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Linguist explains why Brits add an 'r' sound to words that end in vowels, but only sometimes

This is why "Anna is cute" becomes "Anner is cute" in British English.

American English vs. British English

Learning to speak English must be confusing when it's not your first language, especially considering how many distinct English accents there are. If you learn English strictly from American teachers, you'll end up pronouncing the language differently than if your teachers are British, Australian, or New Zealander.

One difference between American and British English is the way the two treat the "r' sound. American English uses the hard "r" sound (which is one of the rarest linguistic sounds in the world) a lot. Brits generally drop it at the end of words—father becomes "fath-uh," water becomes "wat-uh," and so on—and yet, Brits also insert "r' sounds where there isn't a letter "r," which is super confusing for Americans.

letter R, r sound, rhotic, non-rhotic, english accents How Brits use the "r" sound is confusing to Americans. Photo credit: Canva

Case in point: I watched Hamilton on stage in London, and in the final number, the whole cast sang "Angelic-er and Eliza were at his side when he died." How did they turn Angelica into Angelic-er? (Especially when they were supposed to be using American accents?)

A linguist named Derek explains that the inserted "r" in British English serves a specific purpose—as a placeholder to distinguish between the vowel sound at the end of one word and the vowel sound at the beginning of the next word.

@derek__ling

Answering more accent questions #language #linguistics #accents #english

So "America is" becomes "Americ-er is" and "banana is" becomes "banan-er is." (Or "banana rizz" as one clever commenter pointed out.) It's called an "intrusive R" and it sounds downright strange to the American ear. We're used to hearing "r" sounds all the time, but not in places where there isn't actually an "r" anywhere to be found.

When a word ends in a vowel and the next word begins with a vowel, Americans just slide the vowels together or sometimes put a little glottal stop in between the vowel sounds. British English differentiates them with an "r" sound. It's an unspoken rule—they don't learn it at school or anything, as it's dialectical, not grammatical. In fact, Brits often don't even realize they're doing it until it's pointed out to them.

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So if British people are perfectly capable of pronouncing an "r" at the end of a word, why do they not pronounce the "r" at the end of words that actually have a letter "r"? That's an interesting, if not totally clear, story.

People might assume that Americans were the ones who added the "r" pronunciation to English or that it must be a carryover from Scottish accents that pronounce the "r" with gusto. But in actuality, British people in general used to pronounce the "r" as well. That's right. British English actually used to sound more like American English, not the other way around.

How exactly the change happened has been a topic of some debate among linguists, but the gist is that England's non-rhotic accent (the accent that doesn't pronounce the "r") came about as a bit of socioeconomic snobbery in the 18th century. Certain classes of Brits started putting on the accent as a way of differentiating themselves from those of lower classes, at least in certain parts of England. Toss in a trendy fascination with the French around that time, and voila! Bye-bye "r" sounds.

R sound, rhotic, non-rhotic, linguistics, peewee herman Americans love the "r" sound. Giphy

But back to the present confusion about when the "r" gets pronounced. As Derek points out, both British and American folks often get it wrong when imitating one another's accents. Brits will add "r" to the end of words that end in a vowel simply because they think that's what Americans do, and Americans will remove the "r" sound where it's actually used in British English. For instance, British pronunciation of "father" would be "fathuh," but not when a word that starts with a vowel comes after it, like "my father and I." In that case, the Brit would pronounce the "r" but an American imitating a British accent would probably say, "my fathuh and I."

Tricky, isn't it? But now we know. If the next word starts with a vowel, Brits say "r" at the end of words ending with a vowel or with an "r."

You can follow Derek on TikTok for more linguistic fun.

Karl Eccleston and Fiona Pepper star in "Skwerl."

If you are a native English speaker, it is probably hard to imagine what people who don’t speak the language hear when you are talking. “Skwerl,” a short film by Karl Eccleston and Brian Fairbairn, attempts to demonstrate what English sounds like to people who don’t speak the language.

The film was created in 2011 for Kino Sydney, “a monthly open-mic night for filmmakers” based in Sydney, Australia. Since being posted to YouTube 12 years ago, it has received over 52 million views.

The short film stars Eccleston and Australian actress Fiona Pepper as a couple whose special evening is disrupted when underlying relationship tensions creep up.

Warning: Strong language

Here's a sample of the script:

THE MAN

So I ran to yourk around the wash today.

THE WOMAN

Oh?

THE MAN

Yeah. That doll's areen blunderface. Can berave that mory alpen john. Joo flan by the long blatt call?

THE WOMAN

Yeah. I coon by the mex areen. Oh you bleed that pribadium by the ronfort line today?

The video received some thoughtful reactions in the comments section. The SkyWolfie6655 summed it up perfectly: “As an English speaker, it feels like I SHOULD be understanding this and I'm just not, like I've heard them wrong or something, this is really well done.”

The film also connected with people who learned English as a second language. “Man, that's exactly what I used to hear when I was younger, before learning English properly. This is actually quite nostalgic,” another wrote.

The video also is an excellent example of what people with a disability may hear even if they speak the language. “This is kind of what it feels like to have auditory processing disorder,” HorseFace1044 wrote. “It's super frustrating because you can almost get what the person is saying, but not quite enough to understand what in the world they are talking about.”


This article originally appeared two years ago.

Family

I bet you don't know the real history of the gin and tonic. It's crazy.

Turns out your favorite drink might have a super-weird history.

This story is about gin and tonics. But it starts with Britain taking over India.

Actually, it wasn't even Britain that did that at first. Let's back up even further, to where the story actually starts, which is with a trading company in the 1600s called the British East India Company.

Long story short, the East India Company came to India and they were like, "Oh, hey, is it OK if we put a factory here in this coastal city?"

India was like, "Yeah OK, I guess." But then the company was like "OK, well, how about a shit-ton of factories everywhere? Is that OK?"


And India was like, "Uhh, no, what? Don't do that. We don't like that."

So the company was like, "Oh, OK, no, we totally understand, all good!" And then they sent in their private army to take over a bunch of stuff and claim it as their own. Seriously.

Of course, India ended up fighting back, but then the whole United Kingdom got involved and just took over India, 'cause it was the 1800s and people didn't understand how colonialism was super messed up.

At this point, India was suddenly under British rule. Which the British really liked. Oh, except for the malaria.

Image from iStock.

Things seemed really bad for everyone involved. But then! Someone remembered this tree in Peru that had a special property that helped prevent malaria. "Why don't we grind it up into a powder and call it quinine and all not die?" this person said.

"Good idea," said the British.

England came up with a great plan of giving this new anti-malaria medicine to its soldiers. Smart!

So every soldier now had a daily ration of quinine. But there was one problem: It tasted super bad. Like, really, really bad. It's super bitter. Even if you add water and a ton of sugar, it's still super funky.

Then someone had the bright idea of adding a ton of alcohol to the tonic. Because why not, right? And so the troops were like, "Cool, what alcohol do we have? Oh, here's a ton of gin. Yup, just dump it on in there."

Just duuuuuump it in.

Yup.

Keep going.

And there you have it: gin and tonic.

All the soldiers were like, "Hey, this is actually kind of nice. Also, I'm no longer dying of malaria!"

Image from iStock.

Fun fact: It's not just that it tastes better 'cause it's suddenly alcoholic. Turns out, it's actually chemistry that makes it taste so good. A bunch of the different flavor molecules in gin kind of dog-pile onto the super-bitter quinine and hide it from our tongues, making the whole thing taste less bitter and more herbal!

Yay, science!

Eventually, all the British soldiers in India started drinking the ol' G&T.

Then the soldiers went back home to Britain and were like, "Hey, that drink was actually pretty good." So they went down to the bar and were like, "Hey, can I have this random medicine and gin mixed together, please?"

The bartenders were like, "Okaaaaay." And the soldiers were like, "We're going to drink a ton of these and make them super popular."

And then they did.

Oh, and what happened to India?

Well, suddenly it was the 20th century and that whole colonialism fad turned out to be not so popular anymore, especially with the people who, you know, had their countries taken away from them.

So these people started pushing back against British rule and eventually kicked them out in 1947! Woo!

There you go: the twisted, surprising, colonialism-based story of the gin and tonic.

So clink those glasses to weird history. Cheers!