The Letter "r"
Jul. 29th, 2004 11:12 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
stoutfellowThis isn't anything important, but it's a phenomenon I've run into several times in the recent past, and I think it's interesting.
One of the great divisions of English is between "rhotic" and "non-rhotic" dialects. Non-rhotic dialects are those which weaken or omit "r" after vowels; most dialects of the Southern USA, and many dialects of British English are such. Generally, this presents no great difficulty to the ear or eye, but there's one situation in which it does have an impact. If a speaker of a non-rhotic dialect writes a non-standard word, especially if he's using eye-dialect ("Ah jist cain't unnerstan' 'im!"), what he writes can easily be misinterpreted by speakers of rhotic dialects. (NB: in the cases I'm about to describe, all of the writers are in fact male; hence the choice of pronoun.)
1) The Winnie-the-Pooh books feature a donkey by the name of Eeyore. Like most rhotic speakers (including the makers of the Disney movies), I've always pronounced the "r". But it was recently pointed out to me that A. A. Milne spoke a non-rhotic dialect. Now pronounce the name to yourself using an English accent. It makes a little more sense, doesn't it? (As an aside, the donkeys I've heard seem to say "haw-hee", not "hee-haw", but maybe that's just me.)
2) In the Uncle Remus stories, several characters are referred to as "Brer" - Brer Rabbit, Brer Fox, and the rest. Again, I have always pronounced this to rhyme with "rare". (Disney gets into the act again here.) But Joel Chandler Harris was a Southerner, and I have it on good authority that the correct pronunciation is closer to "bruh". (Compare "bro" today - or, for a more exotic analog, the use of "Fra" (< "frater") as a title for monks in medieval and Renaissance Italy.)
3) Turning to England, one sometimes sees the eye-dialect form "barmy". Once more, I needed to be reminded that the "r" is not pronounced (at least, not as an "r"). Giving it the correct pronunciation, I can see that it's really just a variant spelling - not a variant pronunciation - of "balmy". ("l" is almost as prone to being dropped, in certain contexts, as "r" is; compare "chalk", "talk", or - in some Southern dialects - "film" and "calm".)
It's not very significant, but I keep noticing things like this.
One of the great divisions of English is between "rhotic" and "non-rhotic" dialects. Non-rhotic dialects are those which weaken or omit "r" after vowels; most dialects of the Southern USA, and many dialects of British English are such. Generally, this presents no great difficulty to the ear or eye, but there's one situation in which it does have an impact. If a speaker of a non-rhotic dialect writes a non-standard word, especially if he's using eye-dialect ("Ah jist cain't unnerstan' 'im!"), what he writes can easily be misinterpreted by speakers of rhotic dialects. (NB: in the cases I'm about to describe, all of the writers are in fact male; hence the choice of pronoun.)
1) The Winnie-the-Pooh books feature a donkey by the name of Eeyore. Like most rhotic speakers (including the makers of the Disney movies), I've always pronounced the "r". But it was recently pointed out to me that A. A. Milne spoke a non-rhotic dialect. Now pronounce the name to yourself using an English accent. It makes a little more sense, doesn't it? (As an aside, the donkeys I've heard seem to say "haw-hee", not "hee-haw", but maybe that's just me.)
2) In the Uncle Remus stories, several characters are referred to as "Brer" - Brer Rabbit, Brer Fox, and the rest. Again, I have always pronounced this to rhyme with "rare". (Disney gets into the act again here.) But Joel Chandler Harris was a Southerner, and I have it on good authority that the correct pronunciation is closer to "bruh". (Compare "bro" today - or, for a more exotic analog, the use of "Fra" (< "frater") as a title for monks in medieval and Renaissance Italy.)
3) Turning to England, one sometimes sees the eye-dialect form "barmy". Once more, I needed to be reminded that the "r" is not pronounced (at least, not as an "r"). Giving it the correct pronunciation, I can see that it's really just a variant spelling - not a variant pronunciation - of "balmy". ("l" is almost as prone to being dropped, in certain contexts, as "r" is; compare "chalk", "talk", or - in some Southern dialects - "film" and "calm".)
It's not very significant, but I keep noticing things like this.
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Date: 2004-07-29 11:45 am (UTC)