from older folks (although I find myself code switching into it when interacting with the older generation)

[@jfren484b]

In a New Hampshire elementary school, I had a classmate with a very strong Boston accent. There was a line in our science textbook that mentioned "tigers, cheetahs, and pumas", which with my general accent I would have pronounced "tie-gurrs, chee-tuhs, and poo-muhs", but she pronounced "tie-guhs, chee-turs, and poo-murs". That memory still cracks me up to this day. The existing R in tiger was removed, and the words that didn't have them got free R's.

[@rmrmlcy8906]

when i was very young my mother and i (appalachian) would visit relatives in NYC and were always amused how they’d say “docta” and “lawya” and “teacha” removing the Rs but would ADD an R to words that didnt have them like “Brenderrr” for “Brenda” !

[@alloradora]

Rhode Island is the same way! (And fairly different in other ways! I've seen the Rhode Island accent imitated in accent videos but it's usually Boston and not right at all)

[@dickottel]

tie girls cheaters and boomers

[@GhostWatcher2024]

And let's not ferget words like "warsh"

[@masterlotiondmt]

Khakis≠ Khakis= car keys ≠ car keys

[@AlexWalkerSmith]

The first time I watched Oppenheimer, during the Truman scene I thought "is that Gary Oldman?" Then he used an intrusive r while doing the southern accent, and I was certain it was him 😆

[@RasheedGazzi-u5l]

You caught that 😂😂😂

[@AdmiralStoicRum]

Warsh is my grandmother word

[@Envy_May]

it's funny that you have to recognise him by voice because you can't just recognise him by face like most actors hhh

[@RasheedGazzi-u5l]

@@Envy_May Gary Oldman is a chameleon.

[@FLPhotoCatcher]

@@Envy_May Carm down.

[@Kevin-hp5fk]

I'm Irish, I have a fairly strong Dublin accent. I'm a theatre actor. I was doing a show a few years ago in BC, Canada where I was playing an American character from DC. After a show where we had a dramaturg in the audience I went to speak with him and the first thing he said when i introduced myself was "wait. you have an accent?". That was such a compliment. It was a lot of work to really nail the accent and speech patterns for that role, but totally fooling an audience and people as educated in it as him was an amazing feeling. I also work as an accent coach on many shows here and the inverse is how hard it is to prevent all North American actors doing a generic leprechaun voice when they're playing irish.

[@badcornflakes6374]

Most people now that I know of that try doing an Irish accent try to sound like Conor McGregor. 😂

[@DogeickBateman]

@@badcornflakes6374He’s not even Irish right?

[@MollyMiaow]

I'd like to have a leprechaun accent 😅

[@PatrickFitzgerald-n3w]

@@DogeickBatemanI mean technically he is, but we don’t claim him

[@gabbleratchet1890]

Years ago, a woman who worked for me asked me to review her resume. She was from Queens, a location in New York that has a non-rhotic accent. She had worked in an office in Rockefeller Center at one time and had written the address as "Rockefella Center," which, no doubt, made perfect sense to her ears.

[@gameratortylerstein5636]

I have seen the Cuyahoga river spelt Cayahaga, by Germans i think.

[@maggiem.5904]

@@gameratortylerstein5636 “Cayahoga” is how I’ve always heard it pronounced, so I can understand why someone would spell it that way.

[@appletree6898]

Rockefella Centa 😂

[@gameratortylerstein5636]

@@maggiem.5904 Yeah. It's not exactly the same as whatis being talked about in the video but it reminded me of that. It's not pronounced Cayerhoger, I know. I think they have some similarkty to discuss about, ghough.

[@stuchly1]

Just imagining a bloke with a stack of rockets behind him. 😊

[@samanthac.349]

American accents are so varied that I don’t worry about it too much when I hear fake accents during performances. For example, my late Southern grandmother sounded like she called me “Samanther”. Though, one of the best on-screen fake American accents I’ve seen was done by Lee Byung-hun in the Korean drama _Mr. Sunshine_. His character was a naturalized American immigrant who returned to Korea for diplomatic reasons. He immigrated as a child, so the adult character’s accent when he spoke English was in a flawless American dialect. I could hear the actor’s native Korean accent slip in every once in a while, but I didn’t mind it because I’ve heard similar accent slips from friends who have also immigrated as children. Even more impressive was the actor didn’t speak English before he took the part.

[@goma3088]

Now I have to watch that show just for this. I wasn't too interested in watching Mr. Sunshine before, but now I am.

[@SirSaladAss]

Kinda like the Southern (broadly speaking) version of fellow is feller.

[@samanthac.349]

@@goma3088 Honestly, it’s one of the best drama television series I have ever seen in my life. Be forewarned, it is set at the beginning of a terrible era in Korea’s history, so have some tissues at the ready for the last 2-3 episodes.

[@samanthac.349]

@@SirSaladAss That’s exactly how my grandmother pronounced “fellow”.

[@nothanks6549]

My dad and I speak pretty similar, except for some reason he doesn't say "wash" he says "warsh." "We need to warsh the dishes. Where's the warshcloth?" So any time I hear something weird in an American accent I think it must be some weird thing they picked up somewhere like my dad with wash.

[@davidbenson8127]

When I was learning Arabic, my teacher pointed out that Americans use glottal stop in between vowels without thinking about it, because we don't have a letter to write it. It seems that the linking unwritten R is just the same thing, but where there *is* a letter to talk about it.

[@puellanivis]

I’ve had a significant benefit in my German accent by being an English speaker with hard attack. 😂 Learning Romance languages has been fun though.

[@DrunkenHotei]

I think this is more of a substitution than a "linking r," but upon reflecting on my own pronunciation, I find it fascinating how often I notice myself using a glottal stop in places I'd never noticed. For example, the other day I just noticed how I tend to substitute the "d" in "and" with a glottal stop in phrases like "and I..." when speaking casually.

[@TillyOrifice]

@@DrunkenHotei Well, that'll teach you to say "and me" like a normal person.

[@DrunkenHotei]

@@TillyOrifice Sorry? I don't think I follow. My example is with subject pronouns, like, "My friend and I dance." But now that I try it, even with object pronouns, when I say, "Come with my friend and me," I seem to omit the /d/ entirely on the word "and." The /d/ on "friend" in my pronunciation seems to be a bit harder to pin down, but I feel it oscillates between a plosive and a glottal stop depending on how quickly I'm speaking. I guess I still don't know how I tend to pronounce things until someone gives me a reason to pay attention to it lol. Thanks for that :)

[@EebstertheGreat]

I think it's not just that. The glottal stop is more difficult to hear than an r anyway, and it's used less consistently (it's not the only way Americans can break a hiatus). We also almost always use it when starting a sentence with a vowel, so we tend to just think of it as the only way to start a vowel. (Singers are an exception, I assume.)

[@lukehamilton5142]

My mind is always bllown by the effort that goes into these videos, so many great clips of examples. Amazing.

[@DrGeoffLindsey]

Glad you like them! I really appreciate it.

[@mediamedia7588]

My mother has a non-rhotic Down East Maine accent and so uses intrusive "r". The most striking example of this was when she was trying to refer to the character Nala from The Lion King and repeatedly said Narler and none of us could understand what she was talking about - until she clarified that she meant "Simber's girlfriend Narler!"

[@rosiefay7283]

"My mother has a non-rhotic Down East Maine accent ... she was trying to refer to the character Nala from The Lion King and repeatedly said Narler and none of us could understand what she was talking about" Hard to believe. If her accent was non-rhotic why do you use the spelling Narler to represent how she said Nala? And I don't believe you really couldn't understand what she was talking about.

[@vladimir520]

@@rosiefay7283 I think they're saying that their mother was trying to speak in the accent of the others around her, but since she doesn't have a native rhotic accent, she hypercorrects and adds intrusive Rs, pronouncing Nala as Narler to try to sound rhotic, but I could be wrong

[@DevinDTV]

​@@rosiefay7283non-rhotic speakers insert r's where they don't appear in the spelling. that's the whole point. also your ability to read when someone is lying is really lacking. think about the context. why would they lie about this? there's literally no reason to at all. it's far more likely either they made a mistake when telling the story, or you're misunderstanding something use some common sense

[@rosemarybarron4256]

⁠​⁠@@rosiefay7283A lot of people in New England who drop the R in words like “river” or “car” or even “park,” add in the intrusive R that Dr. Lindsey was talking about. I am also from New England and we also spoke this way. We’d say “rivah” instead of “river” but “Idear” instead of “idea.” It’s just the regional accent there. I think it’s dying out among younger people, which is probably why her mother has the accent (as my parents did, as my husband and I both do) but her children don’t (as my children don’t). I think a difference from what Dr. Lindsey said about his own accent, is we add in the intrusive R before a vowel, but also if there is no vowel following. For instance, we’d say, “I have a great idear.” The Maine regional accent also has a very particular intonation, a kind of sing-song quality, that you don’t hear elsewhere in New England. When my mother moved from Maine to just outside of Boston, people there thought she was from the US South, because they noticed her accent was different, but couldn’t place it. (It sounds nothing like a Southern accent.) My parents spoke this way until they died not too long ago, and some of their still-living siblings still speak this way. My cousins who are only a little older than me still have this sing-song quality to their accent, which my sisters and I never had.

[@wardsdotnet]

Down easters might also add an r in words like warsh

[@nucleusmedicalmedia]

One giveaway word when English or Aussie actors speak in American accents is the word "anything" which slips out as "ennathin" instead of "enny thing." Related is is the "nothing" which some Brits say as "NOTH-ing" vs the American "nuth-ing".

[@tomothythimas]

I don't know if I just have some weird Chicago influence or something, but I often pronounce "anything" as inny-thing, instead of "eh" in front, I'm from the midwest. American accents are incredibly varied though so no surprise if I pronounce it differently 🤷‍♂️

[@theguitar_diaries]

It was quite fun reading this in an amerivan accent haha

[@musa2775]

Yes! And "anybody". Americans say "ENNY buh-dee" instead of "Annie boddy" or "Annie b-dee".

[@carelessdreamer]

I pronounce it more like “inna-thang” sometimes, but that’s probably just the southeastern dialect slipping in and out.

[@kalafalas246]

@@tomothythimasa lot of people when talking about American accents (including this video) really mean a Californian accent, what they are exposed to from Hollywood.

[@iykury]

20:46 this part kinda blew me away. to me it's so obvious that rhotic vowels are indicated by the letter r that it seems crazy that non-rhotic speakers wouldn't notice the pattern when hearing us speak.

[@jhonbus]

I agree! I'm a non-rhotic speaker but this has always been pretty obvious to me as well. I've always been puzzled as to why so many British actors seem to have a hard time getting this right and it has always been pretty obvious and jarring when they get it wrong, even when I was a kid. Best example I can think of from back then is Red Dwarf. Robert Llewellyn (playing Kryten) got this so _consistently_ wrong I thought he must be doing it on purpose!

[@artmarkham3205]

It's just because most of the time when "translating" and accent (or whatever the word is), you are doing it your head based on sounds rather than thinking of the spelling. So if you are trying an American accent and add an "r" when you say "bigger", "painter" etc., it seems easy to think on the fly that you should add it to "Jehovah" or whatever as well - it's the same sound (to non-rhotic speakers) being translated, so it's easy to just track it in the same way.

[@Envy_May]

right ??? then again for me personally i tend to see the spellings of words in my head when i think or speak in general and on top of that i grew up learning a european second language, so i wonder how many little factors like that contribute for y'all or other people who notice these things without first studying linguistics

[@SomeYouTubeTraveler]

@@artmarkham3205 Yeah, you have to literally know how every word you're saying is spelled.

[@AaronLitz]

@@SomeKZbinTraveler Well, for actors that shouldn't really be that much of a problem, unless they only ever have their scripts _read_ to them. 😁

[@hikikomori_999]

I was told by my grandfather: New Yorkers & Bostonians do not have an “r” at the end of the words like car; “Hey! Get off my ca’h!” -that missing “r” floats up in the air, flys around in the stratosphere over some states before coming down on states like Mississippi & get words like “Warsh your hands”…

[@AnimeSunglasses]

Southern California as well, unless that was just my family.

[@LouisNothing]

😂😂😂 so true

[@joeytribiani9779]

Pennsylvania too

[@BellePal]

A Bostonian friend would refer to Jennifer and Hannah as Jennifeh and Hanner.

[@Achyirah]

South Western Penn., Southern Ohio, Southern Indianie, West Virginia, & East Kentucky share a linguistic family which includes the "r" in "warsh," there has been recent study suggesting that this might be disappearing in younger folks though.

[@joshuasims5421]

Colonel [kʰɝnəl] is an interesting example, the rhotic pronunciation is loaned from 16th century French 'coronnel', which gained the 'r' by dissimilation of the two laterals of the Italian original 'colonnello'. Then, in grand old English style, our spelling directly imitates the Italian source, hence the mismatch.

[@runscopeable]

Colonel is not written nor pronounced with an R in French

[@elwinowen5469]

@@runscopeable "Colonel" in Modern French is descended from "coronel" in Middle French. The French dropped the 'r' from both the spelling and the pronunciation while the English retained the rhotic pronunciation but not the spelling.

[@francescomartella144]

Given that we are between language nerds, I point out that it is "Colonnello" with 2 n's and not with one :-)

[@lilylou4693]

As a French native, this word is one of those who bugs me the most. In writing doesn't make sens to me and is a nightmare to pronounce. 😅

[@TJ-vh2ps]

I’d love to see an episode on why lieutenant is pronounced “left-tenant” in the UK. Is it a simple anglicization substituting English words that sound similar or is there some deeper reason related to changing speech patterns?

[@ruthbryce2667]

As someone who moved from Northern Ireland to England at the age of 6, I moved from a rhotic accent to a non-rhotic accent so I never had this problem. I remember finding it very weird when kids made spelling mistakes like 'farther' for 'father'. It made no sense to me. Maybe this is where my love of phonetics and phonology stems from!

[@OtakuNoShitpost]

Reminds me of a guy online who insisted that Americans said "Parsta"

[@ruthbryce2667]

@@OtakuNoShitpost yep, I can see an English person thinking this. Not me though 😃

[@revealview]

But what explains why people write "loose" when they mean to say "lose"? I see this constantly and can never understand how that happens. What accent could that possibly derive from??

[@ruthbryce2667]

​@@revealviewthat's just a spelling error because 'oo' is more likely to be used for that vowel sound than the o..e configuration. I don't think it's accent dependent.

[@revealview]

@@ruthbryce2667 I don't see anyone writing "moove" though!

[@baticeer_]

I remember actively noticing the "intrusive R" in the British accent when I became a fan of the musical Les Misérables and noticed that, even though I find it harder to hear accents in singing than in speech, you could always tell whether the actor playing Javert was British because he has a song where he repeats the line "It is the law!" And if it was the London cast recording, it's always "laaawr" !

[@premanadi]

The phrase "law and order" is a great illustration of the difference between rhotic and non-rhotic. Americans mostly pronounce the Rs and use a glottal stop between the first two words (or sort of run them together); non-rhotic speakers often say "Laura Nawduh." About as different as can be.

[@fromchomleystreet]

A non-rhotic Brit would only put an intrusive R into “It is the law” if the phrase was immediately followed by a vowel with no pause, so it’s whatever word immediately follows “law” that is the key factor. For example, “it is the law and you must obey it” might have an intrusive r in it. “It is the law that you broke”, on the other hand, wouldn’t. Neither would “it is the law”, as an isolated phrase with any kind of pause at the end of it (such as that typically placed between sentences)

[@electrictroy2010]

@premanadi YA KNOW British english used to be a rhotic language. In 1700 they said all the Rs. That’s why the spelling standard had an R in various words. By 1800 the Rs had started to fade (and British teachers were reminding students to say the R).

[@Amy_Dunn]

@@fromchomleystreet did you not see the the part where they said the actor **Repeats** the phrase?

[@fromchomleystreet]

@@Amy_Dunn Ah. No.

[@TheInkPitOx]

You're my champagne supernover in the sky

[@paulwilson3057]

O. M. G. .... I forgot all about him in the 90s. Lolz. TY!

[@Stop_The_Car]

Believe it or not, I've had to actually point out that R a handful of times.

[@Schnolle]

The spelling and pronunciation of "colonel" has an interesting history - apparently it was originally spelled as "coronel" when imported from French, but later the spelling was changed.

[@DrGeoffLindsey]

Pilgrim is an interesting one too. We don't like words with repeated L or R.

[@christophervollick4634]

​@@DrGeoffLindseynow I'm confused... How do you say pilgrim? In my North American accent, there's nothing incongruous between how I say and read pilgrim. Pill, grim. Maybe pill grem or pill grum if speaking quickly. Is there a tricky history to it or something?

[@ericsmith5919]

@@christophervollick4634 It didn't use to have an "L" in it. Latin "peregrīnus" -> Old French "peregrin/pelegrin" -> Middle English "pilegrim" -> Modern English "pilgrim". The double "R" was preserved in the word Peregrine, as in Peregrine Falcon.

[@christophervollick4634]

@@ericsmith5919 Oh! I see. That makes sense. Thanks!

[@ftumschk]

Weirdly, the French "coronel" was itself a corruption of an original Latinate word meaning the leader of a military "column" - hence the equivalent "colonello" in Italian ("colonna" being Italian for "column").

[@nHans]

*"ARMARDA"* reminded me of a similar situation: For many, many years, I wondered why *"BURMA"* - and later, *"MYANMAR"* - were spelled with R's. See, there's no /r/ sound in the way the native Burmese pronounce them! After learning about rhoticity in English, I finally figured out why: Some enterprising non-rhotic English speaker decided to put the "R" in "BURMA" to indicate to his fellow speakers that the "U" is to be pronounced as /ə/ (schwa). Without the "R", many would pronounce the "U" in "BUMA" as /ju/ or /u/. You've explained as much in this video. The "R" in "MYANMAR" is also quite unnecessary, as your own example of "GOA" goes to show. Presumably, the military junta that carried out the renaming was merely following precedence. The real problem arises because now *rhotic* English speakers are _pronouncing_ the /r/ sound in both words, even in non-linking contexts. And that's wrong! It even trips up ESL/EFL learners like me-whose native languages are rhotic. We end up pronouncing /r/ sounds when we see an "R" in the English spelling (unless we know the proper pronunciations beforehand, as in the aforementioned names).

[@thespanishinquisiton8306]

I live in Canada among rhotic speakers, many of whom are very interested in history and geography and some of whom have taken linguistics courses, and I've never heard anyone not pronounce the R in Burma or Myanmar. I'd never even considered that it could be pronounced any other way because the spelling is the spelling, of course that's how it's pronounced.

[@sluggo206]

Parcheesi got the r the same way.

[@AtomikNY]

Compare also the common use of "Park" as a Romanization of the Korean surname 박 [pak̚].

[@Asidders]

That's really interesting!

[@RandomNonsense1985]

@@AtomikNYSo it should really be “Pahk”?

[@MollyPitcher1778]

As an upper Midwest American I often could spot a British actor playing an American by their "R"s. I didn't know the rule but it just stuck out to me as wrong. Many do get it right -- I was shocked to find out Hugh Laurie and Damien Lewis are not American!

[@wootentottle6570]

Same. Southern Midwest American here, and I can tell when the actor is not American doing an "American" accent because they hit the Rs too hard. They sound almost like a pirate, Arrrrrr there matey.

[@electrictroy2010]

Watch Shakespeare in original pronunciation. He sounded like a pirate too (with rolling Rs). British english used to be a rhotic language. In 1700 they said all the Rs. That’s why the spelling standard had an R in various words. By 1800 the Rs had started to fade (and British teachers were reminding students to say the R).

[@karinanemica5973]

​@@wootentottle6570British actors are naturally rhotic if they're Irish or Welsh or Scottish. Listen to some interviews with Welshmen Michael Sheen and Matthew Rhys. Their Rs are not as strong as in Scottish accents but they're definitely there.

[@BeeWhistler]

@@karinanemica5973I found it interesting when I noticed Maureen O’Hara’s accent kept slipping in Miracle on 34th Street. If anything, she put more R into it than an American would.

[@neuroseptember1020]

@@karinanemica5973depends on the person. My Welsh friend has a non rhotic accent

[@michaelhilliard2370]

You are terrific, and your videos are terrific. Simply terrific. I've been teaching EFL in China for nearly a decade, and your content on pronunciation is some of the best to be found anywhere. You don't leave out important details or oversimplify, yet you still manage to elucidate difficult concepts beautifully. That's a rarity and makes your content invaluable. Even though I'm an American and generally focus on American English when I teach pronunciation (most of my colleagues that I train have mostly American accents, with some British and other varieties mixed in to a lesser degree), you do a wonderful job of talking about 'both' (to oversimplify). Your videos have really helped me fill in gaps in my own understanding, and I look forward to using some of your videos with my classes.

[@eleuron]

Inevitably after Mr L puts out a video, I look at the title in my queue and think "well maybe somebody else cares about such a thing". Yet I know that I have to click on it, just to confirm he can't possibly be as interesting this time. And by the end, somehow I have come out laughing at the language, my use of it, their use of it and most of all his use of it. Dammit Jeff you win again.

[@DrGeoffLindsey]

Thanks! Can I quote you?

[@proudtitanicdenier4300]

​@@DrGeoffLindseysorry i got locked out of my account, im on my alt right now, yes you can quote me. Thank you.

[@twistysnacks]

Lol you're like "why the hell would I watch half an hour video about hard Rs" and suddenly 2 hours later you're an expert on the English language

[@Mentally_Will]

That's Dr. L to you lol

[@L1623VP]

Very interesting. I've seen Gary Oldman's American accent go in and out in the Batman movies too when he played Commissioner Gordon. With English actors doing American accents in general, I find it's easy to pick them out sometimes because 1.) they tend to overcompensate the rhotic nature of the accent by hitting the R's too hard or sitting on them, making their speech sound heavy or choppy and 2.) in order to "not sound English" they strip all the melody out of their voice, making their American accent sound flat and lifeless when in reality, the American accent has plenty of inflection and melody, so the telltale signs for an English actor "doing" an American accent for me are harsh R's and a flat tone.

[@electrictroy2010]

YA KNOW British english used to be a rhotic language. In 1700 they said all the Rs. That’s why the spelling standard had an R in various words. By 1800 the Rs had started to fade (and British teachers were reminding students to say the R).

[@L1623VP]

@@electrictroy2010 I wonder what influence was causing the R's to fade out of the accent.

[@kpanyc]

Yes, Cumberbatch in the first Dr. Strange went waay overboard with the hard Rs and flat tone, even tho I thought his accent was perfect in August Osage County.

[@SeasideDetective2]

I can forgive the mistake when Gordon does it because the very first actor I (and many other people) ever saw in the role of Commissioner Gordon was Neil Hamilton, on the 1960s TV series. Hamilton was from Massachusetts, and had a discernible non-rhotic accent. What especially amuses me is that English people sometimes give the impression they think we Americans can't pronounce the open back unrounded vowel (the "a" in "father"). They seem to think we move it toward the front of the mouth and make it slightly less open, so that it sounds like the "a" in "cat." We never do this, at least not if we've gotten an elementary school education. It used to bother me that when John Lennon was trying to do an American accent on the Beatles' "Rock and Roll Music," he sings, "I'm in the mood to take a maambo." [sic] We Americans, who generally understand Spanish pronunciation rules better than the English, know to pronounce "mambo" as "mombo." We never say "maambo," unless it's to mock the stereotypical "hick" pronunciation. On the other hand, I was surprised to learn that the English can easily pronounce the near-open front unrounded vowel. I had never thought about it before, but it's a bit counterintuitive that an English person would say "I'm too fat to wear these pants" exactly the way an American would (aside from the fact that "pants" means "briefs" and not "trousers" in British English, of course). I would have guessed that the words would be pronounced "fot" and "ponts," since "chance" is "chonce" and "bath" is "bawth." But they're exactly the same in both dialects. It's tricky.

[@mottom2657]

@@electrictroy2010 Doesn't make you superior. Yo mama's just anatha ho in the end. 😉😉😉

[@jetjaguar_nz]

New Zealander here. There's a running joke in my family about asking "is a mandarin?" instead of "is Amanda in?" which obviously hinges on this linking r. Similarly, my family name is Upton and my wife, whose first name ends with a schwa, jokes she didn't take my name because she didn't want to have to constantly explain she's not a Rupton.

[@davorzmaj753]

"not a Rupton" I.e. not eruptin'? 🙂

[@jetjaguar_nz]

@@davorzmaj753 haha nice!

[@sarag1158]

Amander Rupton has a nice ring to it.

[@cggc9510]

To a US person, those are 2 completely different sounding phrases. I had to slow them both way down to hear how they could be the same.

[@NicolaiCzempin]

there's got to be a joke about "inter-Upton" in there somewhere 😉

[@RICHUNCLEPENNYBAGS77]

The power of suggestion is so strong that even though I am aware the Australian guy isn't saying the "R" I still hear it.

[@rowenaredd]

I noticed and found it a little ironic.

[@jd3422]

This was the first video of yours that I have seen. I am writing to say how much I appreciate the graphics you employed to highlight your points, such as the words underscoring your point in the film clips. The red "r" inserted into the white lettering really highlighted the point that you were making. Well done, indeed!

[@__--__]

A child of a friend of mine failed a spelling test when the southern teacher said "bath" they spelt "barth" cause they figured it was a new word they'd not heard before

[@EvincarOfAutumn]

Oh boy does this give me spelling bee flashbacks. I narrowly avoided missing a word by catching that the judge reading it had a different accent from mine-only to get eliminated because he misheard how I spelled the next one. Rude!

[@julilla1]

My great grandmother from Arkansas did this. My great aunt picked it up, despite nobody else in the family using it but her mother. She's always going to warsh something.

[@purelightapologetics4930]

@@julilla1In my best friend’s family, her mother (and only her mother) pronounces it “warshcloth” and gets teased for it.😂

[@StormyDay]

That’s a totally different type of intrusive R! More like when my grandmother pronounced oil as “erl” and toilet as “terlet.” I believe it’s brought over from Ireland.

[@technoman9000]

Get in the barth, boy! lol

[@dumsparce]

might be worth a deep dive into American southern accents, including the appalachian accent. my grandmother used to say things like "wash" as "warsh" and i think "intrusive" 'R' is highly present in the appalachian accents*. pretty much everything you described about linking 'R' is present at the end of vowel sounds, even when they're not linking. saying the word "idea" alone might always sound like "idear" depending on where in the country you are. *as an appalachian i should not generalize accents lol

[@khaunleper]

I still use warsh sometimes and my kids think its the funniest thing in the world.

[@pell222]

yeah several of the examples of it as a mistake just sounded southeastern to me, as a northwesterner. carm is right out though lmao thats bad it also does exist in old Noir mystery radio plays set in LA. so i don't think the BBC example is a mistake at all!

[@kpaukeaho6180]

“Warsh” is also found in mid-Atlantic accents like in Pennsylvania.

[@TigerDude333]

traditional southern ("suthuhn") is more likely to be non-rhotic: Vuh-ginia, suh.

[@michelleb7399]

My grandma had very unusual pronunciations for someone born and raised on the west coast. She would also often comment on some of her values and mannerisms being the “Scotch” in her. She comes from what we call a “Scots-Irish” or “Scotch-Irish” heritage. The Appalachian speech sounds very much like my grandma and also has a healthy percent of people claiming to be of Scots-Irish decent. Having been born and raised in rural areas often without even a radio, her family was very much isolated from other speech patterns until she started first grade at nearly age 7. It’s interesting to hear her speech patterns very much in the accent of rural Appalachians.

[@floatingdon]

Wonderful and informative video (and funny, too!). Thank you! There are a couple of things I would mention, which are 1) in California, where I grew up, we pronounce 'dawn' and 'don' exactly the same way; and 2) when I was growing up, they taught us in school that if the word 'the' came before a word starting with a vowel then you pronounced it 'thee', as in 'thee apple', which means you don't need the glottal stop. Before a consonant it's with a schwa, so 'thə table'.

[@rmdodsonbills]

Yes, same for me growing up in South Dakota.

[@laurierend]

Yes, of course Don and Dawn sound the same. I had a linguistics professor from England who talked about the pronunciation(s) of cot vs. caught. We (Canadians) all wondered what he was talking about. I still don't know.

[@jobdylan5782]

@@laurierend deranged

[@nexthoudini]

@@laurierend I grew up in NJ and live in NY, both places that extra-emphasize the "aw" as in "caught" and "dawn", and I'm curious what they sound like for people for whom they sound the same. Are they both "ah," both "aw," or somewhere in the middle?

[@laurierend]

​@@nexthoudiniHi, thank you for the challenging question. For me, they're both like ah. Maybe "somewhere in the middle." But definitely not aw.

[@puellanivis]

I came into a high school class and saw “Goethe” written on the board, and I was like, oh /gøtə/, and the teacher was like, “no, not /gɚte/” and I was like, “I speak German, I didn’t say ‘gortte’, I said /gøtə/.” But then, she had just been around so many English speakers she just heard the difference in vowel as a mistake for the rhotic, rather than the rounded /ɜ/.

[@hbowman108]

In Chicago, some people actually call the street "Go-EEth-y".

[@christopherellis2663]

3 is not the vowel that you are taking about e/ø, vs 3/(3

[@hbowman108]

@@christopherellis2663 The British version of the NURSE vowel, which is just a syllabic R in rhotic American accents, is /ɜː/. /œ/ in Goethe, the short ö, is different from the NURSE vowel in being higher, fronted, and lax.

[@Robostate]

I watched a PBS show about Hitler with a British narrator and I thought his propaganda minister was "Gerbles" (Göbbels).

[@notwithouttext]

the british NURSE vowel is actually /əː/: /ɜ/ used to be a variant symbol for schwa, but it was changed to a different sound.

[@jyrki21]

In the song “Scenes from an Italian Restaurant”, Billy Joel (who has a Long Island, New York accent) sings a section about a couple named Brenda and Eddie. It of course comes off as “Brenda Renetti” to the rest of us North Americans who don’t use intrusive R (but do turn inter-vowel Ts into taps) and leads to a great deal of confusion. 😆

[@user-ii4vn8hw7z]

It’s pronounced Lawn Guyland.

[@user-ii4vn8hw7z]

It’s pronounced Lawn Guyland.

[@kellyalves756]

Yeah, when I sing along with that song I feel very wrong about calling her anything but “Brender.”

[@Jones4Leather]

My Grandma was small village from south of Boston. It always made us laugh as little kids that she called my aunt Brenda "Brender" and a granddaughter Barbara was "Baabrer" and my dad Arthur was "Aathaa" After living in Cleveland and Chicago for decades, her Boston area relatives thought she sounded very Midwestern while us Midwesterners heard her as clearly from Boston .

[@Peleski]

It's a good example of when Americans use Intrusive R. And now I'm a bit confused because I don't know how others connect the two workds if they don't insert an R.

[@pidgeotroll]

Great choices of real-life examples (as usual), for me it happens that “I sawr a film today, oh boy” was the first time I encountered this phenomenon as an American and still the canonical example to me, so it was neat to see you chose that one, too.

[@Asidders]

I'm happy he included James Bond in here. I remember watching the "making of" documentaries of James Bond and having all these people with posh British accents saying stuff like "sawR it" and I was like, what? Why do they put an extra R in there? 😄

[@PasCorrect]

Speaking of songs, hearing Oasis rhyme "saw" with "door" wrinkled my 14-year-old brain.

[@21katieus71]

help i think that was the first time i noticed it too 😭😭 i wonder how many ppl had that same experience…..

[@Tribdinosaur]

I randomly stumbled upon this video while removing things from my Watch Later playlist, and I ended up watching the whole thing. You're a Superstar, Dr. Geoff Lindsey!

[@Amy_Dunn]

I'm American, and talking about the rhotic Rs reminded me of when I was in highschool and I was in theater. I was also in a play, and during our first rehearsal we got to a point where each person would stand up and shout "OURS!" but the way we say the word "ours" is like you're saying the plural of the (rhotic) letter R (Rs) and our theater teach had to stop us and tell us to say it like the word "hours" because we sounded like a bunch of pirates shouting at each other.😆

[@jmchez]

Thae "pirate" accent did not exist as a term until Robert Newton from Cornwall played Long John Silver in the movie, "Treasure Island". Newton was from Cornwall and decided to really push the accent that he had heard from rough seamen back in his youth. It is doubtful that an Englishman like Blackbeard would have talked like a Cornish seaman.

[@Amy_Dunn]

@@jmchez I'm fully aware of that, it was said as a joke.

[@elsiestormont1366]

😂 thanks for the laugh.

[@matthewhenderson7701]

That's pronounced "Ahhhhs"

[@ea42455]

"Rs = ours"? Just as we say it here in my old Kentucky home. Gotta' ask... are you from the south, or maybe the Appalachian region?

[@nathooooooon]

I had a math teacher in high school who came from Northern Vermont and would say the Greek letters α, β, and θ "alfer, bayter, thayter." One classmate of mine had had him for algebra 2 and actually thought alpha was pronounced alpher until someone with different experience pointed it out. It wasn't just limited to Greek letters; pretty much any word that ended with a schwa got an "r" appended. I called him Mr. Schaffa, of course, since his name was Schaffer. It's weird, though, because I have a lot of family in the Northeast Kingdom, and while their accent is distinctive, none of them sound like that. It's amazing how such a tiny area can have such distinctive accents.

[@stevetalkstoomuch]

Same in New Hampshire. Mother's side up there always talked like that. But add "lawnd" for lawn, "gararge", Ty-yota (Toyota)

[@leagarner3675]

Lol

[@Neogeddon]

Heyyy I'm from northern VT too! The accent is sort of dying off but my grandparents still have it : ]

[@michaels4340]

@@stevetalkstoomuch interesting parallel between the spellings of Toyota and coyote...

[@icarusi]

My head teacher used to say 'singin' and 'playin', yet complained about our pronunciation!

[@jimpemberton]

9:00 - Regarding something like "The idea", we often simply change the pronunciation of "the" from the schwa to a long E when preceding a word that starts with a vowel: "Thə pear" "Thē apple" "Thə music" "Thē organ" But it's true that many people use glottal stops and keep the shwa: "Thə 'organ."

[@matthewhenderson7701]

I never fully realized this until you articulated such. Now I'm going through countless nouns in my head just to see how they sound with "the" before them.

[@MegaFonebone]

I thought exactly this while watching the video because that's what I do. Thanks for articulating it so well. I'd noticed that sometimes I pronounced it "thee" and sometimes "thuh" but couldn't put my finger on why until I watched this video.

[@cailin5301]

I thought I pronounced it "th' idea" but I tried it out and said "the idea" and "the apple" aloud; and I find you're right, I definitely say "thē idea" in that context, I just say it really fast so I don't even realize what I'm saying. I'm from Arkansas, if that matters.

[@cathjj840]

I was even taught to explain that pronunication difference to students learning English as a second language: thee before words beginning with vowels. But then again, I'm an old time Californian when they said we had thuh least accented English of all.

[@rmrmlcy8906]

i would love to find out if Dr Geoff has any videos that address the pronunciation of the word “to” in the regard you mentioned. Sometimes i’ll hear “to” pronounced with a strong shwa like “tuh” for emphasis (“tuh have and to hold”) and im wondering what circumstances or regional accents or word combinations this occurs in.

[@secondaccount1688]

In American English it is correct (though not always done) to pronounce a final e before a word that begins with another vowel as ‘ee’ instead of as a schwa, ‘thee idea’ this flows more smoothly. For the same reason we change the word ‘a’ to ‘an’ before another word beginning with a vowel, ‘an idea’.

[@b43xoit]

Yes, that's natural to me.

[@PeterApgar]

There are a few special situations where the "an" is optional. Such as "This is a historic moment" with an audible H or "This is an historic moment" with a silent H.

[@j8kethewizz]

my friends and I have been reading the word "erm" incorrectly for several years because of the split between rhotic and non-rhotic accents. We're American so we've been reading it like /ur/ in purr followed by an m, while speakers with non-rhotic accents just pronounce it as "um"

[@d4r4butler74]

You just blew my mind. I would never have put that together erm = um.

[@johnindigo5477]

I used to notice this is british set novels. I thought they were muttering err under thier breath every sentence. Like a low growl

[@electrictroy2010]

Depends when the book or play you’re reading was created. “erm” had an R sound in most accents pre-1750. Even British english used to be a rhotic language. In 1700 they said all the Rs. That’s why the spelling standard had an R in various words. By 1800 the Rs had started to fade (and British teachers were reminding students to say the R).

[@joruha]

I remember seeing the Andy Capp comic in the Sunday newspaper when I was young. He was British (Cockney maybe) and when stammering he would say "er". It never occurred to me until fairly recently that in his accent it would have been pronounced "uh".

[@crackerjackheart]

What. WHAT.

[@ytmndan]

Funniest example of the invisible R imo, comes from the band, Oasis. "In a champagne supahno-vah, a champagne supahno-vurr in the skyyy"

[@TN-rf7nt]

Trained singer here. We are trained to use an intrusive r to help transition vowel sounds because you can't do a glottal stop in singing as easily. Trust me, Charlotte Church's decisions are intentional.

[@Mikelaxo]

I have an American accent and I love this song, that was one of my first times noticing this feature of brutish English

[@ytmndan]

@@TN-rf7nt It doesn't make in not funny though. Just like we all laugh at JT's "It's gonna be May" meme every April, even if we know that long Es should be avoided when singing.

[@aerobolt256]

@@TN-rf7ntas an american musician i cannot relate to sung glottal stops being more difficult than spoken

[@TN-rf7nt]

@@aerobolt256 oh I'm American too but it probably also depends on your type of training. Mine was opera, art music, and musical theater. Pop and country styles are completely different and I could see where someone trained in those styles, or even some musical theater styles, approach glottal stops differently than opera.

[@jasonremy1627]

My favorite use of linking R in an American context is the Billy Joel song "Scenes From An Italian Restaurant" where the Long Island Native Joel sings of "Brenda-r-and Eddie"

[@TigerDude333]

yeah, Brenda Renetti!

[@artomatt]

Exactly what I was thinking of!

[@lornacy]

My boyfriend from New York literally doesn't hear the "r" sound. I gave up arguing with him about it.

[@magnusengeseth5060]

Another Long Islander - comedian Jon Gabrus - started pronouncing "ninja" as "ninjer" on his podcast when the movie discussion got intense enough for the islander accent to return.

[@jimmyharrington3655]

That's a great example! You know what's funny about that example? It sounds odd to me because Joel is American, but when I hear a Brit do intrusive r, it doesn't sound unusual at all because I'm used to it in their accent.

[@miles1337]

Ok so randomly on KZbin, and I see this video, and I have just sat through all 26minutes of it. Its a topic that in context I would not see interesting in the slightest but you made this a real fascinating aspect to discuss and listen to.

[@michaelhorning6014]

I'm from Iowa and had a friend who always said "warsh" instead of "wash."

[@emilywagner6354]

I have Missouri relatives who did the same thing.

[@muskadobbit]

I used to say “warsh” and “wartch” until I moved away. My sister still says it. We are from Vancouver, BC, and our mother lived with her Scottish aunts for many years. She also pronounced the h in whether.

[@БогданКостюченко-ц4о]

Hmm... That's weird because in this case "r" is not between two vowels. In "draw-r-ing" (the way non-rhotic speakers pronounce "drawing") /r/ is put to separate two vowels. But "warsh" for "wash"? Interesting where it comes from.

[@DrGeoffLindsey]

I didn't include warsh(ington) as it isn't considered General American, same reason I excluded feller, yeller etc., and the pronunciation of 'oil' like 'earl'.

[@SilentTristerosEmpire]

Same in neighboring Illinois.

[@phoenix6676]

I (a rhotic speaker) always thought the infamous Dr Who enemies were Darleks. It wasn't until I saw it in print, that there is no /r/!!! I still sometimes subconsciously say it with a truly intrusive /r/.

[@GohTakeshita]

As a child, I thought they were saying, "dialects"...

[@GeoffO856]

I used to think the same thing when I heard the Top Gear trio pronounce Peugeot - I was tempted to say "Purr-zhou" in my own, rhotic accent.

[@HOUROFPOW3R]

@@GohTakeshita You from appalachia perchance? That's a straight up homonym for some daleks. I mean--dialects.

[@GohTakeshita]

@@HOUROFPOW3R No, I live in Texas.

[@brokenursa9986]

I didn't watch Dr. Who until I was a teenager, but I had a book about famous sci-fi robots as a kid, so I encountered the name written first, and I assumed it was pronounced "daylek" until I heard it said in the show.

[@fromchomleystreet]

Matt Damon’s Bostonian rendition of “is Ma upstairs?”, complete with intrusive R after “ma” and the absence of one in “stairs”, sounds pretty much indistinguishable from someone asking the same question in my own Australian accent. I’ve often been struck by particular sentences spoken by TV and movie characters with old-school New England accents who, for a moment now and again, suddenly sound completely and utterly Australian to me. It’s very discombobulating when it happens.

[@Jones4Leather]

I'm from Chicago where the local dialect has been particularly influenced by the Irish. I have that same discombobulation when I discover a character in a BBC program is Irish while I thought for a long while they were American. I thought Moriarty in the BBC Sherlock series was American with a couple of oddities in his speech. I only learned the truth when the actor was interviewed on a talk show. Say whaaat?!

[@WorldConquerer2295]

Fascinating video. Also the Australian kids’ videos teaching “al” is sometimes pronounced “ar” is a hilarious touch at the end. Subscribed. Will watch more from America.

[@ElNeroDiablo]

It wasn't until the part with Gary Oldman turning "calm" to "carm" and the Mr Spelling song showing how we Aussies use the same "ar" sound in place of the "al" in "calm" that I realised why it's so easy for me to recognise and do R-L slides when going from my Native East Aussie English to pronouncing things in Japanese (where "R" & "L" are the same sound). It gets to the point where sometimes I have to catch myself making a "R" instead of a "L" or vice-versa when talking in English.

[@Elesario]

Was that "leash wagging the dog" at 11:13 deliberately wrong? Never heard that form before, and makes no sense. It's usually "the tail wagging the dog"; I mean, how often do leashes wag? 😄

[@leagarner3675]

I noticed too. And the graphic was odd.

[@davidconner-shover51]

I remember getting so much grief from my kindergarten teacher; I was born in Southern California and lived there till shortly before I started school. I found myself in Boston, Not having experienced my first real winter yet, the only places I'd seen snow were in the mountains. Big X against when I was asked what season it snowed. I replied "in the mountains" seasons not really being much of a thing in SoCal. The second part, was having my kindergarten teacher telling me that "You don't pwonounce youa 'Aahs' cowwectly". That, right there, lowered my opinion of the teacher immensely for failing to take into account the regional differences in accent. To this day, I can trace much of my own linguistic history to those words I'd learned before Kindergarten, and those I learned afterwards; where the Boaston suddenly comes out, words like Coaffe

[@Salsuero]

My parents being from the Boston area and me being first-born in Southern California, I could never understand when the hell they were dropping certain R's or why. My mom hated her accent and worked hard to change it to sound more like the one I was born in, but it would inevitably slip out and we'd just laugh at her because we knew it made her miserable. Kids.

[@thefaboo]

I was born and raised in central Mass, and had several heated arguments over the pronunciation of words like "idea". I was *shocked* when my third grade teacher declared the regional "idea(r)" the correct one 😂

[@nunkatsu]

So your teacher reprimended you for pronouncing the r in the same way that 99% of non-black Americans do? Doesn't she know that Boston is the exception to the rule?

[@davidconner-shover51]

@@thefaboo It is a correct one IMO, but not a singular "the". My mother had words with her at the next PTA conference, I never got grief about my 'foreign' accent again

[@ginarosemary786]

@@Salsuero Sad for your mom. I was raised in the Pacific NW of the USA and my dad was from the Bronx. He would lay the accent on thick some times, just to make us kids laugh.

[@merrylderrickson3147]

Gary Oldman is such a legend that doc needed to a 5,000 word prologue in order to lend the credibility required in critiquing the man

[@ainmeile]

I have a rhotic dialect and I live in Australia, so my favourite word that comes up fairly frequently in my work is "drawer", pronounced seemingly identically to "draw", which sometimes leads to delightful *written* messages like "Please ensure that all draws are locked before leaving."

[@ainmeile]

@anthonycotter1493 wait so they really are just calling this thing a draw? And in my bedroom is a chest of draws with a sock draw and an underwear draw? This explains a lot actually...

[@freshfreenlovinit]

​@anthonycotter1493 I'm Australian and the word 'draw' does not refer to a single 'drawer'. It is simply a spelling mistake to spell the word as 'draw', if referring to a single 'drawer'. Find me an Australian dictionary that says otherwise.

[@CherylVogler]

I have discovered this as well. Quite a few fanfiction stories I have read have sentences with the word "draw", and at some point I realized that they meant "drawer", and since they pronounce drawer as "draw", they must have thought that was the way to spell it. 😄

[@adamgreenspan4988]

With my Long Island (NY) accent, I might pronounce “After you’re done drawing, put the crayons in the top drawer” as “After you’re done drawring, put the crayons in the top draw.” But I’m beyond bewildered when I hear my Philly friends pronounce crayon as “crown”.

[@alittlebitgone]

Every Australian tennis commentator "and here she is, SerenER Williams" ugh

[@timseguine2]

Since I have a rhotic dialect, I sometimes have trouble telling if someone meant the word spelled with an r or not. For example "law/lore" or "raw/roar". Context clears it up most of the time obviously, but it is a little bit of extra cognitive load that sometimes makes it more difficult to understand.

[@MrFgibbons]

Love this channel! Your description of how you realized that “all those r’s in American speech lined up almost exactly with how the words were written” is about the funniest thing I’ve heard all week! Yes, I’m rhotic (Ireland) though I live near Boston Massachusetts and still love the sound of my gloriously non-rhotic neighbors (they have cot-caught merger too, so “drawer” becomes “drah”). Signs over the highway commonly remind drivers to “use ya blinkah ” before changing lanes. Your piece highlights just how tricky it is to listen with your ears, not your eyes - once we learn to read any language , it’s really hard to use our ears like we did before! I think that’s a big part of the difficulty in trying to learn another language, especially if it uses the same alphabet as our own.

[@anndeecosita3586]

Most Southerners pronounce drawer as drah. For underwear they say drawers as drahs.

[@MrFgibbons]

So they keep theyah undahwayah in the tawp drag? LOL

[@electrictroy2010]

YA KNOW British english used to be a rhotic language. In 1700 they said all the Rs. That’s why the spelling standard had an R in various words. By 1800 the Rs had started to fade (and British teachers were reminding students to say the R).

[@Yamezzzz]

One I just came across recently and was shocked I'd never noticed before, is from seeing Americans online talk about "Looney Toons" as a Mandela effect, insisting it was never "Looney Tunes", it was always "Loony Toons". I didn't get it because it was 100% obviously Looney Tunes, but then realised that "Tunes" and "Toons" are perfect homonyms in North American English, so they could get confused. No you're not from an alternate universe. You just say "tune" and "toon" identically. This extends to YouToob, Toona steak, Toozeday etc.

[@newp0rt]

the issue about toons and tunes for looney tunes is that they are cartoons or literally "toons". disneys "toontown" or the toon cards in yugioh. plenty of people referred to cartoony things as toons. so if you are watching a loony cartoon.. it would quite literally be a "loony toon". the fact that its looney tunes makes little sense without seeing the name before and memorizing it. it has nothing to do with the tune toon phonetics really. just the obvious assumption that a cartoon is a toon and that tune makes no sense.

[@TubzInkswithus]

I think the cause of this is due to the popularity of the animated series Tiny Toon Adventures and not the two words being homophones.

[@Minotaur-ey2lg]

Damn dude. I was positive it was ‘toons. Mandela effect strikes again.

[@b43xoit]

They're not homonyms in *my* North-American English.

[@SapphireBlue-cq4rm]

And you say YouChube, Choona steak, Chooseday.

[@MrScorpianwarrior]

Your videos have a weird way of confusing my brain. I live in the American Midwest, and after watching a video and speaking along with a lot of the phrases and concepts you present, I actually start to hear my own accent. For example, at 15:55 when you said "Law, Saw, and Draw", I repeated it with _your_ accent, and then when I said it as I normally would it felt super wrong! I have never had that happen before, and it actually makes me even more aware of my own accent in a way I quite enjoy!

[@pXnTilde]

Same, I felt like how I think about rednecks lol; unrefined and unnuanced

[@jamesmcinnis208]

"actually"

[@brianmiller1077]

Do you call a small sack, often made of plastic a "bayg" ? I flip between bag and bayg, I haven't figured out the context yet.

[@higgme1ster]

I had a friend in the US Air Force who was from Boston. He told a story about his accent from Basic Training at Lackland Air Force Base. In one of the classes there was a multiple choice question that had letters indicating each answer. The instructor asked for the answer and called on him to tell the class. He answered "ah" (R). The instructor understood him to say "ah" like he didn't know the answer and was filling time thinking about it. He said the answer a couple of times more before he finally went full on rhotic and said AhRRRRa.

[@DrGeoffLindsey]

Fantastic

[@electrictroy2010]

“I’m from Boston” is not excuse to sound uneducated. It’s pronounced “car” or “door” not “cah” or “daah”

[@franciscodanconia4324]

@@electrictroy2010nah. A Baahstan accent is like wicket ahsum.

[@Grey_Ocean2023]

Well, no, those words are in fact *not* pronounced in this manner by speakers of traditional non-rhotic Boston/New England English, or similar non-rhotic forms of English. What sounds uneducated to me is implying that certain pronunciation systems are correct (presumably yours) and other are incorrect.

[@deleted01]

@@electrictroy2010 сяу

[@MCMAHT1]

Out here on the US Midwest/Appalachia border you'll sometimes hear "wursh" or "warsh" for wash and "ideer" or "ideal" for idea. Also, people in my small town say "bart" instead of bought. I've never heard that anywhere else.

[@SirFrogsley]

"Bart"? That's a new one for me!

[@HebaruSan]

A star of the Hoarders TV program said, "It could be warshed," and my wife and I immediately added that as an affected alternative pronunciation. Though ironically we use it when we're actually going to warsh a thing, unlike the original speaker who had never warshed anything.

[@joeconcepts5552]

I noticed a common way Brits switch over to the American accents is to emphasize the R but then make their voices more nasally. Hugh Laurie and Benedict Cumberbatch are examples of this. They take their great low voices and make them higher because of it.

[@ashxp10101]

I love this channel. I always click on a video like "Hmm, that sounds sort of interesting... I'll just watch for a minute or so to get the gist of the video." and then you keep me until the end! Thanks Dr Geoff!

[@Paul71H]

I found it interesting that the Australian pronunciation video teaches kids that "al" can sound like "ar" (or an American might say that "al" can sound like "ah"). I was at least 40 years old when I realized that many people don't pronounced the "L" in words like calm, palm, talk, walk, stalk, almond, folk, yolk, etc. I pronounce the "L" in all of those words (though I barely pronounce it in "walk" and "talk"), and I had never noticed that other people don't. I had quite a revelation when I got into an online discussion/argument about whether "folk" rhymes with "poke" (for me it doesn't).

[@bloosy1771]

That's really interesting! Has anyone ever picked you up on that pronunciation? I've never heard anyone say the 'L' in those words before.

[@Paul71H]

@@bloosy1771It's possible that you *have* heard people say the "L" in those words, but you haven't noticed -- just like I hadn't noticed people *not* saying the "L" in those words for decades. In the discussion I had online about "yolk" and "folk", about half the people said they pronounce the "L"s and couldn't believe that other people don't, while the other half said that they don't pronounce the "L"s and couldn't believe that other people do! Both sides cited the example of the character Porky Pig saying "That's All Folks!" at the end of the classic Looney Tunes cartoons, and both sides were sure that Porky Pig pronounced "Folks" the same way that they do (either with or without the "L"). So I think there are two things going on here. First, the difference in pronouncing or not pronouncing the "L" is subtle, since even if you do pronounce the "L", it gets masked somewhat by the following consonant (especially true for words ending in "k", but less true for "almond"). And second, I think there must be some confirmation bias at work, where we perceive the sounds that we expect to hear. Having said all that, I'm an American, and most people in the discussion were American. I'm not sure if this same dichotomy exists in England, Australia, etc.

[@NotSomeJustinWithoutAMoustache]

That's interesting. I've never heard anyone pronounce the "L" in talk, walk, stalk, or yolk, but I have heard L in the other words before, I alternate between either pronunciations of those other words myself.

[@cassinipanini]

​@@Paul71H i think even if we are not pronouncing the L in some of those words, its still performing a function. after all 'calm' and 'cam' are totally different vowel sounds to those of us who dont say it. i think it applies more for the a than o vowels, as our o is pretty consistent (unless its doubled oo which is more of an uu), since we have a soft a and a hard a. the L helps us differentiate which vowel sound to use

[@sharmanmurphree-roberts4018]

It doesn't. 😄

[@What_Makes_Climate_Tick]

Singing is a case unto itself. I'm a rhotic American speaker and a serious and well-trained amateur choral singer--trained to use "r" differently when singing than in speaking. The clip from the Welsh singer has a "flipped r", sort of like a soft "d", which doesn't feel as jarring to me as a fully pronounced intrusive "r" would. This flipped r isn't a feature of most of the spoken accents/dialects of English that you were talking about, but may be present among Scots and some other parts of the Commonwealth, like India and Africa. But in singing, especially in a choral context, we are trained to use a flipped r when a "partially rhotic" speaker would pronounce an r (immediately before a vowel), while if it occurs at the end of a syllable, hold out the preceding vowel sound and link the r into the next syllable, or leave it out altogether, like a non-rhotic person would. The goal is to have a choir with a unified sound by not transitioning from a vowel sound to an "r" sound at random times. In solo singing, there is more leeway to use the "r" sound as a means of expression. American choir directors have to pick their battles on getting people to follow these rules, and only the best choirs have everyone consistently doing this.

[@lizzclark4543]

Charlotte Church is Welsh and Welsh English does have flipped Rs. But in general yeah people, especially trained singers, don’t necessarily sing the same way they speak.

[@pXnTilde]

As a singer, I've always thought it was funny how much of an accent is lost when singing. There are just things that are necessary or more comfortable when singing that aren't present when speaking, especially for opening up vowels.

[@bennyfifeaudio]

Superb explanations. As a native Rhotic speaker who frequently narrates non-rhotic and Rhotic characters right next to each other in a book, this is delightful.

[@Trendyflute]

Love the way you break things down and how precise you are with your terminology, it's so refreshing. As an American one thing you can continue to work on (and I've left similar comments before) is realizing how many American dialects/accents we have, from the UK perspective our variety seems to get flattened into too few bins, but I respect that you're referring to common accents that have worldly distribution through media. Keep rocking the edutaining language videos, you're so good at them!!

[@Tracymmo]

Our differences aren't as dramatic. I spent nine years in Washington DC around people from all over the country. I usually couldn't guess where people were from unless their accent was particularly pronounced. I'm from Cleveland, and in my 18 years outside Ohio, only one person guessed that I might be from Cleveland. Of course, a lot of people who move to DC for work grew up middle class and never had a regional accent or they lost the one they had when they moved.

[@SpencerTwiddy]

19:45 - another prototypical example of the American “idear”, “Cubar”, etc. without a following vowel is words like “winder” (window) and “tomater” (tomato). That’s where Mater from Cars got his name (pronounces tomato like “tow-Mater”).

[@N0zer0]

also Wa(r)shington

[@pXnTilde]

Ah yes, the "old timey farmer" accent

[@SmashhoofTheOriginal]

The "calm down" example is particularly striking to me since I actually pronounce an /l/ in "calm".

[@pietrosigismondodelvalenti6371]

Practicing non-rhotic speaking was tough, almost like learning another language. Except you're saying words you already know. This really helps me visualize the sounds; I am indebted.

[@OrlyYahalom]

Thank you Dr. Lindsey for another facinating video! As a non-native English speaker, it took me *many* years to notice that so many r's are not pronounced in British accents. I find it interesting that along non rhoticity, some accents in Northern England and Scotland use emphasized r's (guttural ?).

[@thevis5465]

not guttaral here in Scotland, our rs are tapped. Its like a rolled r but shorter.

[@OrlyYahalom]

Thank you, I didn't know the term@@thevis5465

[@i.d.6282]

אני דובר אנגלית קנדי, אבל גרתי שנה בארץ והיתה לי חברה שלמדה בלשנות אנגלית איתי. היינו חייבים לבחור בין מבטא בריטני או מבטא אמריקאי כדי לכתוב באלפבית פונטי. היא בחרה בשיטה הבריטנית… למרות שהיא דיברה באנגלית עם מבטא ״רוטי״! בהחלט היה יותר קשה לי כשנתתי לה עזרה…

[@OrlyYahalom]

@@i.d.6282 נשמע מעניין! אגב, אומרים "בריטי" ו-"בריטית". חוץ מזה העברית שלך מושלמת :)

[@i.d.6282]

@@OrlyYahalom אה כן, תודה! כיום אני מדבר צרפתית הרבה יותר מעברית... קל לשכוח את הפרטים.

[@joshuasims5421]

I have never heard 'grapholatry' to refer to the phenomenon of orthographic primacy, but I kinda love it. So can we call spelling sticklers 'grapholaters?'

[@jamesdewane1642]

Most of my ESL students are tripped up endlessly by their grapholatry. Now I, and they, will have a new term for it. Lately, I had been calling it their personal fantasy English. We'll see which way of calling it is more effective at curtailing it.

[@jumpvelocity3953]

It’s always been known amongst armchair linguists as prescritivism.

[@Travisdeste]

​@@jumpvelocity3953I'd say prescriptivism is a more general term. You could be a prescriptivist saying people should pronounce and say things a certain way, but not necessarily have spelling as a basis for it. Grapholatry would be a more specific term for the writing side in particular.

[@johnyoung1761]

To parallel, idolatry:idolize:idolizer, grapholatry:grapholize:grapholizer? I'm afraid that doesn't clearly highlight the false primacy of spelling, either.

[@jasonschuchardt7624]

I feel like idolater is more common than idolizer. Not that either is particularly common around me. So maybe grapholater.

[@gh0st_b0yfriend]

That BBC Raymond Chandler radio play 17:14 had me in stitches - the only person I've known who talked like that was my Massachusetts born grandmother, so I can't help but picture this very proper 90 year old woman talking about reaching for a gun and making threats 😂 Comparing someone to a tarantula on angel food cake is totally something she would have said though 😂

[@ericscavetta2311]

I’ve heard older rural Americans add intrusive r in certain words like “wash” (warsh) and “idea” (ideer).

[@ghost.and.gills.]

The actor that has fooled me the most with their accent is Hugh Dancy in Hannibal. I was absolutely shocked when I heard his actual voice in the bloopers reels

[@ericmills9839]

The best and worst for me are from Eddie Marsan. He was in Hancock and had the most ridiculous, all over the place American accent. Years later he’s in Ray Donovan doing an excellent Boston accent. He definitely put in the work in the interim.

[@calebgoodman8729]

​@@ericmills9839his role in Hancock is also broad and over the top, whereas he has to actually carry some dramatic weight in Ray Donavan

[@ericmills9839]

@@calebgoodman8729 totally agree, but it was just bizarre. It was a mashup, like listening to a bunch of different folks trying to do a New York accent in succession, very inconsistent. Love the guy, but t was a bit cringe.

[@vestraegir]

he's REALLY incredible! if you listen when he says "anything" you can tell though. love hugh dancy and hannibal!

[@zzineohp]

Here in Maine I often hear people say the word "drawing" with intrusive r, even when they don't have intrusive r in other words.

[@alittlebitgone]

Older people from Washington state calling it "WARSHington" always gets me.

[@jomidiam]

I remember watching Monty Python when I was a kid in NYC, wondering why Graham Chapman, playing a US military officer, was putting so many Rs into his words. It sounded so strange. 40+ years later, I now have an explanation. Thank you.

[@stvitalkid7981]

And of course his masterfully hilarious portrayal of Hollywood film magnate, “Irving C. Salzburg”. Pencil droppers eh?

[@BeeWhistler]

@@stvitalkid7981That’s the one I thought of! “It just so happens my idear isn’t lousy, so get out!” Splunge.

[@christinescreativitycabine280]

The Pythons were terrible at American accents. The best American accents I've heard are from Peter Sellers as the U.S. President in "Dr. Strangelove", and Hugh Laurie in "House". I binge-watched the entire series before learning that Laurie is British. His accent is flawless.

[@jwismar11]

Shortly after seeing this video I saw an interview with Margot Robbie where she said (to my rhotic ears) that a set was getting "crazier and crazier and craziah". Thanks to you, I realized she was actually saying "craziah(r)and craziah(r)and craziah". Made a lot more sense!

[@automaticprojects]

Another amazing video. You make some of the most educational and entertaining content on KZbin. Growing up in Los Angeles, even 40 years ago in grade school, I wondered why Brits and Bostonians didn’t pronounce many R’s that were in words and then added them to words that didn’t have them like Cuba or idea?!

[@DrGeoffLindsey]

Thank you!

[@electrictroy2010]

300 years ago British english used to be a rhotic language. In 1700 they said all the Rs. That’s why the spelling standard had an R in various words. By 1800 the Rs had started to fade (and British teachers were reminding students to say the R).

[@mark9058]

I grew up in Orange County, California in the 1960s and had arguments from some of my teachers about their accents and how they pronounced things. My family on my father's side came from Kansas and my dad didn't like being corrected on his pronunciations at all. I went to Catholic grade school and we had an Irish priest! We had a ball with his pronunciations! Of course we had an earful from Pres. Kennedy and we would deliberately use his accent to drive the teachers crazy. "But, the President said it that way!"

[@rhkips]

You have broken something in my brain. I had never once even considered that trailing consonants function as diacriticals in British English, rather than unpronounced consonants. I can't even put the words together to express how far a step back my thought process has taken in approaching accents. I feel like an entire chunk of my understanding of language just got unlocked! Thank you, genuinely! :D

[@SeanPorio]

This realization of how these extra Rs make it into english gave me a huge revelation about my grandparents. My grandparents on my dad’s side are both from Queens in NYC and they say words like “drawRing” and “drawRer” and when describing their accent it was so hard to put a pin in what was different. Makes much more sense now! I think to folks outside the NYC area, you might be surprised to how common it is, even to the point where a few of those “mistakes” made by English actors here didn’t sound totally out of place to my ears after knowing so many people with New York/Long Island accents

[@notwithouttext]

drawRer? unless you're talking about someone who draws, it'd just be "dror", one syllable.

[@riz94107]

Actually, more likely just "draw"

[@SeanPorio]

@@notwithouttext I guess it’s a but more similar to “drawR” or “draw” yeah

[@hbowman108]

An R? Do they not have the stereotypical NYC "coffee talk" version of the CLOTH vowel? kzbin.info/www/bejne/pZqtnHSEpdhjh9k

[@MrScorpianwarrior]

I pronounce drawer as 'drore' (like shore)

[@misusatriyo]

As a non native American speaker, I've been looking for this particular answer for ages. I thought I misheard phantom "R"s here and there. Thank you for answering this conundrum for me.

[@Jiyoon02]

This is a frighteningly precise answer to the itch I've had for years on at this point! When people, mostly from the UK or Australia, say "American accent has really pronounced R's," that has forever confused me, consumed me and made me contemplate about all their law(r)s, idea(r)s and saw(r)s. To the point I had asked chat.gpt the same question, not once, but multiple times, going back to it every so often. I couldn't be more glad and appreciative that you covered the subject and solved my itch once and for all.

[@dogmakarma]

As a dude from California, I find that gnarly.

[@J75Pootle]

The thing is, when we say that you have very pronounced R's we're talking about the letter, as in, you always pronounce the letter R when it's written. We don't even notice that we're doing our "intrusive" R's just like you don't notice when you put in a glottal stop to bridge the same gaps

[@Jiyoon02]

@@J75Pootle Yeah. I mean, now I got it. Dr. Lindsey such a great lecturer, and a video producer.

[@Yassinius]

Love your videos. You're debunking the idea that British people are always capable of doing perfect American accents. I guess the mistakes are minor and a bit harder to catch than an American doing a faulty British accent.

[@shawqin992]

As a native Mandarin speaker, I noticed that a lot of Chinese folks learning English add "intrusive Rs" after words ending in vowels regardless of the syllable after the word, like pronouncing "idea" as "idear." I now wonder why this is. (Now that I think of it, Mandarin is non-rhotic except for the 儿化音 (I don't know what its English term is), which only happen some of the time, and even less for people in southern China who speak other dialects.

[@samhutchison9582]

What English are they taught, American or English? It's always interesting hearing non-native English speakers in America speaking English English

[@hbowman108]

儿化 is called "erhua" in English. Pronounced like the letter R followed by "wha". Here by "wh" I mean the consonant for "wh" used by older American speakers and by Scots.

[@RAFMnBgaming]

Growing up in england I knew a lot of kids that pronounced it like that growing up. I suppose it might be some universal step people go through when learning english via certain dialects.

[@shawqin992]

@@samhutchison9582 It varies. The old-school way is teaching English dialect, but it's more and more widespread to teach American dialect (which is also the one I grew up learning, except for my elementary school English textbooks, which are Canadian).

[@shawqin992]

@@RAFMnBgaming That's interesting!

[@markadams6497]

I've heard unwritten non-linking "r"s in TV shows. For example, in The Beverly Hillbillies, Milburn Drysdale was talking about pillars and Jed Clampett thought that he was talking about pillows. Also, in Doc Martin, characters used to refer to Louisa as "Louiser".

[@markadams6497]

Or the Benny Hill sketch about two Irishman and one says "they're looking for tree fellers and there's only two of us".

[@Raveler1]

The l/r confusion in calm is interesting to me - I have a north-American midwestern dialect, shaped by Canadian relatives and time around UK, Aussie, and Kiwi speakers in Jakarta. (Yes, it's quite confusing.) I do pronounce the l in "calm", though - so "calm" and "awl" have the same sound, which is distinct from "cam," "karma," and "come."

[@woodfur00]

Yeah, I was thinking this. I once asked my friends around the country about calm, palm, wolf, yolk, folk, walk, chalk, calf, and both and the results were _amazingly_ diverse. Distinctions in places that don't even make sense. Californians are insane, what the hell is sidewallk chock (they couldn't decide which one 'talk' rhymed with)

[@wardsdotnet]

I'd love to see the results of that survey. In my Californian accent I would say sidewalk with an ock ending but I can't be so sure about chalk. I feel like the L does color the vowel a little in some but not all of those words

[@bosslca9630]

Here's another one from the Simpsons. "Superintendent Chalmers" How do say "Chalmers", I'd be using that 'awl', which probably informed me at a young age to put the Awl in Calm. After all the Gary Oldman 'Carm' sounds like 'Come' for some strange reason to me. To put the L/R confusing in the it would be Charmers... which is a VERY different word.

[@jenniferpearce1052]

@@woodfur00 Californian here! Definitely chalk rhymes with chock as well as wok, walk, and clock. But not balk. I balk at that. Yolk and yoke and folk rhyme as well, though if I'm thinking about yolk and folk the ls much appear.

[@Khifler]

​@@jenniferpearce1052 Same experience here, also Californian. I noticed that I say "Folk" differently when talking about the genre - that is definitely rhymes with "bowl" for me.

[@th60of]

One of my favourites is the ingenious title of Nabokov's novel "Ada or Ardor: A Family Chronicle": unlimited pronunciation possibilities, some of them quite funny.

[@drivers99]

I just realized why the song Karma Chameleon sounds like it says "comma comma comma comma comma chameleon"

[@pXnTilde]

Maybe this whole time it's actually charmeleon

[@nineteenfortyeight]

😂😂😂😂that one messed me up as a kid

[@fifif6074]

The man has opened my ears to what has been mostly subtle to me. Outstanding videos.

[@bonnecherie]

There's a thing in American English (particularly the south and Appalacia) where if the ǝ is followed by an an sound, we drop the A and continue on speaking. In the case of and, we drop the A and D, so combinations like Ma and Pa sound more like Ma 'n Pa, greater than sounds like greater 'n, etc.

[@elainebelzDetroit]

Fascinating! I didn't know that the unwritten linking "r" is deliberately sung - rolled or trilled, even! As a US American, I wouldn't have thought so. (That's one more reason not to call it "intrusive"! Singers-especially in classical singing-deliberately modify much of their usual accent, so to include it in singing means it's not uninvited at all!)

[@elainebelzDetroit]

Loved the shoutout to Hamtramck! It's an enclave, a separate city surrounded entirely by Detroit. (As is neighboring Highland Park.) I know you weren't referring to diphthongs when discussing the vowel sequence & schwa coming before another vowel. In my accent (I call it Great Lakes, but I think it's Northern US or something) we pronounce the letter i as schwa+y when it comes before an unvoiced consonant or before an r. Before a voiced consonant or an l, it's pronounced ah+y like other Americans pronounce it.

[@frafraplanner9277]

@@elainebelzDetroit Gotta love Canadian raising and the Northern Cities Vowel Shift

[@justjulia8007]

I grew up in Midwest America with a mother and grandparents who all pronounced wash as warsh, sink was zink, rinse was wrench and idea was ideal or idear. I remember always giving my mom a hard time often asking her, where’s the “r” in wash? She eventually caught herself doing it and would laugh and say “WAAAASH is that better?” Great video!

[@Scripture-Man]

The shot/caption at 25:23 of Oldman saying "Barbara, carm down" is so funny and striking, you should make make that the thumbnail. Would grab attention!

[@deathpigeon2]

There's a sort of intrusive r that occurs in rhotic dialects of english, also. Some words, like Myanmar, have, in their spelling, an 'r' that was included by non-rhotic speakers to change the pronounciation of the vowel entirely unreflective of the pronunciation and spelling of the language being borrowed from (it's 'Mranma' pronounced [mjəmà]). This is done by the non-rhotic speakers with the understanding that no 'r' sound will be pronounced. But, then, speakers of rhotic dialects like general american will read these words and assume that the 'r' is reflective of a historic 'r' and pronounce it with a final rhoticized vowel when, if it was spelled Myanma, the general american strategy for foreign borrowings would pronounce the word closer to the original language than a rhoticized vowel would be.

[@ormondomaha]

Thanks for this! As an American I had no idea that there was no "r" sound at the end of "Myanmar" in that nation's native language(s).

[@lilylou4693]

As a non native, I'm flabbergasted. This is fascinating to me. Yet, my brain has started to leak from my ears. Some subtleties are so specific 😮 And don't get me wrong, I watch this type of videos in my mother tongue too so I know it's the same for ppl learing French (coucou "il y a"), but being in the other end of the language is really hard! Anyways, keep them coming ❤ this is for sure improving my confidence on the speaking part of my English-learning.

[@davidbernier5782]

Hi! I’m a native English speaker and I’m working on my French. I would absolutely *love* to know about which videos you’re referring to. Are they any specific channels that you enjoy, so I can improve my French accent? Merci !

[@LybertyZ]

Don't freak out-- it's all intuitive. (Our brains are hardwired for it.)

[@lilylou4693]

@davidbernier5782 Hey! I'll have to do some digging because I watch the French videos once in a while for funsies but I'll look into it for you. See you soon

[@NavyVet9702]

When you showed the examples of less or non-rhotic American accents, it reminded me of the way Peter Sellers played the president in Doctor Strangelove. Especially, when he said the line, "That is precisely the idea(r), General. That is precisely the idea(r)."

[@cruzcflores]

That was him imitating the director Stanley Kubrick who had a strong New York accent

[@NavyVet9702]

@@cruzcflores I thought the president character and way of speaking was inspired by Adlai Stevenson.

[@Chrisyade]

Fascinating. I had not anticipated that being a non-rhotic speaker of English could lead to spelling errors.

[@jamesdewane1642]

One written r that rhotic speakers used to commonly leave out of our speech is the first r in February: Feb-you-wary It's a case of two adjacent semi-vowels, that r and the y to start the long u. Due to grapholatry, the culture has been favoring the r now for a long time Because of the good Doctor, I've proudly gone back to my childhood Feb-you-wary even though it had been ridiculed out of my speech decades ago, both for the lack of r and for the "intrusive" w. Thanks Doc!

[@frankpaiz5657]

Why does that dropped R give me such anxiety?

[@overlordnat]

It’s by no means just rhotic speakers, that’s how I and many British people say it too, with a y where there ‘should’ be an r.

[@thewingedporpoise]

that and Surprise, which I think is the most common and best example for it disappearing from a general American accent

[@SirWrexes]

One of my favourite videos so far! As a non-native speaker but heavily influenced by British culture in my mostly self-taught use of English, I noticed I ended up naturally doing linking R and I was honestly surprised. But this video was very instructive and explained it delightfully well!

[@urahi830]

this is exactly what happens to Italian students, after a lifetime of ignoring the letter H in writing they struggle to pronounce it, and when they do they start putting it everywhere H-year, H-I H-am, H-all H-over

[@lakrids-pibe]

Many years ago I visited the Palace of Versailles and got a guided tour by an English-speaking French guide. She took great care to pronounce "18th century" with a distinct "h" in (H)eighteenth. Very charming. hehe!

[@erichamilton3373]

Also a stereotypical Cockney mistake: fresh Heggs!

[@MrScorpianwarrior]

@@lakrids-pibe I was speaking to a French speaker from France the other day (who's English is not great), and they asked me "How old are you?". I swear, every time I asked them to repeat it, I heard "How hard are you?". They pronounced 'old' with an H at the beginning, and struggled a bit with the 'ld' pronouncing it like an American r. An odd misunderstanding, to be sure.

[@AbiSaysThings]

French people too!

[@Arkylie]

Once had a French teacher try to ask me if I'd seen a recent movie. Her vowel for it was so weird that I had no clue what she was talking about (notably, I hadn't seen or cared about the movie, though I had heard of it), and then she tried to clarify by, with great effort, making an H sound at the front. Me: Oh! The Hours? 😂 I also can't stand Esperanto turning key Silent H words into having H sounds. I vaguely recall getting annoyed with "honoro" or something. Borrow words by sound, not spelling, and adapt to your system as needed -- don't utterly butcher the sound to keep the spelling!