Conference thebay::joyoflex

    
    It's not just the Brits, people from the east coast and California
    also throw in the "phantom r".
    
    					/^PiT^\

RE .1

Yes, except that with the British its a soft R and with some Americans
it's a hard R.


John M.

    It shouldn't come as a great surprise that the phantom R's are those
    that were picked up after being discarded from such words as _library_
    (li-berry??) and _February_ (Feb-u-erry).     :^)

    The R's were just laying *what* around?
    
    --- jerry

    I thought this was the Law of Conservation of Rs at work.  Rs are
    never created or destroyed, just redistributed.
    
    "Grandma(r) is in the yahd."
    
    See?

    re .4:
    
    A gentleman never asks questions like that. :-)
    
    	Jon

    RE: .5
    
    Of course!  What an interesting theory!
    
    
    John M.
    
    
    

    re .2 and .4
    
    Apparently it is the American R's that are laying "what" around.
    
    
    
    sorry!!

    Re: .3++++
    
    My apologies for using a word incorrectly.  I should have said that
    the R's were _lying_ around.  But then, this is an easy point for
    confusion...there is frequently a lot of lying when someone is 
    accused of _laying_ around.  :^}
    
    As to the collection of R's to be found _lying_ around in New England,
    they tend to drop most frequently in the latter months of the year...
    Sep-TEM-bah, Oc-TOH-bah, No-VEM-bah, an' De-CEM-bah!
    
    Ayuh, ain' thet the truth!
    

    SET PEDANTRY = ON

    The great show "The Story of English" pointed out that a lot of
    American speech is "fossilized" from regions in Great Britain.
    You can even find a Southern drawl in certain small towns.

    My father is from the midwest (South Dakota).  He has very little
    accent, except for the added 'r' (Warshington).  I've noticed the
    addition of 'r's most prominently in people from the Dakotas, Missouri
    (Missoura), and Iowa (Ioway).  Northeasterners tend to place an
    'r' on the end of words; Midwesterners place it in the middle.

>			Northeasterners tend to place an
>    'r' on the end of words; Midwesterners place it in the middle.

Does that mean that Californians will put them on the beginning? :-)

						>>>==>PStJTT

    
    Re: .11
    
    >My father is from the midwest (South Dakota).  He has very little
    >accent, except for the added 'r' (Warshington).  I've noticed the
    
    I am always amused when someone states that he or someone else has
    'no accent'.  Does this mean that there is a ISO standard for the
    way words are pronounced?  Or does this mean that the person talks
    with Network (ABC/NBC/CBS not DECnet) standard english.
   
    Curiously,
    Peter
     

    > I am always amused when someone states that he or someone else has
    > 'no accent'.

    For many years, I thought "English accent" was an oxymoron.

    Re: .13
    
    I always thought "Network English" = "Standard English"  and that
    most network news people either come from the Midwest or have to
    adopt the Midwest, Standard English.
    
    Re:  .12 (Californians adding r's at the beginning of words)
    
    Rats right, Rastro
    
    
    
    Susan

Re: Discussion of the variable 'R's

Hence the phrase "it's nice to have your R's to fall back on" ???

			Nigel

    re. no accent - I have always said I speak "eastern sea board"
    or "t.v. news broadcaster".
    
    re warshington - I grew up in northern Virgina and had thought 
    that I had lost all traces of a southern accent in my speech.
    One day I was asked if I came from Arlington Virgina  ( I did )
    because I said Warshington and only people form Arlington Va.
    prounced it that way.
    
    Bonnie

    re .17:
    
    Nonsense, Bonnie. People from Bowie or Laurel also say "Warshington." 
    
    I won't mention how Baltimoreans pronounce "Baltimore" nor how
    "Baltimorean" is pronounced. :-)
    
    	Jon

                        
    Re. 17&.18
    
    Many Rho-Die-landers pronounce our first president and capital
    Warshington as well.

    To get back to the British and the phantom R, it is not true that
    most British people would pronounce drawing with an extra r in the
    middle. It may well be that most of the people we hear on radio
    and TV in Britain and the USA would, but most regional accents in
    England and Scotland don't have any phantoms, the have more missing
    sounds than extra ones.
    
    Phirrip

    
     Trounce, Trounce !!!
     Here in good ol' Brit' some people add R's as you say.
     I  have a chappy sitting next to me that spent 5 years in San Fran'
     and in D.C. he admits that he has more R's than any true Brit !!!
    
     The U.K. may be pretty small, but as in my home county (state) Essex
     (due east of London) you only have to travel about three mile
     to the next town to hear people using R's in different ways.
     It's all down to local colloquialisms.
     
     Until I was about 10 years old I thought there was a yank accent.
     aren't there 3 !!!
    
     Regarrds
          
    Graham.

    Three? Hah! Maybe three hundred!
    
	Jon

    But maybe two of them were Australian or Canadian...

    I believe there must be an infinite number of accents in any country.
    True, if you take a point in the North East, and compare the accent
    there with one in the South West (again - any country), you'll hear
    a marked difference.
    
    But I'm pretty sure if you drove from North East to South West,
    stopping every couple of miles, you wouldn't detect when it changed.
    (It would also take you a long time).
    
    Jeff.

    I think what you say is true, Jeff. With the increase in population
    movement and the influence of broadcasting media, there has been
    a dramatic mixing of geographically and socially defined accents.
    
    Fifty years ago the situation was probably one of clearly defined
    accents in communities which were themselves much more discrete
    entities than most places are today.
    
    Where there is a clear geographical division between communities
    then I think it is much easier to see a change in accent, such as
    when travelling over the Pennines from Lancashire to Yorkshire,
    or travelling south in Scotland, particularly on the West coast.
    
    Locals in areas such as mine - I'm from an area 10 miles west of
    Manchester originally - where there is a massive conurbation with
    the older towns now merging into each other would though still claim
    to be able to recognise differences in accents separated by only
    a few miles. If I were to go to Birmingham, though, or Glasgow,
    then I'm sure that I would not be able to hear any of the fine
    differences which do exist.
    
    Phillip

    Yes, I agree where there is geographical separation, you'll get
    a 'jump' in the accent.  One thing my theory won't explain though,
    is the vast difference between the Scouse (Liverpool) ach-sent, and
    that in the rest of Lancashee-err.  Perhaps you can shed some light
    on that one.
    
    Jeff.

    I believe there is an enormous Irish influence on the Scouse accent,
    this is based on no sound (sic) linguistic theory, just on the fact
    that a lot of my ancestors came to the old Pier Head and didn't
    get much further. A friend of mine was once in a pub in the depths
    of Liverpool and could hardly understand a word, it all sounded
    Irish, he said. But then, maybe it was.
    
    Lancashire is not though a linguistic whole. The accent we all
    associate with Lancashire is the broad, Northern accent of the "Ee
    bah gum" type. This exists, obviously, and as broadly as in Yorkshire
    which is perhaps more famous for it (So Yorkshire men would have
    us believe, anyway. Oh, God, I hope they don't rise to that, it's
    not meant to be provocative.) Even this accent is not uniform
    throughout the county, though. North Lancashire - Preston, Blackburn
    etc. - has a completely different accent to the area between Manchester
    and Liverpool. The Manchester conurbation has yet another accent,
    not of the broad type, but full of much closer vowels, swallowed
    consonants but without the ellision of definite articles common
    elsewhere in the broader accent areas.
    
    And, of course, as we said before, they all merge into one on the
    fringes! My own accent is one such, with a mixture of really open
    vowels apart from "o" which is sometimes open and sometimes close.
    The Manchester accent is also full of extremely aspirate plosives
    or stops. And I've got those too. Gosh, what a mixture!
    
    The influences on these accents is beyond my knowledge, however.
    Do we have an expert on the history of Lancashire accents out there?
    
    Phillip

	re:.24 by ECLAIR::GOODENOUGH "Jeff Goodenough, IPG Reading-UK"

>                        -< Anyone want to disprove me? >-
>
>    I believe there must be an infinite number of accents in any country.
>


Sure, I'll take a shot at it....

Given:		1. The population of any country may be expressed as an 
		   integer quantity.

		2. Each citizen of each country has a number of accents which 
		   is equal to a small integer (probably only one.) 

		3. The number of accents in a country is the sum of the
		   number of accents of all of the country's citizens. 

		4. The sum of any group of integers is never infinity.


Therefore:	1. There are not an infinite number of accents in any
		   country.


Q. E. D.


Larry

    Perhaps it's as simple as this.
    
    The two area which show the greatest differences to a "standard"
    Lancashire accent are Manchester and Liverpool, which happen to
    be the largest cities. If the start of their movement away from
    a standard coincided with a massive population increase, following
    immigration rather than an increase in fertility! then surely the
    differences could be traced back to the influence of the newly imported
    accents.
    
    The populations of Manchester and Liverpool were increased dramatically
    during the Industrial Revolution by the influx of cheap labour into
    the cotton mills. The area between these cities and to the north
    of them does not show such a massive population increase, and the
    accent is consequently less influenced by the immigrants. It is
    therefore an older dialect with more surviving dialect forms.
    
    Things such as the extreme aspirates could probably be traced back
    to the influence of Irish accents. However, as I said a couple of
    notes back, I thought the Irish didn't really go much further than
    Liverpool. Maybe I was wrong. 
    
    Any one know about that?
    
    Phillip

    Re: .28  You are absolutely right, of course.  I made the mistake
    of integrating the country with respect to a very small person.
    I'm glad you were able to differentiate.
    
    Jeff :-)

    Re .27;
    
    Urban accents often differ from those in the surrounding area,
    precisely for the reason you state - immigration.  I live near New
    York City, where accents can vary wildly in the space of a few miles.

    The notorious "Brooklyn" accent is really only found in one part
    of that borough, but a similar approach to mispronunciation can
    be found among the residents of the Pelham Parkway/Arthur Avenue
    neighborhood in the Bronx (other end of the city).

    
    I expect all of these micro-accents could probably be traced back
    to the influx of different ethnic groups at different times.  I'm
    not sure if any formal study has been done.
    

    I agree with the conclusion of .28, but not with one of the
    arguments.  My mother uses several accents, depending on
    who she's talking to.  She's lived in several parts of the
    world, so when she speaks with someone from one of them,
    she adopts the regional accent.  I've always found this 
    fascinating, especially since she's unconscious of the habit.
    
    MATT

    	My younger daughter (7 years old) speaks 3 variants of French.
    First with a strong English accent for the rest of the family
    (otherwise I don't understand her), second when reading a book she
    speaks "standard" French as that is what she has learnt at school,
    and then with her friends she speaks local dialect which uses almost
    Italian pronunciation (it sounds that way to me).
    
    	I could quite believe that you could find a very large number
    of accents just going across one person, without bothering to go
    further across the country.

    Examine the word "drawing", and one will find it to be an exceptionally
    difficult word to pronounce in any dialect or accent. Let's explore.
    
    Dror-wing (british). Not right.
    Drar-wing (american). Not right.
    Dror-ing (british). Needs a pause.
    Drar-ring (american). The way it usually comes out.
    
    What is really needed, in this context, is a new, undocumented vowel,
    which is a cross between a "w" and an "r".
    
    Ray

    >>Examine the word "drawing", and one will find it to be an exceptionally
    >>difficult word to pronounce in any dialect or accent. Let's explore.

    Sorry, I don't get this.  What's to prevent one from pronouncing it simply
    as "draw" followed by "ing"?  I believe that's how it's supposed to be
    pronounced - no?  Not too terribly difficult.    


    Di

    I think "any dialect or accent" meant "some dialects and accents,"
    in particular those with drawling.

    So why is "drawing" pronounced "drar ing" by Massachusettsians, but
    "drawer" "draw"?  My mother (midwesterner) says "dra ing".

    Dunno, but it's the same reason Massachusettsians refer to that left-
    coast state as "Califawnier."  It's amazing how many Bay Staters spell
    "drawer" "draw", too... they're not just dropping the R, they never
    knew it was there in the first place.
    
    Leslie
    
    (Actually, maybe they never knew it was theah 'rin the feust place)

    Massachusetts and the way Rs get moved from one word to another...
    
    It's a manifestation of Coyle's Law of the Conservation of Rs.  Coyle's
    own illustration of this law is the phrase "dater buffa."
    
    -dick

    >>So why is "drawing" pronounced "drar ing" by Massachusettsians, but
    >>"drawer" "draw"?  My mother (midwesterner) says "dra ing".

	Gee, I wish we could keep the gross generalizations to a 
	minimum here.  Some of us, born and bred, know how to pronounce
	these words with the best of 'em.

	Some of us talk real good.  8^)

	Di

    There used to be a telephone operator/receptionist in building 12 that
    referred to my ski parka as a ski "packer", thus following the MA
    conservation of Rs rule.