The Truth about R (and why you're wrong about pirates)

The letter R is a whole lot weirder than we give it credit for. Linguists can't even nail it down. In this video, I talk about all the ways accents that delete r and accents that don't lead to layers of mutual confusion.
Patreon: www.patreon.com/languagejones
Honorable mentions:
"moggin hoss" (Morgan Horse) - Joel Chandler Harris
"jorb" (job) - Coach Z
"ter" (to, pronounced "tuh") - J.K. Rowling using eye-dialect for Hagrid

[@alanbarnett718]

Okay, I've GOT to jump in again on the pirate controversy. We think of pirates as saying "Aaaarrrr" or even "Aaaarrrghhh" because of Robert Newton's portrayal of Long John Silver in Disney's Treasure Island. It was a furiously over-the-top act, and had a lot to do with Newton's drinking problem, but the important thing is *he got it RIGHT*! It's the Devon and Cornwall accents, which like a lot of rural English accents are most definitely rhotic. A lot of Cornishmen and Devonians were sailors. Some of them were pirates. And yes, they did say "Aaaarrr". In fact, they still do.

[@jaycee330]

And the Cornish still mean it in the same way. "Arr" is "Aye".

[@PhinClio]

I was about to say this. People with West Country accents sound like stereotypical pirates.

[@wafelsen]

A friend refers to Sep 19 as “Speak like a Dorset Fisherman Day”

[@dazartingstall6680]

As a native of Somerset, I second this comment.

[@dogvom]

Exactly right! In fact, here's the opening of the show _Long John Silver_ with Robert Newton himself. kzbin.info/www/bejne/anyWp3SBoJtmhJI&ab_channel=MetalTigger

[@nathangale7702]

Getting the 'r' right is often key to a convincing accent impersonation.

[@languagejones6784]

Yes! And British actors often overdo their American rs!

[@blotski]

​@@languagejones6784 On the other hand, have you ever listened to Scarlett Johansson speaking?

[@aaron2891]

@@languagejones6784or their American “aa’s”?

[@c0wqu3u31at3r]

English people doing non-rhotic Irish accents... Just no

[@markpolo97]

It's my nemesis in German. If I'm really paying attention, I can do a German r, but when speaking quickly, I very quickly slip into an American version.

[@CrownRock1]

I appreciate how you are righting our wrongs, readily reinterpreting our readings, and rectifying our rhostisms. You're no rookie, not relying on rhetoric or rivalry to wring richness from your recorded recitations. A right raconteur, you regularly recount remembrances to relate to your receivers.

[@MiKenning]

Now say it with a speech impediment

[@CrownRock1]

@@MiKenning I appwethiate how you awe wighting ouw wongth, weadiwy weintewpweting ouw weadingth, and wectifying our whothithmth. You'we no wookie, not wewying on whetowic or wivawwy to wing wichness from youw wecowded wethitationth. A wight waconteuw, you weguwawy wecount wemembwantheth to wewate to youw wetheivewth.

[@christianstainazfischer]

I love this comment thread

[@tebby24]

@@christianstainazfischer I wuv it too

[@christianstainazfischer]

@@tebby24 yo what I play snare too

[@Topomato1]

As a native Farsi (Persian) speaker who is now living and working in Australia, I gotta say I always thought that our language was not too hard to get right in terms of pronunciation. However, hearing you, as a language expert, sort of find it hard to pronounce Fekr is more evidence towards my new stance which is that no language is easy to get right for a non-native speaker.

[@languagejones6784]

oh man, a voiceless alveolar tap for an r? As the second consonant in a coda cluster? That's, if not hard, then definitely cross-linguistically marked.

[@Topomato1]

@@languagejones6784 fair enough 😅 I suppose you never think of this stuff until you hear about it. Also something to consider is that Fekr is an Arabic loan word. My wife and I did a non-expert attempt at analysing our R and came to the conclusion that depending on the its place in a word, etc. it can be a voiced or voiceless alveolar tap or a rolling one closer to the Spanish example you provided. So all the more fun! 😀

[@theworchester]

My daughter's favorite joke: Ardith: What's a pirate's favorite letter? Me (feeling smug): Arrrrr! Ardith, You'd think so, but his first love is the "C"!

[@MrJacobThrall]

Actually, "pirate voice" is sort of heavily accented West Country English - otherwise used as farmer voice (ooo-arrr) - because those southwestern ports were where ships departed for the Americas. And they arrrre rhotic accents. So when the English actor Robert Newton played Long John Silver in Treasure Island, all that "Arrr, Jim laaad" stuff he did was overblown West Country. And that's pretty much the pirate voice that everyone does - the Robert Newton voice. When Brits do pirate voice, they say "arrrr" too - it's not rhotic Americans missing the point.

[@johntrevithick5900]

As far as I know, Cornish (aka Kernewek) is a rhotic language. I wonder if the "oo arr" didn't come from something like : "it is so". Fun fact, is Cornish for "Pirates" - literally something like "Sea-thieves". And the Rs are definitely pronounced.

[@landmarkfilly5477]

@@johntrevithick5900 also fun fact, Welsh for Pirates (môr-ladron) means the same thing.

[@peterw29]

'Oo-arr' is certainly the stereotype, but I have never heard it in real life. Plenty of 'oo-aah' though. (Important note: The Wurzles do not count as real life!)

[@Crazael]

@@peterw29 It is also a stereotype that comes from a movie from 1950 based on a book that was written in 1883. Plenty of time for the actual spoken language to have drifted to me more in line with standard British English.

[@Muhahahahaz]

I came here to post this

[@davexhayter]

The all-time best intrusive R is the Homestar Runner "Great Jeeoorrb" episode.

[@CrownRock1]

As well as a host of intrusive random vowels.

[@PerryWagle]

In second grade, we were presented with a task to color in a sheet of paper with the letters of the alphabet partitioned off into regions such that vowels would now be in red (I think?) regions and consonants in blue (?) regions. When I came to the letter "r", I was completely stumped. So, apparently somehow not knowing better, I glanced at a friend's sheet. He'd colored it in as a vowel. This seemed plausible to me, so I then did too. This was the only one I got wrong, and was tremendously embarrassing. I've carried that lesson to never cheat again for the rest of my now quite long life. When I was in graduate school in the mid 1980s, however, I worked in a phonetics lab that had a gizmo for recording FFT's of speech. I kinda half learned Victor Zue's technique for reading the FFT's (of English) by eye. I found that "r" looked more like a vowel that a consonant (though with "important" differences, I think). Was that much belated vindication?

[@tedonica]

The "ir" in bird could be seen as a kind of vowel, although I believe it's usually considered an approximant.

[@PerryWagle]

@@tedonica "approximant", eh? New concept! Thanks!

[@albertlouisher]

Southern Standard British English speakers use their "trap" vowel in words like "pasta" because their "trap" vowel is /a/ instead of /æ/. This sound is closer to the Italian "a" sound than Southern Standard British English's "palm" vowel (/ɑː/)

[@languagejones6784]

I will include this in a future video; that makes a lot of sense!

[@barrysteven5964]

@@languagejones6784 This is true. I'm from the north of England where we don't even make the trap/bath distinction. We pronounce both with the short /a/ - (tɹap /baθ). As this is a very common vowel sound in English in most areas of the UK, this is the vowel we use in both pasta and taco. I don't think /æ/ is that common in Modern British English anywhere and /ɑː/ isn't that common in the north.

[@evilgir]

I'm from Washington state and the "intrusive r" finally explains why folks from outside the state sometimes call it "Warshington". I've always been curious where that came from. Thank you!

[@bartolomeothesatyr]

I'm from west-central Indiana, and I've noticed that the further south you go in Indiana, the more intrusive rhoticism you'll hear, particularly from older rural Hoosiers. Unless she's consciously focusing on enunciation, my mother usually pronounces "wash" as "warsh", and sometimes I hear her pronounce the word "oil" as something that to my ears sounds like a mumbled "oral". Along with the intrusive R, she also sometimes drops a terminal consonant in words with an O vowel like "coal", which in her rapid speech sounds something like "koh". On a tangential note, my mother was brought up calling starlings "spatzies," which I later learned is a direct Anglicization of the German word for sparrow. We have German ancestors several generations back on her side of the family, but how their word for sparrow got applied to starlings and transmitted through several generations of exclusive English speakers is a mystery to both of us. I wonder too sometimes if she might not retain some family vestige of German-language grammatical gender, because my mother subconsciously refers to every cat she meets as a "she," even if she knows full well it's a tomcat.

[@emccormack4209]

I was coming to mention warsh as well. My grandma was from eastern Missouri, also of German American descent. Warsh for wash and zinc for sink were the two word pronunciations that always stood out to me as strange.

[@legofriend22]

Western Kentucky mom, said warshrag, but the neighbor was around the cahner.

[@Onoma314]

A pirate's favorite letter isn't " R " though, it's " P ", because it's like an " R " but it's missing a leg

[@MrJacobThrall]

You say that. But a pirate's first love is the C...

[@davidwuhrer6704]

Well, without the P they are irate, so I understand that the P is important. But the C is always the first love. And of course a pirate's favourite element No, no, it's gold!

[@adrianblake8876]

Joke, but the Latin alphabet added the leg to the letter R when loaned from Greek rho... The letter pronounced in English like a pastry looks different which makes it's latin equivalent weird (also it looks like cursive latin r...)

[@davidwuhrer6704]

@@adrianblake8876 Π π Ρ ρ

[@hieratics]

And talking about R weirdness, I thought you would mention Brazilian Portuguese R: In the beginning of a word (r-) or doubled between vowels (-rr-) or before a consonant (-r-) it is pronounced as the French R of the English H. In the end (-r) of word it has the sounds above or may be silent. And in some dialects it may have the American R sound. And lastly, between vowels (-r-) a single R has the sound of the Spanish R.

[@LeykosLykos]

it would be necessary an entire video to delve into the Brazilian Portuguese R. Imagine asking for somebody to say 'porta' or 'carne' from the North, Northeast to the South, SE, and find out the different sounds it can pop up.

[@spolch9482]

The R of Portugal Portuguese is also interesting.

[@heatth1474]

You forgot at the end of a syllable but not at the end of a word (porta, for example), which might sound as any of the other variants depending on dialect.

[@john.premose]

He's probably too much of a hack to even know about Brazil. This guy doesn't strike me as a real linguist. You can't believe these people, they are just trying to make an easy paycheck by making videos about something they barely know anything about but which they know will receive a lot of interest.

[@edwardlane1255]

when a Brazilian I know says Rock & Roll it sounds to my UK ear like Hockey hole (obviously they are not saying 'and' and are instead saying 'e' the Portuguese word for 'and')

[@nyuh]

i havent finished watching the vid but here's a lil funfact for people scrolling in the comments: you can pronounce every trill (bilabial, alveolar, uvular) at the same time it sounds like the gurgling vocalizations of an undiscovered species of dragon !! its hard. i think im not doing the uvular well enough. but i think its neat. you should try it !!

[@languagejones6784]

In a future video, I will have another linguist do so. She's the one who first showed me that. It requires some serious lung capacity and pressure, though!

[@bofbob1]

Lol this is hilarious. I feel like if I do it too much though, the neighbors are gonna call the cops on me for suspected murder or something. ^^

[@maxonmendel5757]

I like to do a uvular trill at my cat when I hold her cause I think it sounds like purring. I cant do the tongue trill but I will learn just to try this!!

[@gcewing]

"The tunar is delicious" is a disturbing thing to hear if you've had your piano tuned earlier in the day.

[@Psyk60]

The thing about that intrusive R is that most people who do it have no idea they are doing it. They just don't notice that R sound either when they speak themselves or when they listen to other people who do it. I remember someone asking British people on the Internet why they do it, and several of the replies said they don't and they've never heard anyone do it. But it's just not really possible to live in Britain and have never encountered an intrusive R. They might live in area where the local accent is rhotic so the locals don't do it, but if they've watched basically any British media they've almost certainly heard an intrusive R.

[@peterw29]

I live in the extreme north of the (non-rhotic) East Midlands, where intrusive r is a way of life. As elsewhere, the word 'of' often loses its final f in casual speech - "a pint o' milk". But unlike everywhere else, the f is not reinstated before a vowel. Instead we get an r - "a pint o'-r-ale". People here are so fond of their r that they often substitute it for other consonants too, so that "Has he got them?" can become "Arry gorrem?" Add to this an endemic disdain for superfluous syllables and "the top of the hill" becomes simply "toporill". I've lived here for 30 years but still struggle to understand what some people are saying.

[@paulweiss2720]

Another regional rhotic amusement which you didn’t mention is the old Brooklyn accent which flipped the “r” sound and the “oi” sound. So my working-class grandfather, born in Brooklyn in the mid-1890s, said “Thoisday” and “terlet” his whole life. I’ve read that a similar regional accent exists or existed in some social strata of New Orleans, but through a different a different pathway of language influences.

[@peterw29]

@paulweiss2720 I know "Thoisday" is real enough, but I thought the other side of the flip was a fabrication in the film "The Odd Couple" (Jack Lemmon and Walter Matthau), where they ordered ersters.

[@paulweiss2720]

@@peterw29 I remember my grandfather making sure that I had peed before we got in his car to drive from Flatbush to Sheepshead Bay to go out on my great-uncle's fishing boat when I was still a little kid: early 1950s, probably. “Yauhw shauw you don’ need to go to the terlet?” My family lived in a small town in the Catskills during the school year, and on a three-family farm in NE Pennsylvania when school was out, and I thought that my grandfather’s speech was unimaginably exotic. Later, I thought it was embarrassing, but that was at an age where everything adults did was embarrassing.

[@paulweiss2720]

I’ve been thinking about how I wrote those sounds, and I think that I capitulated to the conventional “Hollywood Brooklyn” representation of Thoisday. That’s not actually the way he sounded, though. The first vowel of the diphthong was lower - closer to a schwa. So maybe /əi/ , or even lower like /ɔi/ instead of /oi/ ?

[@peterw29]

@@paulweiss2720 Sorry, I don't speak IPA or high/low/front/back, but I agree that oi is a distortion, and a schwa would be closer. I imagine it to be rather like the -euil in the French word fauteuil.

[@Muhahahahaz]

Interesting… I was familiar with hearing the “oi” (instead of “r”), but I had no idea that “oi” would be pronounced as “r” in exchange

[@fanqa9765]

Another fun example of this is the Korean surname 박 romanised as Park. There's no rhotic in the original Korean.

[@mollof7893]

Korean "romanisation" really sucks

[@languagejones6784]

WHAT

[@simonspethmann8086]

Yes, well. They write it Park in English, because it's pronounced park ... the way British would pronounce it, eh. Makes total sense, but also shows that shortcuts commonly end in disaster. 😅 Another fun example: "K" in front of a vowel is pronounced "sh" in Swedish. So the spelling Peking makes total sense. 🤣👍

[@egbront1506]

@@simonspethmann8086 K in front of a front vowel is actually pronounced like the CH of ICH in German. If you were going to approximate it, it would be closer to English CH than SH. However, there are exceptions, like KILLA (lad) or KÖ (queue) where the K is pronounced hard as in English.

[@simonspethmann8086]

@@egbront1506 How and in what Swedish dialects would k be pronounced like English ch? The German ch in ich is pretty similar to English sh in my book (there is no 100% equivalent to ch)...

[@jasonschuchardt7624]

Another fact in a similar vein. One of the most influential mathematicians of the 20th century was named Shiing-Shen Chern. Which is romanized from Mandarin Chinese using a system called Gwoyeu Romatzyh which uses the r to represent tone because in a nonrhotic accent it wouldn't affect the pronunciation. Unfortunately in the US that means that his name is routinely mispronounced to the point that people probably wouldn't understand you if you pronounced his name properly and you didn't have a non-rhotic accent yourself.

[@generalZee]

My grandmother was from Hoboken, NJ and had the craziest use of R's. My dad called it an "R Warehouse." She would take the cah to bah to have pizzer and soder.

[@butterflybullet]

Al Bowlly singing Ray Noble's "The Very Thought of You" has my favorite Intrusive R in it because it's essential to the rhyme scheme: "The mere Idea[r] of you The longing here for you You'll never know how slow The moments go till I'm near to you" Mr. Bowlly was born to a Greek father and Lebanese mother in Portuguese Mozambique in 1898 and raised in British South Africa. I sing this song to my girlfriend often and I absolutely include that intrusive R, every single time. I am from Georgia, United States. 😅

[@noelleggett5368]

We Aussies often talk about the American TV stah: Pamela Randasson.

[@omp199]

As a British person, I can confirm that that is her name.

[@zak3744]

@@omp199 Just think, we could write the 90s British TV presenter Anna Ryder Richardson's name as Anna Ida Ichardson and it would sound exactly the same! 😂

[@omp199]

@@zak3744 I don't remember her, but yes, you are right!

[@omp199]

@@zak3744 I always wondered about the Australian actress Indiana Evans and whether she called herself Indiana Revans. Since @noelleggett5368 is Australian, he might know.

[@KinkyTurtle]

My favorite example of intrusive R is Billy Joel singing about "Brender and Eddie".

[@dimmmmmmp]

this danish guitarist jens larsen pronounces ‘idea’ as [aɪdiɻ], which is coincidentally the same kind of pronunciation you often get from a native-mandarin english learner

[@CuriosityCore101]

I've never had my mind blown this much by linguistics before. O.O Also, this explains some stuff I've been wondering for years that ironically can be summed up by a particular app I use. The important thing about the app is it primarily takes the form of an audio story that takes place in Britain and the characters come from lots of places therefore have lots of accents. The first thing is that I've wondered for a long time why certain British accents seem to add an R to the ends of names that end in vowels. It must be the linking R. Also, there's one particular character who's supposed to be from the USA originally and has a non-regional rhotic accent that I wouldn't expect to use intrusive Rs but every so often she does and it's always been kinda jarring to me. The voice actress' native accent must be one with intrusive Rs and even thought her US accent is usually flawless occasionally she slips up. (To be honest I expected something like that but I didn't know the terms and it's good to have intrusive Rs explained.)

[@johnrobinson3117]

All I can say is I am shocked and delighted that the voice of solid snake supports a linguistics channel. Mad props to the prof.

[@davidsoule8401]

Loving your channel, Dr. Jones! My ex-stepmom grew up in English schools in the middle east, so she’d always refer to my ex and me as ‘PatriciarandDave’. 😁

[@thoralfsahn]

In classes on German as second language my students often ask for the correct way to pronounce the "R". I tell them not to worry, because for almost every conceivable way to speak the letter there is a place in the German dialect continuum, where this is standard 😁 (Obviously a bit of an exaggeration, but still...)

[@Amanda-C.]

That's great and amusing, but, if I was aiming for any kind of "standard" or common regional accent, I'd still want to know which one I was aiming for. Or at least which one went with the other sounds I was learning to pronounce. (Not interested in German, specifically, though. Maybe someday.)

[@someknave]

I'm an Aussie, years ago I was in the states in some big box store trying to get my phone fixed or replaced and I had to tell them my email address. It had an r in it and the exchange went like this "r", "a?", "no r", "e?" "Arrrrrrrrgh" "oh you mean r" "yes"

[@JonnesTT]

"it's bruh rabbit" hit me with emotional whiplash from a direction I didn't even know could give you emotional whiplash.

[@atypocrat1779]

Saying R in a particular way is important to convey your snarky level of culture, pompous superiority and class.

[@PeterStanton]

I only realized the full extent and ridiculousness of this when I started studying Tlingit history and place names. The Tlingit language has no R sound whatsoever, but when Americans started recording Tlingit names in the 19th century, they often wrote the Tlingit “ah” vowel as “ar.” To take one example, there’s a place in Alaska called “Sarkar” and everyone now pronounces the R’s in English, but the original Tlingit name is S’a.àa Ká.

[@icelandicforforeigners]

You mentioned that the only linking feature of the different R's is that they are all written with R or something similar. I agree that there doesn't seem to be anything common between a uvular French R and an alveolar tapped R...yet some dialects of French (i.e. France) use the uvular R while others (like Algerian) use the alveolar tap. I'm sure there's an interesting history in the development of Algerian French that led to the alveolar R (my guess is it was caused by Arabic and Berber influence), but it's interesting that the alveolar R was able to so effectively take the place of the uvular R. If you can't pronounce the uvular R (or don't want to), why would you replace it with an alveolar tap as opposed to some other sound? Makes you wonder if there's something connecting the two sounds after all.

[@khelian613]

Well the French R used to be an alveolar R not too long ago (you can still find videos of rural people using it in the 2000's, though it's incredibly rare nowadays). Knowing algeria was under french rule since 1830, when most french people didn't have french as their first language and used an alveolar R anyway, I don't think they replaced anything. btw, I've never personally heard a maghrebi person speak french with alveolar Rs 🤔 Most arabic dialects do include both sounds to begin with so it would be kinda weird that they'd have trouble pronouncing it. It is more often the case with subsaharian people, like in Congo or Cameroun for example.

[@SlimThrull]

Intrusive R! Thank you. I've been wondering why certain words (like "law") somtiimes had an R tossed in at the end. Now I know.

[@godowskygodowsky1155]

English as a whole generally avoids vowel hiatus, so in many non-rhotic dialects, rhoticity is kept when removing it would leave two adjacent vowels across a syllable barrier. The intrusive r is what happens when you generalize this rule so that you insert an r whenever you would otherwise have a vowel hiatus. You might be able to call this an example of morphological leveling or an early phase thereof.

[@georgebattrick2365]

@@godowskygodowsky1155 Laura Norder

[@languagejones6784]

Excellent!

[@retibeenK]

A boyfriend (from Boston) upon meeting my mother (from Baltimore), within 5 minutes of meeting her exclaimed, "So that's where all our Rs went!"

[@fairyofdaisies]

this was all so fascinating, my jaw kept dropping after every mindblowing revelation ("wait that makes so much sense!") great video!

[@rugbybeef]

Yay Quakera! I really enjoy when I find out that someone on a podcast or KZbin channel has a Penn background or connection. My sociology professors presented Dr. Labov's elevator study as a creative, informal method of research. I really enjoy how linguistics can inform on issues of class, race, and ethnicity (such as your discussion of Latinx and the Spanish animate before this video). That and Professor Santorini's syntax course changed my life. I wish that linguistics were more widely understood and encouraged as it is so much more nuanced than underlining parts of a sentence. "Doing so" could make languages more accessible and mistakes more understandable by analytically minded students. I myself struggled to understand English syntax through high school and college, let alone the six or seven years of Spanish as well. After seeing syntax trees on a whiteboard at the LGBT Center and Dr. Santorini's class I was able to intuitively understand nuanced grammatical distinctions (adjectivals, topic v. subject distinctions) when took intro Japanese. Anyway, I had a question pop into my head as I was reviewing this before posting. How would a native Bostonian or other non-rhotic speaker pronounce "Quaker"? Would this be subject to the "linking R" for phrases like "Quakers are". Also, what about language learners who have a native liquid R like Japanese in Boston and London where non-rhotic speech is prominent? How do they cope with rhotics and their rather complex phonetics?

[@MarlonOwnsYourCake]

The r being equivalent to h thing threw me into a deep visceral rage.

[@languagejones6784]

Honestly, we should just be doubling the vowel instead of adding silent consonants.

[@MarlonOwnsYourCake]

@@languagejones6784 you're 20% right

[@EllenKozisek]

I appreciate the mention of vocalization of R in non-rhotic dialects. Usually it's described as the R just being gone, but I (rhotic American) definitely hear something that my brain hears as equivalent to an R in some of those spots.

[@KCIvey]

I remember when the singer Sade first came on the scene, the pronunciation of her name was always given in a form created by a nonrhotic speaker, "shar-DAY", so Americans all dutifully pronounced it with an r. I don't understand what nonrhotic speakers have against writing "ah". It would work just as well for them but also work for everyone else. On the pirate point, I thought the stereotypical pirate accent was supposed to come from the actor Robert Newton, who did use a rhotic accent in his portrayal of Long John Silver. en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Robert_Newton

[@ethanpintar5454]

Yeah, that pirate accent is specifically an English West Country accent because Newton happened to be from the West Country. He was just speaking in his own accent but it became associated with pirates as a result. In reality there's no real reason to think pirates would have sounded anything like that; I mean they came from all over and would have all had different accents so it doesn't even make sense to think there was a specific "pirate accent" at all.

[@pooyatiquairequrious4186]

what if someone with an accent pronounces the h at ah then? that's not working, i believe English needs more letters to represent its vowels

[@EchoLog]

@@pooyatiquairequrious4186 not calling w, y, r and l vowels and not using diacritics on vowels are my English orthographic pet peeves. We're in a world where English speakers see foreign text on the internet daily, we don't even need to learn the languages to learn from their orthographic insights.

[@alicemilne1444]

@@ethanpintar5454 The West Country was known for having pirates, though. There were sea-going pirates and there were land pirates too. The latter were known as the Wreckers. They would walk along the shore at night carrying a lantern and lure ships onto the rocks. It's no coincidence that one of the Gilbert and Sullivan operettas is called "The Pirates of Penzance".

[@leocomerford]

Newton as Long John Silver: kzbin.info/www/bejne/bIXOpYebe5iDl7s

[@jack2453]

What amuses me is the bizarre contorted sound that comes out of rhotics when they meet two Rs in a row, viz 'mirror' and 'stirrer'. And how they make 'orange' into a single syllable.

[@stevenglowacki8576]

I'm reminded of the fact that there's a Korean name that gets transliterated as either "Pak" or "Park" depending on whether the writer thinks their audience is Rhotic or non-Rhotic, and it means that it gets pronounced incorrectly if someone of the opposite persuasion reads it. As the "pasta" example, I don't think it has as much to do with thinking there should be an 'r' there than with a general complete difference in approach in pronouncing words from a foreign language. Commonwealth speakers will generally pronounce it was though it was always an English word, while American speakers will generally follow the rules from Spanish or Italian, where most such words some from.

[@jonathanramsey]

When I lived in Saint Louis, I found a lot of speakers pronounce a fourth of a dollar like “quah-ter” This added to my astonishment at how much Great Lakes Vowel Shift had encroached into Eastern Missouri.

[@EarlHayward]

This video made me think of when I was in Navy ROTC and it was explained how the British pronounce colonial and lieutenant compared to how we pronounce in the US (and some other words we just don’t use, like quay versus dock)…

[@notwithouttext]

5:16 actually, it's because the british "a" is closer to the italian "a" than the british "ar" is. the canadians who say pasta with a short a (i'm canadian and i don't) probably borrow from the british. the american "a" is farther from italian "a" than american "ah" is though. watch the video by geoff lindsey on foreign words, it's pretty interesting

[@sam927]

That doesn't explain why the British "a" in Spanish words like "tacos" isn't closer to Spanish though, which supports the "otherwise it would be tarcos" hypothesis (Edited to add missing word)

[@blotski]

@@sam927 I don't quite understand that comment. I'm English and I say tacos with a short a like in Spanish. I also speak Spanish btw. To my ears Americans say 'taahcos'.

[@notwithouttext]

@@sam927 the british short "a" is closer to the spanish "a" than british "ar" is. the american "ah" is closer than american short "a" is though. to be more precise, british and spanish "a" are some form of /a/, while american "a" is some form of /æ/. (for any brits who do say tacos with a long "ar", it's just because americans are more familiar with tacos than brits, and say it with a long "ah".)

[@blotski]

I actually put a link to Geoff Lindsey's video as it was very relevant but my comment was deleted.

[@alonsoACR]

@@sam927 Im a Spanish speaker and let me blow your mind. Every Spanish vowel is short. All five of them.

[@johnfitzgerald7618]

When I was a young Canadian back in the 50s, I often heard "khaki" pronounced as "karky", which fits with your speculation about "pasta" and "kebab". I don't know if this pronunciation is still used. Oh -- and at Canadian racetracks the exacta was an exactor into this century, and spelt that way. The tracks I used to go to seem to have adopted exacta, but I don;t know if others have, or if the bettors (bettas?) have. Another oh -- a very helpful video.

[@egbront1506]

"Car key" is how we still say it in the UK. Whenever I hear the American "cacky" pronunciation, it always takes me a moment to process and then it sounds like a judgement.

[@Drazzz27]

I don't know if it's been mentioned, Chinese-American mathematician Shiing-Shen Chern's surname is 陳 (Chén in pinyin, IPA [tʂʰən]). This R is from some older type of transliteration of Mandarin Chinese, where it was used to denote the second tone. Apparently, even Chern himself pronounced his name in English as 'churn', so it's an accepted pronunciation nowadays.

[@juniper617]

Fun fact: Bill Labov was a professor of mine at Penn in the 80’s, for several classes. (I was doing a BA in linguistics and sub matriculating for an advanced degree, but then I just took the bachelors and got on with life. Did an advanced degree in something completely different, some years later.) It seems like he did a lot of just marching up to people and getting them to say stuff, then turning it into an academic paper. Have you heard the one about how you pronounce “Secaucus?”

[@natlewvt]

My delightfully curmudgeonly high school physics teacher - Bostonian - dropped his r's in the usual places, but for him the first three letter of the Greek alphabet (essential in physics!) were alfer, baiter, and gammer. On the Jewish side of things, one older Bostonion Jew bewildered us all at Passover one year with a linking r and a Yiddish shift of stress. Recounting the old (false) story, he quoted the imaginary sexist rabbi as "A woman on the bimmer is like an orange on the seder plate."

[@jeff__w]

3:49 “Fahvel” Being originally from New York, I would have _definitely_ thought his name was “Farvel” or close to it-or at least not “Faivel.” Before I left New York for college, I had _no_ idea that I dropped my “r”s because, well, I was indicating “vowel length and color”-I knew the difference between “far” (as I pronounced it non-rhotically) and “fa” (supposedly a long, long way to run). I wonder if you asked people from the New York City area if they pronounced their “r”s what kind of response you’d get.

[@earthdrawn]

I-monothongization? R-deletion? Yup, can attest. My name is Michael, and I’ve lived in the mountains in north Georgia for 40 years. I learned to speak in Missouri, so my Appalachian accent is not very strong, but it’s apparently strong enough. Several years ago, I made several business contacts via phone, a few of which were in New York. After introductions via telephone, I began to receive multiple faxes daily from each contact, but I noticed that all the faxes from New York (3 separate individuals) were addressed to Marko (not even Marco, which would seem to be a more suitable spelling). I still don’t know where the “l” went, but now I know why the “Mic” became “Mark”.

[@jasonremy1627]

My favorite use of intrusive R is in the Billy Joel song "Scenes From An Italian Restaurant" where he sings about "Brendar and Eddie"

[@kirankataria6491]

Thank you. The one that drives me mad is the rendition of the name the Little Women called their mother. I'm fairly certain they were calling her Mah-mee non-rhotically in their New England accent, but LMA chose for somecreason to denote the long A by inserting that R. I don't know of any dialect accent where Marr-mee is used.

[@johnnye87]

I think the 'pasta' thing is just different perceptual divisions of the vowel space. Show Brits and Americans an *Italian* pronouncing pasta and ask them how they're saying it - /pasta/ or /pɑstɑ/ - and it usually lines up with how they'd pronounce it themselves. My impression is that GenAm /a/ is more raised and /ɑ/ is shorter compared to Southern British English counterparts.

[@michaelbednarski4601]

Yes, we Canadians do say "pæsta" rather than "pawsta." We also say "foyé" rather than foyur" for foyer. We do pronounce our R's in car and park. We don't insert R's between words.

[@tedcrowley6080]

Where I grew up (North Jersey, suburbs of Newark and NYC), the word "wash" was pronounced "waRsh". My grandparents lived in "WaRshington, DC". I haven't noticed this in any other words, or in any other region (though I wouldn't notice it if it was there).

[@vickigsolomon1241]

I grew up in Southern Nevada/Arizona. Those flood plains are definitely called warshes.

[@paulweiss2720]

An old university friend from the upper Midwest US used to come home from crew practice to say, “My sweatshirt needs warshed."

[@empresagabriel]

Amazing video as always!

[@sphexes]

I got to hear Labov speak at the University Of Toledo 25 years ago. I love your channel!

[@theosib]

I love this channel!

[@XtecHubble]

You are the only youtuber that I feel like slowing down, instead of speeding up haha

[@DaveTexas]

My mother and an uncle (by marriage, unrelated to my mother) both add an "r" to "wash" - "warsh." "Washington" is "Warshington." They don’t do this with any other words, however. They’re pre-WW2 babies, born 1939-1940. My mother’s family was from Arkansas and Tennessean, but my mother spent most of her childhood in New Orleans and Houston. My uncle’s family was all from Houston. I’ve never heard anyone else use this pronunciation. I always thought it must have been a Houston thing, but since others of my parents’ generation didn’t do this - and my father’s family’s roots in Houston go back to around 1900 - I’m not sure if it has anything to do with a Houston "accent."

[@alistairlacaille]

BRUH!!! You just broke my brain with Bruh Rabbit!

[@GroovingPict]

Here in Norway there's a civil war between two types of R's. The socalled "Skarre R" (like a back of the throat R; a guttural R) has for the last couple of centuries been spreading and gaining ground slowly but steadily from western Norway (think Bergen) towards the east, around the south coast. Like a very slow, very annoying virus.

[@blotski]

I speak Italian and have lived in Italy. The British pronunciation of 'pasta' is closer to the original Italian. We have that short 'a' sound (especially in central and northern UK) which doesn't exist in the USA.

[@EchoLog]

Which short a in particular?

[@blotski]

@@EchoLog The one represented by the phonetic letter /a/ rather than the short /æ/ or the longer /ɑː/

[@EchoLog]

@@blotski I've never been more confused instead of less when shown IPA and given length information than now. I know what you mean though, i sorted it out after the third read. my brain just played some trick on me at first. Took me back to 3rd grade "short and long A" up on the chalkboard and then the teacher proceeds to say /ɑ/ and /e͜ɪ/. "Whatchumeen SHORT and LONG lady thems is big and wiggly just as much as they're short and long" said my inner dialogue, but nothing left my mouth. And now after speaking and thinking about different American accents I've learned and been around, i don't think I have /æ/ or /ɑ/ in my native English. They're either raised, rhotocized, sulcalized or centralized in some other way. I need a mirror.

[@BBarNavi]

No, it absolutely is not. The British "at" vowel is æ, which is fronted, and the American "on" vowel is a, which is centered, and therefore closer to Italian.

[@ernestcline2868]

I am floored by how you bravely go fourth!

[@JW-vi2nh]

When I worked in customer service, I talked to a man who was in an absolute rage because we had shipped his item "in the original cotton." Over and over, he just kept screaming "WHY would you ship it in the original cotton?!" At the time, I was training some new agents so they were "splitting in" on the call. Their headsets were connected to mine so they could listen in. We were all looking at each other with puzzled expressions. Why indeed? Why would we ship something in cotton? And what item would be in "original cotton?" The man was belligerent. There was no way to ask him to explain what he meant, so I started looking over his account for clues. That's when I saw it. He lived in Boston. Aha! He was angry that we had shipped his order in the "original carton" AKA the manufacturer's box, instead of putting that box inside another box. This was almost a decade ago and I still laugh whenever I think about it.

[@ke9tv]

Even the most rhotic of English dialects usually use a non-rhotic pronunciation for 'arse'. (Yes, I know, it's different around Bristol, guv'nor!) The Americans drop the 'r' even when spelling it.

[@76rjackson]

Thai has a real love hate relationship with R. In educated and official speech, it's trilled as in Spanish but it can also morph into an L sound, or, amomgst friends, be casually dropped altogether. 2 consecutive written R's are pronounced as /a/ and final written R's of course are pronounced as N's. Quite a versatile letter, and it's not alone in its overachiever status in the Thai abugida. No wonder it gets dropped out of speech so often.

[@Accordeonaire]

I have friends from France who have commented that the class where they discussed how to pronounce 33rd in English was one of the funniest things they'd ever experienced.

[@RobespierreThePoof]

This is the kind of thing that makes me realize that while i love languages, i was definitely right not to choose linguistics. History comes so much easier. I just don't hear all the nuances in speech without great effort

[@ManicEightBall]

When my wife was a kid, she lived in New Hampshire for a short while. In school, she was taught to pronounce it as "idear". She mentioned this to a neighbor lady, and said she didn't understand why they said it as "idear". To this, the neighbor responded, "haven't you heard of silent letters?"

[@Barde_Jaune]

Came here for the idear, was not disappointerd !

[@gary.h.turner]

What do you call a deer with no eyes? No idear.

[@jack2453]

@@gary.h.turner the joke that rhotics don't get.

[@digitalnomad9985]

@@jack2453 Other way around, most rhotics DON'T use intrusive "r"

[@jack2453]

@@digitalnomad9985 No. For non-rhotics 'no idea' and 'no-eye deer' sound exactly the same. That is why it is funny. Keep up. 😁

[@MikeV8652]

O, the intrusive R! I laugh whenever I hear some New Yorker or Bostonian on TV talking about "lawr enforcement." I want to shake them and tell them that Laura was my great grandmother. Also, there's all that historic news footage of John Kennedy talking about the missile crisis in Cubar. 🤣

[@yiannisroubos8846]

I'm an Australian lawyer. I have a typical South Australian Adelaide accent. English is my first language. Anyway, I use non-rhotic english except when I'm on the phone and I'm spelling something out and I need to say R. I always say R like an American would and say ARR because if I say R as I normally would people would get confused. I find it so weird and unnatural to say ARR though. Like my mouth is telling me I'm being pretentious or eccentric.

[@joadbreslin5819]

I plan to imitate you during the next Talk Like an Australian Lawyer Day.

[@philosophyofiron9686]

Something missed that I'm not sure you're aware of is the pattern of r-deletion + intrustive r in the Mandarin English accent. Since I taught English pronunciation to Chinese students for a year and a half, and have otherwise lived in China and heard a lot of Mandarin-accented English in the U.S, I've been made aware of it. The "debarkle" example from this video sounds just like the accent I'm referring to. Something interesting about it, is that some people even tend to drop -er's and -or's! There were students in the past who I could not get to say the words "hamburger" or "refridgerator." Even when I called attention to it and kept having them repeat, the words would consistently come out as "hamburg" and "refridgerate." Yet at the same time, a word like "sauna" might become "sarna," and "woman" might become "warman." There may be some somewhat unique and interesting things going on here. Also, I think the Mandarin R is one of the most interesting ones. Listen to how the word for hot "re" (熱) is said. This R starts with the tongue in the same position as for "sh" and "ch."

[@hglundahl]

1:08 Another commonality. In related languages and accents, with different actual sounds for R, they occur _roughly speaking_ in same places in same words (English has at least two or three obvious exceptions : word final or syllable final R in general, word final R before a following vowel, intrusive R between vowels).

[@jeffsykes4589]

Was watching Tom Scott talk about the R/W distinction (some people make the W sound instead of the R sound) and noticed he makes the R sound with the front of his mouth. You (Language Jones) do it too. But I make the R sound out of the left side of my mouth. Is that common? Is it a signal of someone who, as a child, had difficulty with the R/W distinction, and found a way to compensate? Does this question even make sense?

[@languagejones6784]

Very interesting. In first year phonology we talked about how there are two very different physical ways to make the same American R sound -- bunched and retroflex. I definitely do the retroflex r, which is pointing the tip of the tongue back toward the back of the hard palate. A good friend does the bunched r, with the tip of the tongue behind the bottom teeth and the body of the tongue rising toward the hard palate. If you mean my pirate face, that's just because the other side is missing a tooth -- which would probably have been better for the pirate shtik.

[@THall-vi8cp]

Spot-on with the various examples of how Aussies pronounce "no" (and also, "know"). That weird 'r' sound on it is even more pronounced when said by Kiwis.

[@Pehmokettu]

This reminds me of one long video where someone explained the Rammstein R and how most Germans don't pronounce R like Till Lindemann does. :D

[@benw9949]

Oh, I have heard people in the South and Southwest, including Texas and Oklahoma, use short A as in apple, cat, ash, in words like pasta and casa, and don't get started on jalapeño. But you forgot the wash vs. "warsh" intrusive R or the R Americans added to "schoolmarm" (which should've been school ma'am). I've heard "er" in addition to "uh," but I'd agree "erm" is "um." Side note: yes, long I/Y can reduce to "ah" in some accents, but closer to short A as in apple, cat, ash in other accents. I wonder also if that /Æ, æ/ + /ee/ = /æ-i/ is or was a variant for ai/ay and long I/Y before or after a divergence.

[@thejamesthird]

The Dutch R is very unique too

[@leocomerford]

Which one? ;)

[@kindauncool]

3:05 perfect delivery.

[@jack2453]

A story I heard from my anthropology lecturer - I assume apocryphal - concerns a Virginia community where most of the population was rhotic except for two groups: the old plantation families, and African Americans. The former group never ordered anything from local businesses by phone.

[@mrewan6221]

Not all versions of Australian English add "r" to "no". I suspect it's most likely in Cultivated Australian, especially for people who normally speak General or Broad but are bunging on posh (or think they're doing RP). But I wouldn't be surprised if nearly all speakers add an intrusive-r to some words. I'll admit to saying "draw-ring", even in considered speech. I'm likely to say "faw-re-vah" with the "r" in the middle, but I know if I sing "Hallelujah Chorus" I carefully omit that middle "r" - "faw-e-vah". But that's a learned habit for me, and many people sing "faw-re-vah".

[@ak5659]

I've lived most of my life somewhere along Rte 95 between Boston and NYC. Everyone is happily non-rhotic and feels little need to compensate by randomly rhoticizing as in the 'American' examples you give. When I moved to NYC in the late 80's I noticed the 'a' as in 'apple' used when in Boston you'd hear either a long 'a' or a broad 'a' as in 'father'. The words 'aunt' and 'radiator' come to mind. Separately I also noticed most non-ethnic, white native NY-ers had an aversion to the perfect tenses. Ex. 'I'm working here 25 years' or 'I ate' when their point was the present situation of being not hungry. I'm very happy both have faded. I suspect all the immigrants from current/former Commonwealth nations are to thank for that. If you want to explore this furthsr maybe you could look into why most people imitating a Boston accent do not sound remotely Bostonian and why (and I've read this example in several books/articles) Bostonians supposedly pronounce 'potty' and 'party' the same when in reality they aren't even close.

[@canadagood]

Reminds of the time as teenager I first met a guy from what I heard as "Bohsunmass". I had to get him to repeat it three times before I figured out where it was. As it happens, my mother's father was born in Medford, Mass before moving to Canada. I never met him and now I wonder what he sounded like.

[@davexhayter]

Growing up around linking R in Boston def made the similar French quirk a freebie.

[@NAPIERV6]

I was in Cambodia and my tour guide asked me where else I had gone on my trip. I mentioned Myanmar, but he had absolutely no clue what I was referring to until I did my best attempt to drop the R.

[@SIC647]

I chose to speak British English because American is too full of rrrrrrrrrrr. I am a Dane and our R is a grovelly throat sound. It is the sound that often gives away people as foreigners, even if they speak good Danish (not Dutch and German people though, they can do it too).

[@michaelwald6671]

What I'd to know is why did my late grandfather--and other people from his region of Nebraska--tend to inert an "r" after an "A" sound. They would speak of "A squa(r)sh from the garden, or " Those politicians in Wa(r)shington". It doesn't seem to match the description of an "intrusive r", and their accent is mostly rhotic, as far as I can remember.

[@maxonmendel5757]

I knew about the R and L thing because my friend lived in S. Korea for a couple years as a AF brat and explained to me how R and L are kind of the same thing in Asian languages, which is why those letters give them so much trouble in 'Engrish'

[@crptpyr]

Not necessarily, Korean in particular has quite a bit of variety with them. They have an L, a tapped R, and a vowel coloured R more similar to the American one. They're all *written* using the same character - ㄹ - but pronounced differently depending on placement in words and other factors like doubling (a double ㄹ is just gonna be L). Chinese has more variety with rhotics too. The one language I know where it becomes an issue is Japanese, which only has a tapped R. No L, and no other rhotics.

[@maxonmendel5757]

@@crptpyr that's fascinating! thats kind of similar to how different characters in roman alphabets can sound different. in English, y is vowel or consonantal depending on context, and in Spanish double L is a y sound. idk if that's the same thing, but thats what I thought of.

[@paulweiss2720]

There has also been fascinating work done on babies discriminating and performing various sounds along the continuum, and that at a certain point their cognition “freezes” at the phoneme that’s actually used in their language, and they can no longer hear the other variants after that time.

[@Tysto]

Here's one: "not arf" among Cockney characters in _Oliver_ and other works can be quite a mystery to Americans. It's "not half", meaning "all the way, absolutely".

[@theosib]

American English terminal er is a vowel, and the consonant r like in run is its corresponding semivowel, right?

[@joelcohenx]

Modern Hebrew, I once read, switched from rolling R (like in Arabic) to the throaty R (like German and French had a baby R). Also, some latin american Spanish accents switch L with R and back. (like in some parts of Venezuela). Indeed R is interesting and should be split into separate new letters

[@kindauncool]

2:32 literal life changing information

[@kierstynsharrow1266]

"Warsh"

[@seeds5835]

And "Chicargo?

[@ghosteyes2034]

As someone who speaks a dialect that has 'warsh" instead of "wash", it just sounds much better in our accent. The flow of words with "wash" in them improves and is easier to distinguish from other words when the "R" is added. At least that is what it sounds like to my ears.

[@TalaWolf95]

Both of my grandmothers were born and raised in Washington state, in the same rural farming community at the southern end of the Olympic Peninsula, both put Rs in words like wash (Warsh), which means they both say Warshington. I have no idea where this came from, it is not a common occurrence in our local dialect in the younger generations. I wonder if it is a hand-me-down from their parents and grandparents who moved here from the Midwest following the immigration paths of other Norwegian settlers. But it doesn't seem to be a hand-me-down from Norwegian, maybe it's more like something they picked up from those regions of the US as they moved?

[@lanzji1345]

There is definitely some link between alveolar and uvular ... uh ... spanish and french type R. French went from alveolar in baroque era to uvular now (some dialects and accents never followed or went back again). German is doing it right now. As a kid, I knew other kids havin trouble pronouncing the alveolar, as it is standard in swiss german. Some pronounced it "l", but others pronounced it like the french. So, there is something there...

[@languagejones6784]

Hebrew did it as well, independently, between the 2nd and 8th centuries, according to a recent masters thesis I read

[@drtaverner]

There is a sound in Japanese which gets transliterated to "R" but encompasses both English R and L sounds. The Japanese is more of a clip off the hard palate, but it means they'll have _Weekry News_ magazines or are taught to pronounce "Twelve" as "TeWeReBeh". To our ear it seems they're mixing up R and L but usually it's the same sound being applied to English structures.

[@andreakoroknai1071]

I noticed that when watching an anime, there's a character by the name of "Ray" but it's pronounced more like "Lay" although not entirely, it's just a sound we simply don't have in English

[@tedwhelpdale7931]

"Terlet" That is all. Okay, I lied. Also "warshroom". Incidentally, where you find the terlet.

[@rickeyoftherhodes8983]

Ok, but how do explain my dad's intrusive R in his non-non-rhotic accent? (Southeast Texas) He adds Rs to ends of words like "idea(r)" and in the middle of words like "wa(r)sh" and "window" is "winder".

[@dangillespie7052]

I was hoping that you might have included the odd slender R sound in Irish in your list of diverse R sounds.

[@talideon]

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