Definition and Examples of Rhotic and Non-Rhotic Speech

In  phonology  and sociolinguistics, the term rhoticity refers broadly to the sounds of the r family. More specifically, linguists commonly make  distinctions between rhotic and non-rhotic dialects or accents.  Simply put, rhotic speakers  pronounce  the  /r/ in words like large and  park,  while non-rhotic speakers generally  dont pronounce the /r/ in these words.  Non-rhotic is also known as r-dropping. Linguist  William Barras notes that levels of rhoticity can vary  between speakers in a community, and the process of a loss of rhoticity is a gradual one, rather than the sharp binary distinction implied by the labels rhotic and non-rhotic (Lancashire in  Researching Northern English,  2015). EtymologyFrom the Greek letter rho  (the letter r) Examples and Observations [C]onsider dialects that drop r such as varieties of English spoken in the United Kingdom, the southern United States, and New England.  Speakers  of these r-Iess dialects dont drop r just anywhere, they do so only under certain phonological conditions. For example, speakers drop r in a word when it follows a vowel, and would therefore not pronounce the r in the following words: heart, farm, car But they would pronounce r in these words, because r does not follow a vowel: red,  brick, scratch The r-rule in words is even more complex; though you may be familiar with the phrase pahk the cah  in Hahvad Yahd, a stock phrase used to imitate this dialectical feature, real speakers of such varieties of English in fact retain a final r when the following word begins with a vowel. Speakers say  pahk the car  in Hahvad Yahd. (A similar rules accounts for so-called r-intrusion,  where some speakers add r to words that end in vowels before another word that begins with a vowel, as in . . . That idear is a good one.)(Anne Lobeck and Kristin Denham,  Navigating English Grammar: A Guide to Analyzing Real Language. Wiley-Blackwell,  2013)   Varieties of English: Rhotic and Non-Rhotic Accents [Rhotic accents are] accents of English in which non-prevocalic /r/ is pronounced, i.e. in which words like star have retained the original pronunciation /star/ starr rather than having the newer pronunciation /sta:/ stah, where the /r/ has been lost. Rhotic accents of English include nearly  all accents of Scottish and Irish English, most accents of Canadian and American English, accents from the south-west  and north-west of England, some varieties of Caribbean English and a small number of New Zealand accents. Non-rhotic accents are those of Australia, South Africa, eastern and central England, some parts of the Caribbean, and a number of places on the eastern seaboard of the United States and Canada, as well as African American Vernacular English. (Peter Trudgill, A Glossary of Sociolinguistics. Oxford University Press, 2003)   Rhoticity in British English While the dropping of r had spread  [from London and  East Anglia]  to most other accents of England by the eighteenth century, rhoticity remains a feature of accents spoken in the geographically more extreme areas of England today: the southwest, northwest, and northeast.  This distribution suggests that the loss  of this feature has been spreading outwards from the eastern dialects since the fifteenth century, but has not yet affected these few remaining strongholds. From this development, we might predict that postvocalic r will at some stage be entirely lost from accents of English, though it is impossible to determine exactly when this process will reach completion.(Simon Horobin, How English Became English: A Short History of a Global Language. Oxford University Press, 2016)   A Change From Below Throughout most of the nineteenth century, non-rhotic pronunciations  continued to be condemned, but  by the time Daniel Joness pronouncing dictionary was published in 1917, non-rhotic pronunciations had become characteristic of RP. The spread of non-rhotic pronunciation can thus be seen as a change from below, beginning in nonstandard London English  and spreading geographically northwards and  socially upwards until, in the early twenty-first century, it is the rhotic pronunciations that are marked as nonstandard in England.  Even within rhotic areas there  is evidence that younger people are less likely to pronounce /r/ in words such as arm. In other words, rhoticity is a recessive feature in England.(Joan C.  Beal,  Introduction to Regional Englishes: Dialect Variation in England. Edinburgh University Press,  2010)   Rhoticity in New York City Sociolinguistically, there is more social stratification on the British model in the accents  of New York City than anywhere else in North America, with upper social class accents having many fewer local features than lower-class accents. . . . New York City English, like that of Boston, is non-rhotic, and linking and intrusive  /r/  are usual. As a consequence, the local accent shares with RP and the other non-rhotic accents  the vowels  /IÉ™/, /ɛə/, /ÊŠÉ™/, /ÉÅ"/ as in peer, pair, poor, bird. However, as in the Boston area, younger speakers are now becoming increasingly rhotic, especially among higher social class groups. (Peter Trudgill and Jean Hannah,  International English: A Guide to the Varieties of Standard English, 5th ed.  Routledge, 2013)The distribution of /r/ is one of the most  widely researched sociolinguistic features. [William] Labov (1966/2006), in a groundbreaking study, reports on the social stratification of rhoticity in New York City. His general results  are that the absence of [r] in coda position is generally associated with lower social prestige and informal registers. Labov argues that rhoticity  is a marker of New York City speech, since it shows style-shifting and hypercorrection. This would not be the case if New Yorkers were not aware of this difference, even unconsciously. The marker status of rhoticity is further supported by [Kara] Becker (2009), a study conducted on rhoticity in the Lower East Side forty years later. As she notes, There is much evidence that both New Yorkers and non-New Yorkers alike do  identify non-rhoticity as a salient feature of NYCE [New York City English], one that (in combination with other NYCE features or even alone) can index a New York persona (Becker 2009: p644).(Pà ©ter Rà ¡cz,  Salience in Sociolinguistics: A Quantitative Approach.  Walter de Gruyter, 2013)In terms of phonology, many AAE speakers in  New York City  and many parts of the country t end to omit /r/ when it follows a vowel. This pattern, known as post-vocalic /r/-lessness  or â€Å"non-rhoticity,† leading to the pronunciation of park as pahk and car as cah.  It is not unique to AAE and  is found in the wider New York City vernacular among older and working-class white speakers, but not very commonly among young, upper middle class Whites. (Cecelia Cutler,  White Hip Hoppers, Language and Identity in Post-Modern America.  Routledge, 2014) Intrusive /r/ Intrusive /r/,  heard in expressions like the idear  of it and the lawr of the sea, arises by analogy with words like father, which quite regularly have a final /r/ before a vowel, but not before a consonant or a pause. For a long time, intrusive /r/ has been normal in educated speech after /Ç /, so that the idear of it and Ghanar and India are perfectly acceptable. Until relatively recently, however, intrusive /r/ has been stigmatized when it occurred after other vowels, so that the Shahr of Persia and the lawr of the sea were  considered vulgar. This now seems to have changed, however, and intrusive /r/ is widespread in educated speech after any vowel.  Sometimes the intrusive /r/ goes  on to attach itself permanently to the stem of the word, leading to such forms as drawring board and withdrawral. These are quite common, but probably not yet accepted as standard. (Charles Barber, Joan C.  Beal, and Philip A. Shaw, The English Language: A Historical Introduction, 2nd ed. Cambridge University Press, 2012)   The Lighter Side of R Dropping R-dropping  America has inspired a humorous  theorem called the Law of Conservation of Rs (formulated by Edward Scher in 1985), which holds that an r missing from one word will  turn up in excess in  another: fawth (fourth), for example, is balanced by idears or the common second r in sherbert. (Robert Hendrickson,  The Facts on File Dictionary of American Regionalisms.  Facts on File, 2000)