The bit I find neat is the rhotic 'R'. Most of the US says 'R'... not quite as strong as pirates did (I'll get to that) but the 'r' is there.
A British woman who I worked (from London) didn't have the 'r' sound "car park" sound to my ear like "ca pack".
In England, the rhoticity was found in the poorer and rural parts of the country during the age of discovery. The ship builders, the people who were on ships, the poor people who got sent to the new world... and pirates.
FYI the stereotypical "pirate accent" is in fact a West Country accent - that is, it's from the southwestern region of England known as the West Country. And the reason this particular accent became associated with pirates is not because historical pirates actually spoke like that (although many surely did) - it's almost entirely due to a string of popular movies about pirates in the 1950s starring the actor Robert Newton:
> A British woman who I worked (from London) didn't have the 'r' sound "car park" sound to my ear like "ca pack".
Most English people don't pronounce the rhotic "r", with the main exception being the West Country. It's still widely pronounced in Scotland, Ireland, and parts of Wales.
Let me rephrase... the less wealthy parts of England had more rhoticity in their accent than the upper class parts. These poorer parts - either as indentured servants or immigrants to the new world (and Australia) had a stronger influence on what would become the American English accents.
Rhoticity can be understood by the further exaggeration that pirates displayed which was again exaggerated in popular media. Their accent was part of the West Country English which was in the poorer parts of the country - ship builders and young men with little to lose.
> not because historical pirates actually spoke like that (although many surely did)
Blackbeard was presumed to have been born in Bristol. Francis Drake was born in Tavistock. These locations are both firmly in the West Country English dialect.
It's also why West Country accents, and accents from the southwestern part of England (Dorset, Devon, Somerset, Gloucestershire) are generally easier to understand for USA citizens than, say, a Geordie accent from Northern England or a Cockney accent from the east end of London.
The guitarist Robert Fripp is from Wimborne, Dorset, UK. He's clearly rhotic—he pronounces the 'r' in 'Mayfair.' https://youtu.be/woRhyl4k6sc
The first time I heard "Geordie" was in the song "Sailing to Philadelphia" ( live - https://youtu.be/GtxuWycNgfo ; studio - https://youtu.be/GGgZ5aimDbM ) which referred to Jeremiah Dixon as a Geordie Boy and immediately describes him as upper class.
... and looking it up... Dixon was born in Cockfield, County Durham... which is in Northern England as described.
Just interesting seeing these loose ends of things I knew tie together in other ways.
>Most English people don't pronounce the rhotic "r", with the main exception being the West Country. It's still widely pronounced in Scotland, Ireland, and parts of Wales.
Its fascinating listening to Original Pronunciation Shakespeare and hearing how utterly rhotic it is, indicating that Americans and British use to sound alike before diverging
> The earliest traces of a loss of /r/ in English appear in the early 15th century and occur before coronal consonants, especially /s/, giving modern ass 'buttocks' (Old English ears, Middle English ers or ars), and bass (fish) (OE bærs, ME bars). A second phase of the loss of /r/ began during the 15th century and was characterized by sporadic and lexically variable deletion, such as monyng 'morning' and cadenall 'cardinal'. Those spellings without /r/ appeared throughout the 16th and 17th centuries, but they were uncommon and were restricted to private documents, especially those written by women. No English authorities described loss of /r/ in the standard language before the mid-18th century, and many did not fully accept it until the 1790s.
This would suggest that it was on the rise during Shakespeare's time.
> Americans today pronounce some words more like Shakespeare than Brits do… but it’s in 18th-Century England where they’d really feel at home.
> It makes for a great story: when settlers moved from England to the Americas from the 17th Century, their speech patterns stuck in place. That was particularly true in more isolated parts of the US, such as on islands and in mountains. As a result, the theory goes, some Americans speak English with an accent more akin to Shakespeare’s than to modern-day Brits.
> That’s not entirely right. The real picture is more complicated.
> One feature of most American English is what linguists call ‘rhoticity’, or the pronunciation of ‘r’ in words like ‘card’ and ‘water’. It turns out that Brits in the 1600s, like modern-day Americans, largely pronounced all their Rs. Marisa Brook researches language variation at Canada’s University of Victoria. “Many of those immigrants came from parts of the British Isles where non-rhoticity hadn’t yet spread,” she says of the early colonists. “The change towards standard non-rhoticity in southern England was just beginning at the time the colonies became the United States.”
My favorite parts about the Original Pronunciation reconstructions of Shakespeare are how many lost puns keep getting discovered, even in the most serious plays, because most of them are quite ribald and directly tosses to the groundlings. It's a fun reminder that Shakespeare was dirtier than people today like to think and that he was never writing strictly for the upper crust and high society (like a lot of today's Shakespeare Companies seem intended for).
Very interesting! Many poor people in Ireland emigrated or were sent to the new world too. The rhotic "r" is prevalent in the Irish language, and it is a distinct characteristic of the sound of Hiberno-English (and other accents with a Celtic influence of course).
There's a cool video on YT called "A London Accent from the 14th to the 21st Centuries"[1] — I'm sure it's not meant to be definitive, but it's very interesting to note the presence or absence of the rhotic "r" during different periods.
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Speaking of the New World — this is something of a side topic, but I think it's fascinating that "caulk" is commonly used in the U.S. and Canada; e.g: bathroom tiling. In my experience at least, you wouldn't really hear someone use the word in that context in the U.K. or Ireland. Most people I've asked associate it exclusively with boats.
I have a speculative pet theory on this — originally, caulk specifically referred to the materials used to fill the gaps between boards in a wooden ship.
Since practically everyone who originally came to the New World came on old wooden ships, it's not hard to imagine that "caulk" — once specific to ship building and maintenance — became well known to emigrant populations and took on a broader meaning over time.
In contrast, it's likely very few people who remained in the Old World at that time were ever in a wooden ship, and "caulk" remained less well known and retained its specific meaning.
French pronunciation has something like this. They can't abide a word that ends in a vowel-sound smooshing into a following word that starts with a vowel-sound. So, for example, the word "suis" is pronounced "swee", unless the next word lacks an initial consonant, in which case the trailing 's' is sounded.
So "Je suis anglais" is pronounced as "Je sweez anglais". Compare "Je suis francais" ("Je swee francais").
Another example: there's a French children's song with the line: "Pendouillez moi avec" ("hang me as well" - don't ask). I have a recording of this song, and it's pronounced "Pendouillez moi za vec" (equal stress on each of the last three syllables). What's interesting is that the intruding consonant isn't an otherwise-silent 's' that is being sounded; it's completely spurious.
This is called “faire la liaison” (“make the link”) between the two words. If the first word ends with a consonant, and the next word starts with a vowel, then do pronounce that last consonant.
Or Oasis’s “Champagne Supernova” sounding (to my American ear) like “supin’ over”.
Also, The Lincoln Lawyer has an Australian actor playing a character (Cisco) with a gruff, throaty American accident, but at one point it slips through and he says “Lisa” as “Liser”.
I'm extremely underqualified (non-native speaker) but first time I heard this and paid attention was from Dave Chinner (linux developer) who is australian and he was using a very pronounced linking r.
I've taken Andrew Ng's coursera courses. I'm almost blind to American dialects (compared to Norwegian dialects the changes feel extremely subtle), but I noticed that one! "Dater science" was definitely on the "agender"! But I don't feel like all Americans have it that strongly.
Common in the States too. I'm from Eastern MA and work in Boston. If I order a "vodka, soda" it sounds normal, but if I say "vodka AND soda" then "vodka" becomes "vodkar". My accent is a pretty standard Eastern New England accent.
Why not "ka pak" or "ca pac"?
I'm not native English speaker. Pronunciation is still mystery for me. Is it like in Dutch or Norwegian that two consonants are enclosing short vowel while one consonant makes long vowel?
And I'm ashamed to admit that I still do not know what is difference between "c" and "k" in English language.
> what is difference between "c" and "k" in English language
They're the same sound, including when it's written "ck" as in "back". Although sometimes the "c" is pronounced like an "s", e.g. "face", "celery".
English spelling is highly inconsistent and it's often hard to tell how a word should be pronounced based on the spelling alone. Don't expect it to make sense.
It only makes sense if you know how the word entered the english language. Face and celery comes from french which pronounces these words with a soft c. So we pronounce it with a soft c. Coupe comes from french which pronounces it with a hard c. Hence why we pronounce coupe with a hard c. The 'strange' spelling and pronunciation of words with c is a result of loan words from many languages ( french, latin, german, spanish, etc ).
> Is the etymology really needed in this case to know how to pronounce "c"?
No. You learn it through osmosis by being immersed in the culture. We all learn to pronounce face, celery, coupe, etc from our parents, school, media, etc. Etymology only comes into play if you want to know why we pronounce it that way.
> I believe in -ce- -ci- -cy- the c is an s, while in -ca- -co- -cu- the c is a k.
That probably works most of the time since I believe that's the rule the french use and so much of our vocabulary came from the french. But there are exceptions as others have noted. 'Boston Celtics' is pronounced with a soft c, while the 'celtic people', is pronounced with a hard c. As far as I know it's cultural. There isn't a rule which will help you out here other than you simply have to know it.
The links in Everything2 go to the correct word if you're having difficulty.
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A Plan for the Improvement of English Spelling
For example, in Year 1 that useless letter "c" would be dropped to be replased either by "k" or "s", and likewise "x" would no longer be part of the alphabet. The only kase in which "c" would be retained would be the "ch" formation, which will be dealt with later. Year 2 might reform "w" spelling, so that "which" and "one" would take the same konsonant, wile Year 3 might well abolish "y" replasing it with "i" and Iear 4 might fiks the "g/j" anomali wonse and for all.
Jenerally, then, the improvement would kontinue iear bai iear with Iear 5 doing awai with useless double konsonants, and Iears 6-12 or so modifaiing vowlz and the rimeining voist and unvoist konsonants. Bai Iear 15 or sou, it wud fainali bi posibl tu meik ius ov thi ridandant letez "c", "y" and "x" -- bai now jast a memori in the maindz ov ould doderez -- tu riplais "ch", "sh", and "th" rispektivli.
Fainali, xen, aafte sam 20 iers ov orxogrefkl riform, wi wud hev a lojikl, kohirnt speling in ius xrewawt xe Ingliy-spiking werld.
I find it fascinating that the writer uses “aafte” for “after.” Clearly their accent was non-rhotic, which isn’t something we’d have any idea about otherwise.
Spelling does reflect pronunciation. The attempt to standardize spelling is rather new, though. It's actually more surprising that there should be canonical spellings when the pronunciation itself varies between speakers and dialects, and it changes over time.
Dialectal variety is true for many other languages, though, which nevertheless manage to do some kind of standardized spelling.
Thing is, in most cases when it's claimed that "spelling reflects pronunciation" for some language, it's not actually true - what it reflects is the phonemes of the language, not phones (actual sounds). To give an example in English, /t/ is a single phoneme, but it can be realized in a bunch of different ways ranging from actual [t] in words like "tea" to a glottal stop [ʔ] in words like "butter" (frequent in UK). Native speakers often don't even notice that these are two completely different sounds, because they are mentally mapped to the same underlying phoneme.
But because our brains are already perfectly capable of handling such mappings (so long as they happen according to consistent rules, which they almost always do), a phonemic spelling works great in practice. And when you deal with phonemes, the difference between various accents and dialects is usually much less than when you look at the phones.
English is problematic because its spelling is strongly inconsistent even with the phonemes, never mind the phones. And, yes, the rather extreme dialectal variety of English means that different dialects do have some phonemic variety as well. But, again, it's much less than actual pronunciation differences would make you believe, and it's certainly possible to come up with a canonical mostly-phonemic spelling that would cover, at the very least, British RP and American GA, and be reasonably adequate for most offshoots of those.
It's also possible to just adopt phonemic spelling based on specific dialects and expect the speakers to handle the differences at least for the popular ones (just like we already do with different words like "elevator" vs "lift"). This was the approach taken by Serbo-Croatian, where e.g. "vreme", "vrime", and "vrijeme" would all be valid spellings of the same word.
It's a common convention for words that end in a "short vowel" followed by a hard /k/ (IPA) sound to be spelled with ck, e.g., "back," "block," "stick," "truc." It's not a convention always followed, though; see "book," "music."
> Is it like in Dutch or Norwegian that two consonants are enclosing short vowel while one consonant makes long vowel?
Yes, that is generally the rule. Usually, a vowel followed by a consonant followed by e (/a_e, e_e, i_e, o_e, u_e) will produce the "long" version of that vowel. To signify that it's pronounced as a short vowel, many words have doubled consonants, e.g., "plate" (long a) vs "platter" (short a). When a word ends in a short vowel and a k, a lot of words unnecessarily double it to a ck, e.g., "trick," "back," etc.
However, this is more of a guideline than a rule; there are many exceptions to it. For example, "paste" has the a, then two consonants, then e; due to the doubled consonants, it "should" have a short vowel, but it actually has a long vowel. And many words with short vowels don't have doubled consonants; for example, the a in "magic" is short rather than long, and the first a in "Japanese" is short (you would expect "Jappanese"). The e in "medical" and the i in "amicable" are both tonic, short vowels.
> I still do not know what is difference between "c" and "k" in English language.
"K" always makes a hard /k/ sound. "c" makes a hard /k/ sound before a, o, and u (e.g., car, acorn, cute), but makes a soft /s/ sound before e, i, and y (celery, peace, cinders, cylinder). With Latin and Greek words, ae and oe are both treated as e, so Caesar, and coelacanth have soft C sounds. However, there are exceptions; sometimes it makes a k sound even before an e (e.g., sceptical, Celtic, loci), and sometimes it makes a soft c sound where a hard one is expected (e.g. facade).
English spelling is very irregular. Much of this irregularity is to reflect etymology, i.e., we borrowed the word without changing the spelling, or only changed the spelling a little bit.
Yes, you're right. It used to be more common to write it with the cedilla/cedille, but over time it's become more common to write it as a normal c. Similarly, for the phrase "deja vu", it used to be more common to write it with the accent marks (déjà-vu), whereas I usually see it written now as deja vu. And I see same thing with café being written as cafe.
English in general seems to "abhor" accent marks and they are seen as "style" rather than orthography/punctuation. It's interesting because it came up recently that the New York Times had to apologize that their style guide required the removal of all accent marks and that drastically changed the meaning of a bunch of Vietnamese names and words they printed in an article (insultingly so).
One of the few notorious style guides the other way, for instance, is the more "upper-crust" New Yorker requires a diaresis mark in words such as "coöperation" (which is useful when discussing say a "chicken coop" versus a "chicken coöp" versus a "chicken coup", all things with very different meanings). To a lot of Americans diaresis marks look unnatural and that becomes one of the sillier markers that the New Yorker is "upper-crust" and "fancy", but teachers for decades have thought they would be a great addition to the language if adopted more widely.
A British woman who I worked (from London) didn't have the 'r' sound "car park" sound to my ear like "ca pack".
In England, the rhoticity was found in the poorer and rural parts of the country during the age of discovery. The ship builders, the people who were on ships, the poor people who got sent to the new world... and pirates.
A map of where non-roticity shows up in American English: https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Non-RhoticityUSA.png ... and you've got a map of where the upper class of England lived in the 1700s in the US.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhoticity_in_English
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https://www.waywordradio.org is a podcast on the English language and dialectical differences are frequently found as topics.
They also make reference to Dictionary of American Regional English - https://dare.wisc.edu - digital version: https://www.daredictionary.com (yes, its a subscription service)