My mother even witnessed a court case that hung on regional pronunciations of R. There was a woman who was being brought in on DUI charges. She was from Western Massachusetts, the police officer was from Boston. Now, in the western part of the state the 'r' has remained quite hard despite the proximity to Boston. One of the tests for drunkenness of course, is to recite the alphabet backwards. It was in the wee hours of the morning, and this woman was nervous talking to a cop. She started with Z, Y, X, etc and then when she got to S she paused. The cop, thinking to be generous, prompted her with the sound of the next the letter: you know..."ahhh!" The poor woman didn't know what this cop was doing, which must have only made her more nervous: so she failed to finish reciting the alphabet. The jury ended up concluding that she was probably just tired and let her off the DUI charge.
I can't cite the alphabet backwards sober, how the Hell am I supposed to do it drunk?😏JK, I don't drink. *Edit:* I actually bothered to try it and realized I actually can do it backward. Ironically, I guess I'm no longer in the can't even do it sober club.
@@NecessaryTruths I've often heard that the field sobriety test is pretty useless. If you're tired, stressed, scared or in any other state of heightened emotions it's easy to fail. Better to take a breathalyser instead and if that doesn't work a blood sample is the safest solution anyway. I may be wrong but there's also the issue of whether a cop is certified to instruct you on and guide you through a FSB in the first place and whether he/she is able to determine the results. Without further knowledge of your specific medical history, current state of mind etc it's very hard to interpret some minor issues. Of course that's why video evidence is always necessary and helpful - for both sides.
Western Massachusetts is NOT in proximity to Boston. That's why. I live about an hour South of Boston and people don't have the accent here, but Western Mass is 2-4 hours away from Boston. You probably interact more with people from Connecticut and New York out there than people from Boston. Proximity? Nah.
When I was in grade school, many years ago in Serbia, the teacher told us flat out that R was a sound between a vowel and consonant. She called it sonant. It was no surprise to anyone, knowing common words like vrh (peak), prst (finger), and trg (square), in which the R functions like a vowel.
I can't believe you managed to pack so much phonetics in 7 min while also keeping it fairly easy to understand. On top of that, it's also a a really fun video!
Glad I'm not the only one. Usually videos like these leave me with a "well aktualyyy" moment, but this really gave context to all the major cases and exceptions without straying too far from the topic.
I, too, was blown away 'aight from the st'ahhht ! The drawings showing where the sounds are formed ! The host singing vowels between informative blurbs ! The historic examples feathered in ! . . . and then : PBS ... Oh ! You folks have done it again ! B-)
As a classically trained singer. "R" s were the easiest way for me to transition without a break from chest to head voice. This segment TOTALLY confirmed why Rs are so important for singers singing correctly. Wow soooo cool.
I am a speech-language pathologist who specializes in remediating the R sound and this was FASCINATING! Thanks so much for a great video! I'll definitely share it with my audience.
I'm in a completely different country (the Netherlands) and I distinctly remember being in a choir as a kid and being told I needed to "properly pronounce my Rs" (aka trill them) because "the dropped R made me sound like farmers kid". The dropped R is standard in my regional accent, which is frowned upon for being too rural.
If I remember correctly, there are 3 ways to pronounce R in Dutch, right? Might've seen a video where a Dutch guy was explaining that his full name Rogier (Something) uses all 3 pronunciations of R.
@@jaimel88 As a non-native speaker, it seems that way. A word like "beter" has something similar to the standard American R, and a word like "zware" is more of a tap. The trills seem to be more of a fancy thing? I may be wrong on this one, most of the time I've encountered them was in musicals, rather than regular spoken Dutch
This is the first time I’m watching this series. Loved it. Now I understand why my kids struggle with pronouncing the letter ‘R’. And Erica is so talented; she moves seamlessly between accents and pronunciations. Kudos.
It’s so interesting that we don’t need to be formally taught ANY of this and just kind of pick it up naturally yet hearing it explained with such detailed is very enlightening
I remember Daphne on Frasier attempting an American accent. Daphne: "I don't know what to do with my Rs." Frasier: "Try hauling it out of here." *Bonus quote* Daphne: "I'm trying my American." Frasier: "You're certainly trying THIS American."
Opera singer and therefore sound-production-nerd here. This is one of the most fascinating videos I've seen on UA-cam in recent memory! I teach some of this stuff - how to produce different Rs in different languages, for example - but didn't know how the rhotic R came to Canada, as well as some of the other history of this weird letter. Love this!
This one has got to be one of my favourite episodes from otherwords! I love this so much, someone give this show an award, please!!! Dr. Erica, thank you! I like to explain the differences between rhotic and non-rhotic English accents to my EFL students so I'm going to be taking a few notes from this video here to show more examples to students from now on. The geopolitical implications of it are particularly interesting and new to me! :)
That's because sanskrit was deliberately constructed utilizing the airflow and tongue positions of the mouth. And yeah the first time I had someone try to tell me R is a vowel was with the Rhi sound in sanskrit
There is a class of abiguida in Sanskrit known as semi-vowels - Y, R, L, V/W (ya, ra, la, va/wa). This is because, although these are considered consonants, there are vowels sounds in Sanskrit very close to these. Such as, 'Yi' and 'Yee' sounds are close to 'I' and 'Ee' vowels. 'Wu' and 'Woo' sounds are close to 'U' and 'Oo' vowels. 'R' and 'L' vowel sounds are tricky and we need comparative linguistics to explain, and it is further made difficult by the fact that 'L' vowel is not used in modern Indian languages anymore, and there are other additional consonants that may sound a combination of various R and L articulations. BTW, the 'R' in the name Rishi Sunak is a vowel, not a consonant.
@@Archiep2979 You are confusing between Vedic Sanskrit and Classical Sanskrit. Vedic Sanskrit was a language like any other, and the letters of abiguida are from Maaheshwara suktas, similar to letters of alphabets of English/Latin. Classical Sanskrit was carefully designed and constructed, hence we see the tabular configuration of vowels (natural vowels and mixed vowels) and consonants ( ka-varga, cha-varga and so on), which the modern Indian languages have adopted, and has inspired Medeleev to create Periodic Table of elements.
An interesting fact: the alphabets of most Indian languages are phonetic and are divided into two parts, the first with all the vowels and the second with all the consonants. In the vowel section of the alphabet, there are 2 letters that approximate the American r (i.e. one of the r's is closer to the mouth opening, the other farther back), meeting up to the requirements for a vowel, hence in the vowel section. Of course, in most Indian languages, there is also a "rolling" r, which is in the consonants section. These are, however, distinct sounds and therefore distinct letters, as the languages are phonetic. Having this knowledge, the title of this video intrigued me, and I wanted to see if the video was about this too.
@@antareepgogoi6065 story of my life lol. There have been several such videos on this channel and many other where when any universal topic is discussed India is conspicuously absent entirely.
@@kailash4799so you mean ऋ is pronounced like american r. Like in ca*r* ड़ is probably rolled r And र is alveolar flap But I never knew the correct pronounciation of ऋ. If you speak ऋ like american r then people will assume you're trying to copy foreigner accent.
@@Dhruv-Kumar unfortunately, the pronounciation you are referring here applies only to Hindi. Sanskrit uses ऋ as halfway to ri and ru. Examples are Krishna, Rishi, Rithu. All are correct even when spelt ru instead of ri.
@@juliedurnan2364 oh man, I don’t 😆 I feel like I can’t explain it properly since there isn’t just one way to make it. How do you typically explain it to a kid that actually gets them to make the sound?
A little correction. Vowels don't have to be voiced. In Japanese and Korean, unrounded high vowels are devoiced between voiceless consonants or at the end of an utterance after a voiceless consonant. This makes them sound like they aren't pronounced, especially after fricatives, but they are and it's noticeable if you have two similar voiceless consonants next to each other like in "sushi". It's also noticeable with "ki" and sometimes "hi" or "pi" because English speakers tend to subconsciously train themselves to hear devoiced "i" when it doesn't significantly change the pronunciation of the consonant or for "hi", we just can't hear "h" sounds without vowels after them very well
@@emilymann1175 Actually, the vowels in "su" and "shi" are debatably omitted in some contexts where they'd otherwise be voiceless. I'd say it's consistently done at the end of utterances. In other cases, it depends on other factors like pitch accent or preceding syllables
In Kenya🇰🇪, the English spoken there has rolled R or a trilled R sound due to influence from local languages and Swahili- hence rhotic Non-rhotic form is from the British influence
In the deep south of New Zealand, we have a rhotic R, unlike the rest of the country. However, it's quite different to the US rhotic R, being more akin to the sound in Scots. People from the rest of the country love asking us to say "Bert is wearing a dirty shirt". Unfortunately, growing up with this R has quite ruined me for other languages. I have a *lot* of trouble pulling off any other kind of R sound, so despite my love of languages, I always give myself away as a foreigner as soon as this letter pops up.
I always thought it sounded interesting, since the rest of New Zealand's accent is kinda bad. Why does everything have to sound like a question, for one.
German "R" was difficult for me also. Having to unlearn the Spanish trill made it worse and it took a couple years before I could even discern the different sounds.
I can relate, despite being on almost the other side of the world. I'm from Washington state, in the Pacific Northwest, and I grew up with Spanish as a second language in the home. For some reason, though, I've never managed to get the trilled R. My high school Spanish teacher said listening to my nearly-fluent accent was a pleasant, relaxing experience - right until the R showed up, then it was like a scratch in a record 😅
In Danish, an R after a vowel usually functions as a vowel. And it also alters the sound of that preceding vowel by making it sound more "dark" or "low", i.e. that vowel is then pronounced farther back in the mouth/throat.
@@rdklkje13 Part of what makes the Danish language so darn charming are tongue twisters such as fyrre tørrere irere badede i Rødovre ("forty drier Irishmen bathed in Rødovre") or gems like otteoghalvfjerdsindstyvende ("seventy-eighth").
In Portuguese, at least in my accent ( northeast Brazilian btw) the R represents two sounds, an alveolar tap when intervocalic, and a uvular trill/fricative (and sometimes may even be realized as a glottal fricative) when geminated, word initial or before consonants. It is always so interesting to think about how these two variants remained in the language and didn’t merge, and how confusing it might be for non natives to get that there is a distinction
I totally agreed, in some regions even exist 3 ways to pronounce it, like the country side that has the rhotic r too. A sentence like "raro como ar" all the r's is pronounced differently.
In czech we have A, E, I, O, U and Y. We also have Ě and half vowels R and L and we have a lot fun with it. For example song "Holka Modrooká" (Blueyed girl). Short, naive text but ideal for rhetorical execises. Just replace all vowels with one ad you get "Halka Madraaká", "Helke Medreeke" or "Hrlkr Mrdrrrkr".
True 😁 I know the song and that substitution game too but I only ever tried it with vowels (Hilki midriiki nisidivij i pitiki etc. 😁), never an R or an L 😄
Sort of like the American song "The Name Game". Except we replace the start letter of a name with different ones, for instance "Larry, larry bo-barry, banafana mo-marry, fee fie fo-farry, Larry"
WeLl AcTuAlLy, Y isn't a seperate vowel, it makes the same sound as I, and Ě also isn't a distinct sound on its own, it either makes /je/ sound, or it softens the consonant before (d, t, n). Except MĚ, for some reason it makes /mňe/ sound, god knows why...
Here are some info on the Mandarin Chinese case: the phenomenon is called "兒化" in Chinese, roughly translates to "er"-ification. When written out, the character "兒" is suffixed onto the character indicating the vowel of previous character is a rhotic vowel. An example: 花兒 ("flowers" /hwaɚ/) from 花 /hwa/. (Although there are some times this suffixed 兒 is pronounced separately, like 花兒 as /hwa/ /ɚ/ -- but this is yet another example showing that our R sound is more like a vowel.) When spelling out in pinyin, this is usually indicated by a *suffix* r on the spelling of previous character. This is different from the *prefix* r in the pinyin: that sound is a consonant /ɻ/ that the tongue is touching the palate, while this 兒化 sound didn't have them touching.
@@angkhoapham8209 There's no "more" meaning in this, so that's simply another way of saying "flowers". An example found in the lyric of a song: "我等到*花兒*也謝了" -- "I waited so long even the *flowers* withered away."
I like how the English dropped their Rs at the end of words but then put them where there aren't any Rs in the first place to distinguish vowels that end one word and begin another. To me (west coast American) the dropped R sounds sophisticated and the intrusive R sounds like a street urchin trying to run some scam on you. It's fantastic.
In the Devanagari script, you'll find 'Ri' listed as a vowel and 'r' listed as a consonant, I was always confused by the redundancy till today. There's also consonants in Marathi, Odia and Punjabi among others that sound somewhere between R and L
As soon as I saw the topic was R I knew Boston was getting a mention. My wife and I, both Bostonian natives, were discussing this recently and we don't really think its entirely accurate anymore to associate the soft R with Boston as much as it was say 20 years ago. As Boston proper has gentrified and seen a lot of influx from other areas, the accent seems to have softened as people who speak with that accent have been economically pushed out of the area to the north and south, closer to maine/NH and Rhode Island.
I did hear it a lot in homeless shelters in and around Boston, especially from old timers, but that just reinforces what you already said. I'm a transplanted Ohio native (via almost every other part of the country) and I'm doing my best to adopt the accent and keep it alive (j/k I'm not trying at all, it just sort of seeps in little by little, lol)
The Car Talk guys, Tom and Ray Magliozzi, propagated the old Boston accent across the US and into space from their studios in Cambridge (Our Fair City), MA until around 2012, on “En Pea Ah.”
This is such a cool topic, and a great video! I'm a Warhammer 40k fan, and I never realized until watching this video that I was vocalizing the phrase "For the Emperor!" as "Foa the Empara!" like they do in the UK, which is where 40k comes from. It got into my speech pattern and I didn't even realize I was emulating the UK style of dropped R's. Fascinating!
Some accents of Portuguese and Spanish also have that rhotic R, like the Paraguayan and inner Brazilian one. Makes pronouncing English words much easier, and makes pronouncing words from other languages incredibly hard. Some of us straight up don't know how to trill the R.
I still remember, when the teacher went around the class asking everyone to roll their Rs, I failed miserably. He looked at me rather sadly and said "Ah, the London R" and moved on. Fortunately this scar has not doomed me to an unhappy life.
This is spectacular and woefully underrated content. Some of the most insightful and compelling things I've learned in a while. And delightful to watch.
Not watching these videos all the way through will make you Regret missing out on great content. Never doubt a great lesson and become a true phonetics fanatic!
Even in a low population country like Norway, the pronunciation of the letter "r" varies so much from dialect to dialect that it helps tell which part of the country the speaker is from.
I always love finding that you've released a new video. I know I'm going to learn something new and interesting, so I can't really say this one is special. Each one is special. Keep up the good work.
Gosh, I just love these videos! As a New Yawka, My grandfather always put “erl” in his car. While my mother was pregnant with me, she decided to name me Joyce, her Irish grandmother’s maiden name. Feeling she was honoring his family, she told her father that would be the name if I were a girl. “Ahhhh, Jers. That would be a fine name.” Needless to say, my name is not Joyce.
Funny that you used a German castle when you talked about medieval English pronunciation. The castle shown at 4:24 is the Marksburg in Rhineland-Palatinate.
Amazing! I noticed this years ago inside my own mouth, that R acted more like a vowel than a consonant, and this video answered all my questions and then some. Thanks again, Otherwords team. You never miss! One more fun thing is the way rhotic R acts as a glide between vowels in standard British English where most American speakers would put a glottal stop. It really is a beautiful and versatile sound.
I'm an early childhood music teacher and every time we're learning a song in another language I love getting to talk about how weird R is, and how English is about the only language that uses that hard R sound. This video is definitely making an appearance the next time a spanish or french song comes up.
As mentioned in the video, Mandarin has the alveolar approximant (English R). Also, speakers of Brazilian Portuguese from rural São Paulo have this R. Someone else also mentioned Dutch. I believe it also exists in Yoruba.
i needed speech therapy when i was a kid. most sounds i picked up by first grade, but R followed me until fifth. nothing stopped me from talking a ton but it did take practice to understand me, so i’ve heard. other kids used to ask me if i was british (i am east coast usa) and for the life of me i could not say “race car”. it wasn’t until i was 10 or so and the speech therapist showed me xrays of tongues and taught me to “pull back the corners” of my tongue to touch my molars that it clicked! everyone except her had been trying to teach me the “tap” and “tril”. if im really tired or jittery, i still slip up
I was the same way as a kid! (native English speaker, West Coast USA, yet often people thought I had an "accent.") I was also pulled out of class to meet with a speech therapist a couple of times a week. I never got to see X-rays of tongues, though! I still had "R" issues through sixth grade or so- at least for me, "R"s in the middles of words were much more difficult to pronounce than those at the beginnings. My grandmother's name was Aurora, which was a real tongue-twister to say when I was small! (Woah-wa?)
What an amazing video! As a non-native speaker whenever I try to do a native accent, it's always the r(and sometimes 'p') sound that trips me up. I especially loved your singing and acting bits. The topic, contents, explanation, and your expressions are always interesting. I wish we could see your new videos every week
What was used in old movies was the Trans/mid-Atlantic accent, and it was created as a sort of counterpart to the English "Received Pronunciation" It was meant to be a "generic" American accent that was a hybrid American-English accent. It is not a naturally evolved accent.
I hadn't thought about this before, but it makes a lot of sense. When writing loan words in Japanese long R sounds are often written instead as an extension of the length of the preceding vowel. For example star (as in movie star) becomes スタ－ (sta-)
It's more likely because there would be a ru syllable. Also the s(u)taa, (yes there is an u what is formed with mouth but not voiced) is easier to pronounce than s(u)tar(u).
I'd say most of the time アー (aa) or ア (a) sound is used to represent the suffix "er" and things that sound like it: - ハンバーガー ("hanbaagaa", hamburger) - ドア ("doa", door) - スマート ("sumaato", smart) But there are a few examples of other vowels getting elongated to stand in for an R sound, notably the オ sound: リポート ("ripooto", report) ボード ("boodo", board) Search for (ɹ) on en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcription_into_Japanese#Table_of_transcription_from_English and it's mostly ア/アー or the previous vowel plus ラ/リ/ル/レ/ロ
You completely missed that R is used as a vowel in several of the Slavic Languages, like Serbo-Croatian, trg, krv, etc. Also found in Slovak and Czech. We trill the r, but can still use it as a vowel. Thus the famous Czech tongue twister 'Strč prst skrz krk'.
Was waiting for her to use my name as an example, always noticed some people hit the hard R (MARcus) and for others it’s (MAHcus). Which could’ve led to Caesar, Czar, dominar/i and other hard Rs derived from Latin
The Shavian alphabet (a phonemic spelling reform) has two letters that correspond to R: • “𐑮”, the consonant “r” in “run”, and • “𐑼”, the vowel “arr” in “arrange”, which is a combination of “𐑩”, the “a” in “about” plus “𐑮”. Other vowels have versions combined with “𐑮”, like 𐑓𐑭𐑞𐑼 (father) vs. 𐑓𐑸𐑞𐑼 (farther) and 𐑕𐑷𐑕 (sauce) vs. 𐑕𐑹𐑕 (source).
Many people have a hard time pronouncing the last name 'Rivera' in English. But in Spanish it rolls off the tongue with ease. It's the opposite when it comes to my first name. It's easy for an English speaker to pronounce 'Raymond' but Spanish speakers have a difficult time with it. Many times they just say 'Raymundo' and honestly I just go with it because it's exhausting trying to help them pronounce it.
you have no idea how validating this is! since about mid-January i've been thinking "hey! R sounds a lot more like a vowel than a consonant. it's kinda like a pseudo-vowel!"
Portuguese also has a strong R that I think is more easily associated with arabic (and maybe german?). It will show up whenever R is the first letter of a word, when it's doubled (carro) and when it follows some other consonants in certain situations (genro or guelra, but not litro, crime or pronome). The first-letter-R will sometimes be pronounced as a trill, but I tend to associate it with a posh and/or old-timey way of saying this type of R.
15:15 Almost correct. While it was becoming somewhat fashionable, that evidence from "old films from the period" was actually a trained film accent called the "Transatlantic" or "Mid-Atlantic" accent, used almost exclusively for films; it was not because it was becoming fashionable. It is believed to have been due to the poor quality of microphones used, so words needed to be enunciated clearly so the listeners could understand them. It was used in radios for a "broadcasting voice" and on TV/Films. It stopped being taught because technology got better, we were able to drop microphones closer to people off-camera, and they could pick-up sounds more clearly, so they didn't need to teach the accent anymore.
I've long argued that R is a vowel in the typical western pronunciation of the word "turtle". People often retort that the schwa before the R sound is the true vowel. I ask "what schwa sound", and then they usually pronounce the word "turtle" very slowly and inject a long schwa sound that doesn't match how a human being pronounces that word. "T-uuuhhhhhhh-rr-d-uuuhhhhhhhh-lll". I'd only pronounce it that way if I had an ice cube in my mouth.
Fun fact: The French style of saying the letter R is considered "wrong" in Finland, and has been dubbed "ärrävika". I know this, because both me and my brother have been bullied in school for saying the letter R using the uvula. The tongue trilling/Spanish way is the correct way of saying R in Finland, but I find it nearly impossible to pull off, which is why I trill the uvula instead, the French way.
I know you covered a lot here, but I'm actually surprised the Intrusive R didn't get a mention given its close connection to vowels! As a non-linguist, I found it to be a pretty interesting topic once I figured out what was going on in dialects that do this.
when you said "the sound you'd sustain if you were singing the word" it instantly made sense to me!!!! yes, r would be a vowel in that sense.. so cool!!
I was actually taught (California 1950s) that the vowels were: a, e, i, o, u and sometimes y and w. Including the American variety of r makes sense to me though. Having now lived in England for 50 years, my pronunciation has become less rhotic, but if I consciously pronounce words like bird or girl, I do hear the -ir- more as a simple vowel sound; not even a diphthong.
I’m 18 and i still cant pronounce r properly, i can say r but not the normal way. Words like horror are especially difficult for me. Im afrikaans tho so we see not being able to pronounce r and rather rolling all your r’s as a cute thing and call it brei (directly translated that would be knitting)
Speaking German, English and Japanese it really is the most stand-out letter between the three. It seems like almost every language has a unique "R". For German speakers it's the hardest English letter to pronounce (alongside "th"), and even English speakers who are 99% fluent in German are usually very easy to hear because of this one difference. The Japanese "R" is also challenging for many Europeans , but the reverse is even harder (and funnier) as Japanese speakers try to guess where to say "R" and where "L" x)
In my German class I pointed out the different pronunciations of "butter" in American, German and British. The -er in the former being rhotic and the latter two being non-rhotic with a Tiefschwa (ɐ).
Absolutely Whenever I try to speak Japanese I end up using the Spanish r instead. It's a lot easier, and most Americans are familiar with it. It's what we typically default to for softer r sounds, whether it's correct or not. And it usually ends up sounding very strange. I just started learning German, and I always think to myself "pretend you're British". It's pretty easy to get a hold of pronouncing German sounds though. Most German speakers are fluent in English as well, and you can learn a lot about how Germans speak by their accents when they speak English.
@@WGGplant Is there any real difference between the Mexican Spanish "r" and the Japanese "ra" (or "re" or "ru" or "ri" or "ro")? Japanese certainly doesn't have "rr", but I haven't noticed any difference between the "r" sounds. The Spanish "l" on the other hand, is different. For instance, the Japanese name "Kirara". I would pronounce that name exactly the same in Japanese or in Spanish. However, translating to English you could also spell it "Kilala" which sounds different in Japanese (but the same as Kirara), English, and Spanish.
@@david2869 its a little further back. spanish r is a flick closer to the front of ur mouth, and is therefore easier to make in fluent conversation at least thats what everyone tells me. ive been told my japanese r sounds "empty". i dont rly get it, but that's what ive been told
@@david2869 its a little further back. spanish r is a flick closer to the front of ur mouth, and is therefore easier to make in fluent conversation. i think its why japanese ppl tend to mix up their r's and l's sound, in english, while spanish speakers dont. at least thats what everyone tells me. ive been told my japanese r sounds "empty". i dont rly get it, but that's what ive been told
I've done international folk dancing almost all my life. One of the first dances I learned was called Srbjanka. That's when it first occurred to me that R could be a vowel.
Seeing the visualizations of the tongue movements, I just had a eureka moment on why our languages in the Philippines sometimes use (or used) R as an allophone of either D or L. They tongue movements are actually very similar.
There is a vowel R ( ṛ - ऋ) in Sanskrit. Modern Indian pronounce the vowel r like "ri" (north and east India) or "ru"(south and west India). Exemples: Kṛṣṇa (कृष्ण), vṛt (वृत्), kṛtam (कृतम्), ṛkṣaḥ (ऋक्षः) and even the name of the language: संस्कृत saṁskṛta(m)
My grandfather, Reinald Werrenrath, was a popular singer in the early part of the last century. Recorded hundreds of RCA Victor albums. He was famous for rolling his R's. Here are a couple of examples:
Star Spangled Banner: ua-cam.com/video/YuLcM39t7Fo/v-deo.html Rose Of My Heart ua-cam.com/video/-YO1_xwAHQo/v-deo.html
Most major Indian languages, starting from Sanskrit, have both vowel and consonant forms of r. In fact, often their alphabets have not just a vowel r (retroflex) but also a vowel l (dental). The sacred Hindu scripture, Rigveda, arguably the oldest extant text in any Indo-European language, is spelt with the vowel r (thus, the technically more accurately spelt as Rgveda).
I also speak French, Spanish and German and I teach French as a second language so this is absolutely fascinating! And you made this so much fun to watch!
Your singing example fascinates me! When singing, one is taught to drop the hard R sound [Bird is usually sung Bahd] because the constriction needed for a hard R sound makes musical notes sound sharper and thus makes the words harder to interpret.
I think it makes sense now that why devnagari script groups ऋ (ri/ru) along with the vowels instead of the consonants, although there exists a consonant र (ra). Similarly other indic scripts do this too. It makes much more sense now.
In Bengali alphabet, for example, ঋ (sounde like "ree") is considered to be a vowel. ঋণ("rin"), ঋতু("ree-tu") are some of the words consisting this letter. However, the letter has become redundant as the aforementioned words are generally pronounced as hard 'r'. In Bengali র is used to denote that sound.
Information, not all of the UK is non rhotic. The Westcountry still has rhoticism, as does Scotland, north Lancashire, Northern Ireland and the Welsh speaking araes of Wales. The Westcountry has the retroflex 'r', also found in Ireland and America/Canada. Northern England till recently had the 'tap', rather than the retroflex 'R, which you can here if listening to old recordings of Cumvrian and Northumbrian. Listen to English from say Devon, even the cities of Plymouth and Exeter, and it is a retroflex 'r'. Call it the Westcountry 'r', taken to and adopted in America. We invented it in the English language, even the Cornish and Irish languages adopted the retroflex 'r'. From Cornwall, in the west of the Westcountry. PS I agree that a retroflex 'r' has vowel like characteristics, which may explain why it was lost in the 1700s in East Anglia and London, spreading north and west overtime.
Until only a couple of decades ago, there was the Northumbrian "burr" found in Northumberland which, I assume was the uvular fricative only pronounced before vowels (as with "r" in British Received Pronunciation) e.g. in the word "road". My uncle who died in the mid-1970s spoke that way. It has gone now, sadly.
@@MrBulky992 I used to live and work in the Scottish Borders in a rural industry (forestry) and was made aware of the Northumbrian 'r' as it was so close by. Never heard it, but was reliably informed by a Geordie I worked with, that there as some still who used it. I suspect older speakers near the Scotish Border. Listening to old recordings from the early 20th C of old speakers, I have heard that uvular 'r' or a tap down to north Yorkshire. I suspect mostly gone now. Glad we still have the retroflex 'r' down here in the Westcountry.
Clever choice skipping over an example of the dropped R in modern black american dialect. But it is incredible how important and culturally significant it is to drop that one R. And you’ve done an unprecedented job of providing all of the context for that here. Incredible video, thank you.
this also notes something interesting that i had never noticed until taking phonetics classes - "R" as in red, aura, etc. is different from "R"'s role in bird, lower, fervor, etc. the former, to me, is a consonant for sure, whereas the latter is the vowel version. super interesting.
Just wondering where you're from or where it is you are learning English? In Canada and probably 70% of the US "R" only has one sound. Just hard R. In the US it's just some of the Southern States and Boston where they pronounce a lot of stuff with a big accent. But for most of us in Canada and US all those other words you mentioned, the R sound would be exactly the same.
We learned in school that R is half vocal (Im from Serbia) In Serbian R is commonly a vocal ( like in words Grb, Srb, smrznuto, krc)Here are some examples of words that Anglo-saxons couldnt pronounce and simply addeed a vocal before R to make it easier. Thorn - Trn, Mlin - Mill Crush - Krš Prdi - Fart Vrtlog - Vortex Mrz - Freeze All these words have same meaning in English and Serbian
The "English" R pronounced ah, is only in South East England. The other areas such as Cornwall, Somerset, Midlands etc. all pronounce the R as "ahr." It is not a coincidence that South East England was Norman-French. In Australia, the R on the end of a word has become a short U as in the word "up." Wintuh, Summuh, Decembuh.
No, it is much more widespread than just South East England. I am from 300 miles away in North East England and we do not pronounce r's unless they are followed by a vowel e.g. "far" is pronounced "fah" or, if you have a broad accent, "fa-a-a" - no r in evidence at all. I think the same applies in Yorkshire and further down the country including the East Midlands, East Anglia and, as you mentioned, London and the Home Counties. It seems only to be in the South West that r's are pronounced where there is no vowel following and in Lancashire in a few places.
Loved this! I need to check if you have a video explaining why I say TAWK for talk. Lol (As I’m sure most can guess, I grew up in NJ about 10 miles from Manhattan.)
2:59 I think the uvular trill is considered to be quite rare in France. Most speakers use an approximant, usually transcribed [ʁ̞], which is the sound you produced, while others use a simple fricative [ʁ]. The uvula does not make the motion displayed in the image for those phones.
My mother even witnessed a court case that hung on regional pronunciations of R. There was a woman who was being brought in on DUI charges. She was from Western Massachusetts, the police officer was from Boston. Now, in the western part of the state the 'r' has remained quite hard despite the proximity to Boston. One of the tests for drunkenness of course, is to recite the alphabet backwards. It was in the wee hours of the morning, and this woman was nervous talking to a cop. She started with Z, Y, X, etc and then when she got to S she paused. The cop, thinking to be generous, prompted her with the sound of the next the letter: you know..."ahhh!" The poor woman didn't know what this cop was doing, which must have only made her more nervous: so she failed to finish reciting the alphabet. The jury ended up concluding that she was probably just tired and let her off the DUI charge.
I can't cite the alphabet backwards sober, how the Hell am I supposed to do it drunk?😏JK, I don't drink.
*Edit:* I actually bothered to try it and realized I actually can do it backward. Ironically, I guess I'm no longer in the can't even do it sober club.
Can sober people actually complete this test? Because I certainly can't.
@@NecessaryTruths I've often heard that the field sobriety test is pretty useless. If you're tired, stressed, scared or in any other state of heightened emotions it's easy to fail. Better to take a breathalyser instead and if that doesn't work a blood sample is the safest solution anyway.
I may be wrong but there's also the issue of whether a cop is certified to instruct you on and guide you through a FSB in the first place and whether he/she is able to determine the results. Without further knowledge of your specific medical history, current state of mind etc it's very hard to interpret some minor issues. Of course that's why video evidence is always necessary and helpful - for both sides.
You're a little f***ed if you're dyslexic and sober.
Western Massachusetts is NOT in proximity to Boston. That's why. I live about an hour South of Boston and people don't have the accent here, but Western Mass is 2-4 hours away from Boston. You probably interact more with people from Connecticut and New York out there than people from Boston.
Proximity? Nah.
When I was in grade school, many years ago in Serbia, the teacher told us flat out that R was a sound between a vowel and consonant. She called it sonant. It was no surprise to anyone, knowing common words like vrh (peak), prst (finger), and trg (square), in which the R functions like a vowel.
I'm half Czech and you're probably right.
I think you mean sonorant.
I can't believe you managed to pack so much phonetics in 7 min while also keeping it fairly easy to understand. On top of that, it's also a a really fun video!
Yes! The rhotic schwa! Never heard anyone talk about this phoneme before until now!
100% agree
Glad I'm not the only one. Usually videos like these leave me with a "well aktualyyy" moment, but this really gave context to all the major cases and exceptions without straying too far from the topic.
I, too, was blown away 'aight from the st'ahhht !
The drawings showing where the sounds are formed ! The host singing vowels between informative blurbs ! The historic examples feathered in ! . . . and then : PBS ... Oh ! You folks have done it again ! B-)
"furthermore the Phoenicians must be destroyed" Cato the elder.
As a classically trained singer. "R" s were the easiest way for me to transition without a break from chest to head voice. This segment TOTALLY confirmed why Rs are so important for singers singing correctly. Wow soooo cool.
I had to learn 5 languages as a teenager and the letter "R" was always my archenemy.
Now I know that it had a reason...
The question is: Was it your archenemy, yah ahchenemy, yourrr arrrchenemy, yourrl arrrlchenemy, or youd adchenemy?
@@david2869 Rrright! : )
And my speech therapist was trying to get me to do “none of the above”, touching the back of my tongue to my palate.
Cool, what languages?
@@Qwerty83834 The usual five: Italian, Spanish, French, German & English :)
I am a speech-language pathologist who specializes in remediating the R sound and this was FASCINATING! Thanks so much for a great video! I'll definitely share it with my audience.
As I'm a fellow SLP wondering what was new info?
I'm in a completely different country (the Netherlands) and I distinctly remember being in a choir as a kid and being told I needed to "properly pronounce my Rs" (aka trill them) because "the dropped R made me sound like farmers kid". The dropped R is standard in my regional accent, which is frowned upon for being too rural.
If I remember correctly, there are 3 ways to pronounce R in Dutch, right? Might've seen a video where a Dutch guy was explaining that his full name Rogier (Something) uses all 3 pronunciations of R.
@@jaimel88 As a non-native speaker, it seems that way. A word like "beter" has something similar to the standard American R, and a word like "zware" is more of a tap. The trills seem to be more of a fancy thing? I may be wrong on this one, most of the time I've encountered them was in musicals, rather than regular spoken Dutch
This is the first time I’m watching this series. Loved it. Now I understand why my kids struggle with pronouncing the letter ‘R’. And Erica is so talented; she moves seamlessly between accents and pronunciations. Kudos.
I just love how Katharine Hepburn is a gift to linguistic studies.
Truly a dahling
😉
A gift to humanity.
What about Cary Grant?
She was a New Englander Lakeview is reflected in Her speech patterns
As an undergrad this would have been useful. As a current master student this is comfort entertainment to confirm that I at least know something
It’s so interesting that we don’t need to be formally taught ANY of this and just kind of pick it up naturally yet hearing it explained with such detailed is very enlightening
I remember Daphne on Frasier attempting an American accent.
Daphne: "I don't know what to do with my Rs."
Frasier: "Try hauling it out of here."
*Bonus quote*
Daphne: "I'm trying my American."
Frasier: "You're certainly trying THIS American."
Daphne: "Sure."
Love me some Frasier haha
Yep, anytime an Englishman insists the English speak proper English, simply remind them R is a consonant and A is a vowel.
Wow, that’s great pun!!
Niles: "I think I have an idea what to do with your R's"
Frasier: "Niles!"
Opera singer and therefore sound-production-nerd here. This is one of the most fascinating videos I've seen on UA-cam in recent memory! I teach some of this stuff - how to produce different Rs in different languages, for example - but didn't know how the rhotic R came to Canada, as well as some of the other history of this weird letter. Love this!
This one has got to be one of my favourite episodes from otherwords! I love this so much, someone give this show an award, please!!! Dr. Erica, thank you! I like to explain the differences between rhotic and non-rhotic English accents to my EFL students so I'm going to be taking a few notes from this video here to show more examples to students from now on. The geopolitical implications of it are particularly interesting and new to me! :)
I'm Sanskrit (and Hindi) there's a vowel ऋ (Rhi) and Consonant र (Ra). Its amazing how ancient yet scientific Devnagari Script is! 💛
That's because sanskrit was deliberately constructed utilizing the airflow and tongue positions of the mouth. And yeah the first time I had someone try to tell me R is a vowel was with the Rhi sound in sanskrit
There is a class of abiguida in Sanskrit known as semi-vowels - Y, R, L, V/W (ya, ra, la, va/wa). This is because, although these are considered consonants, there are vowels sounds in Sanskrit very close to these.
Such as, 'Yi' and 'Yee' sounds are close to 'I' and 'Ee' vowels.
'Wu' and 'Woo' sounds are close to 'U' and 'Oo' vowels.
'R' and 'L' vowel sounds are tricky and we need comparative linguistics to explain, and it is further made difficult by the fact that 'L' vowel is not used in modern Indian languages anymore, and there are other additional consonants that may sound a combination of various R and L articulations.
BTW, the 'R' in the name Rishi Sunak is a vowel, not a consonant.
@@Archiep2979 You are confusing between Vedic Sanskrit and Classical Sanskrit.
Vedic Sanskrit was a language like any other, and the letters of abiguida are from Maaheshwara suktas, similar to letters of alphabets of English/Latin.
Classical Sanskrit was carefully designed and constructed, hence we see the tabular configuration of vowels (natural vowels and mixed vowels) and consonants ( ka-varga, cha-varga and so on), which the modern Indian languages have adopted, and has inspired Medeleev to create Periodic Table of elements.
I adore this show
I adohh this show
I was just thinking the same. The singing bits got me 🤣
Informed, respectful, nuanced, and humorous--i love this host and series!
In serbo-croatian languages r is sometimes treated like a vowel. For example words like crn, vrt, rt, smrt use it as the vowel.
In Czech and Slovak as well (but, surprisingly, not in Polish).
An interesting fact: the alphabets of most Indian languages are phonetic and are divided into two parts, the first with all the vowels and the second with all the consonants. In the vowel section of the alphabet, there are 2 letters that approximate the American r (i.e. one of the r's is closer to the mouth opening, the other farther back), meeting up to the requirements for a vowel, hence in the vowel section. Of course, in most Indian languages, there is also a "rolling" r, which is in the consonants section. These are, however, distinct sounds and therefore distinct letters, as the languages are phonetic. Having this knowledge, the title of this video intrigued me, and I wanted to see if the video was about this too.
Thanks for ths, I came scrolling too far down to see of anyone mentioned the Sanskrit ऋ as a vowel.
It’s disappointing that she wouldn’t even mention it in the video.
@@antareepgogoi6065 story of my life lol. There have been several such videos on this channel and many other where when any universal topic is discussed India is conspicuously absent entirely.
@@kailash4799so you mean ऋ is pronounced like american r. Like in ca*r*
ड़ is probably rolled r
And र is alveolar flap
But I never knew the correct pronounciation of ऋ.
If you speak ऋ like american r then people will assume you're trying to copy foreigner accent.
@@Dhruv-Kumar unfortunately, the pronounciation you are referring here applies only to Hindi. Sanskrit uses ऋ as halfway to ri and ru. Examples are Krishna, Rishi, Rithu. All are correct even when spelt ru instead of ri.
Yay! As a speech-language pathologist, this is so fascinating 😊
As a regular ol' nerd so do i!
Right SLP buddies!!! I have to explain to parents.... /r/ is not just one sound! I
@@juliedurnan2364 oh man, I don’t 😆 I feel like I can’t explain it properly since there isn’t just one way to make it. How do you typically explain it to a kid that actually gets them to make the sound?
you people
@@thenightjackal ikr💀
A little correction. Vowels don't have to be voiced. In Japanese and Korean, unrounded high vowels are devoiced between voiceless consonants or at the end of an utterance after a voiceless consonant. This makes them sound like they aren't pronounced, especially after fricatives, but they are and it's noticeable if you have two similar voiceless consonants next to each other like in "sushi". It's also noticeable with "ki" and sometimes "hi" or "pi" because English speakers tend to subconsciously train themselves to hear devoiced "i" when it doesn't significantly change the pronunciation of the consonant or for "hi", we just can't hear "h" sounds without vowels after them very well
I always wondered about that, when they say "onegaishimasu" I never hear them pronounce that last "U"
@@emilymann1175 Actually, the vowels in "su" and "shi" are debatably omitted in some contexts where they'd otherwise be voiceless. I'd say it's consistently done at the end of utterances. In other cases, it depends on other factors like pitch accent or preceding syllables
In Bosnian/Croatian/Serbian, even an R that closes off the vocal tract can function as a vowel - like in the name Tvrtko or the word smrt!
In Kenya🇰🇪, the English spoken there has rolled R or a trilled R sound due to influence from local languages and Swahili- hence rhotic
Non-rhotic form is from the British influence
In the deep south of New Zealand, we have a rhotic R, unlike the rest of the country. However, it's quite different to the US rhotic R, being more akin to the sound in Scots. People from the rest of the country love asking us to say "Bert is wearing a dirty shirt".
Unfortunately, growing up with this R has quite ruined me for other languages. I have a *lot* of trouble pulling off any other kind of R sound, so despite my love of languages, I always give myself away as a foreigner as soon as this letter pops up.
I always thought it sounded interesting, since the rest of New Zealand's accent is kinda bad. Why does everything have to sound like a question, for one.
German "R" was difficult for me also. Having to unlearn the Spanish trill made it worse and it took a couple years before I could even discern the different sounds.
@@lolly9804 simple, because we like to be sure when speaking. ;)
I can relate, despite being on almost the other side of the world. I'm from Washington state, in the Pacific Northwest, and I grew up with Spanish as a second language in the home. For some reason, though, I've never managed to get the trilled R. My high school Spanish teacher said listening to my nearly-fluent accent was a pleasant, relaxing experience - right until the R showed up, then it was like a scratch in a record 😅
@@lolly9804 shut you mouth cause u mad new zealand accent way beter than anything u could ever make
I could listen to her forever. Her explanations are always so clear and understandable. I really enjoy her sense of humor and even her singing.
In Danish, an R after a vowel usually functions as a vowel. And it also alters the sound of that preceding vowel by making it sound more "dark" or "low", i.e. that vowel is then pronounced farther back in the mouth/throat.
I was looking for a comment about the weirdness of the Danish R ‘vowel’! Thank you for such clear wording.
@@rdklkje13 Part of what makes the Danish language so darn charming are tongue twisters such as fyrre tørrere irere badede i Rødovre ("forty drier Irishmen bathed in Rødovre") or gems like otteoghalvfjerdsindstyvende ("seventy-eighth").
@@kenster8270 He, he, the good old ‘Rødgrød med fløde’ (typical summer dish) and ‘røget ørred’ (smoked trout) are bad enough for most people!
In Portuguese, at least in my accent ( northeast Brazilian btw) the R represents two sounds, an alveolar tap when intervocalic, and a uvular trill/fricative (and sometimes may even be realized as a glottal fricative) when geminated, word initial or before consonants. It is always so interesting to think about how these two variants remained in the language and didn’t merge, and how confusing it might be for non natives to get that there is a distinction
I totally agreed, in some regions even exist 3 ways to pronounce it, like the country side that has the rhotic r too. A sentence like "raro como ar" all the r's is pronounced differently.
having learned Portuguese when I lived in São Paulo state for a while when I was little I use much more of an “h” than a uvular trill
In czech we have A, E, I, O, U and Y. We also have Ě and half vowels R and L and we have a lot fun with it. For example song "Holka Modrooká" (Blueyed girl). Short, naive text but ideal for rhetorical execises. Just replace all vowels with one ad you get "Halka Madraaká", "Helke Medreeke" or "Hrlkr Mrdrrrkr".
True 😁 I know the song and that substitution game too but I only ever tried it with vowels (Hilki midriiki nisidivij i pitiki etc. 😁), never an R or an L 😄
Sort of like the American song "The Name Game". Except we replace the start letter of a name with different ones, for instance "Larry, larry bo-barry, banafana mo-marry, fee fie fo-farry, Larry"
Seriously, just stick to the basic example
Strč prst skrz krk.
WeLl AcTuAlLy, Y isn't a seperate vowel, it makes the same sound as I, and Ě also isn't a distinct sound on its own, it either makes /je/ sound, or it softens the consonant before (d, t, n). Except MĚ, for some reason it makes /mňe/ sound, god knows why...
Like "I like to eat, eat, eat apples and bananas"?
Here are some info on the Mandarin Chinese case: the phenomenon is called "兒化" in Chinese, roughly translates to "er"-ification. When written out, the character "兒" is suffixed onto the character indicating the vowel of previous character is a rhotic vowel. An example: 花兒 ("flowers" /hwaɚ/) from 花 /hwa/. (Although there are some times this suffixed 兒 is pronounced separately, like 花兒 as /hwa/ /ɚ/ -- but this is yet another example showing that our R sound is more like a vowel.) When spelling out in pinyin, this is usually indicated by a *suffix* r on the spelling of previous character.
This is different from the *prefix* r in the pinyin: that sound is a consonant /ɻ/ that the tongue is touching the palate, while this 兒化 sound didn't have them touching.
so 花兒 is like "more flowers"?
那个是traditional吗？我觉个 ”R” 是儿
@@angkhoapham8209 There's no "more" meaning in this, so that's simply another way of saying "flowers". An example found in the lyric of a song: "我等到*花兒*也謝了" -- "I waited so long even the *flowers* withered away."
@@merriweathercommenter1931 是，我是用繁體字的
@@angkhoapham8209 No, it's just how people from Northern China speak. People from Southern China will not speak in this manner.
I like how the English dropped their Rs at the end of words but then put them where there aren't any Rs in the first place to distinguish vowels that end one word and begin another. To me (west coast American) the dropped R sounds sophisticated and the intrusive R sounds like a street urchin trying to run some scam on you. It's fantastic.
Most non-rhotic accents have intrusive r.
We did not drop the 'r' in the Westcountry or north Lancashire, still very much pronounced as a retroflex 'r'. From Cornwall in the Westcountry.
"MAKE R A VOWEL!" - scott wozniak
This was a fantastic episode. Thanks as always for providing such high quality content!
In the Devanagari script, you'll find 'Ri' listed as a vowel and 'r' listed as a consonant, I was always confused by the redundancy till today. There's also consonants in Marathi, Odia and Punjabi among others that sound somewhere between R and L
ऋ is the letter, also confused me as well
Yes ऋ and ऌ are vowel in devanagari
As soon as I saw the topic was R I knew Boston was getting a mention. My wife and I, both Bostonian natives, were discussing this recently and we don't really think its entirely accurate anymore to associate the soft R with Boston as much as it was say 20 years ago. As Boston proper has gentrified and seen a lot of influx from other areas, the accent seems to have softened as people who speak with that accent have been economically pushed out of the area to the north and south, closer to maine/NH and Rhode Island.
I did hear it a lot in homeless shelters in and around Boston, especially from old timers, but that just reinforces what you already said. I'm a transplanted Ohio native (via almost every other part of the country) and I'm doing my best to adopt the accent and keep it alive (j/k I'm not trying at all, it just sort of seeps in little by little, lol)
The Car Talk guys, Tom and Ray Magliozzi, propagated the old Boston accent across the US and into space from their studios in Cambridge (Our Fair City), MA until around 2012, on “En Pea Ah.”
This is such a cool topic, and a great video! I'm a Warhammer 40k fan, and I never realized until watching this video that I was vocalizing the phrase "For the Emperor!" as "Foa the Empara!" like they do in the UK, which is where 40k comes from. It got into my speech pattern and I didn't even realize I was emulating the UK style of dropped R's. Fascinating!
Some accents of Portuguese and Spanish also have that rhotic R, like the Paraguayan and inner Brazilian one.
Makes pronouncing English words much easier, and makes pronouncing words from other languages incredibly hard. Some of us straight up don't know how to trill the R.
@@Omoujathe sound in the words you mentioned isn't a trill, it's a flap
@@boghund true, my mistake. I learned that this sound was called "rolled R", so I mistake trilled R with flap R
I still remember, when the teacher went around the class asking everyone to roll their Rs, I failed miserably. He looked at me rather sadly and said "Ah, the London R" and moved on. Fortunately this scar has not doomed me to an unhappy life.
that's so interesting!!! i wonder how that came about.
You forgot them occasional Y
This is spectacular and woefully underrated content. Some of the most insightful and compelling things I've learned in a while. And delightful to watch.
I love this series so much. I learn so much with every episode, and Dr. Brozovsky presents the material in such fun, interesting ways.
Not watching these videos all the way through will make you Regret missing out on great content.
Never doubt a great lesson and become a true phonetics fanatic!
I knew someone with the surname Vrbsky, so it makes sense R could be considered a vowel considering how it's used and sounds
Also consider the Croatian island of Krk
And Brkini in Slovenia.
I can't
I can't say any of these European hullabaloos
I knew someone once whose surname was "Hricko", but the original spelling was something like "Hryzcko." Which is the vowel, y or r? Or both?
Zbigniew Brzezinski
Even in a low population country like Norway, the pronunciation of the letter "r" varies so much from dialect to dialect that it helps tell which part of the country the speaker is from.
babe wake up new otherwords episode dropped!!
This series is now one of my favorite. Your presentation and easeful delivery are engaging, wonderfully entertaining, and very informative. Thank you.
I always love finding that you've released a new video. I know I'm going to learn something new and interesting, so I can't really say this one is special. Each one is special. Keep up the good work.
Gosh, I just love these videos! As a New Yawka, My grandfather always put “erl” in his car. While my mother was pregnant with me, she decided to name me Joyce, her Irish grandmother’s maiden name. Feeling she was honoring his family, she told her father that would be the name if I were a girl. “Ahhhh, Jers. That would be a fine name.” Needless to say, my name is not Joyce.
Funny that you used a German castle when you talked about medieval English pronunciation. The castle shown at 4:24 is the Marksburg in Rhineland-Palatinate.
Amazing! I noticed this years ago inside my own mouth, that R acted more like a vowel than a consonant, and this video answered all my questions and then some. Thanks again, Otherwords team. You never miss!
One more fun thing is the way rhotic R acts as a glide between vowels in standard British English where most American speakers would put a glottal stop. It really is a beautiful and versatile sound.
I'm an early childhood music teacher and every time we're learning a song in another language I love getting to talk about how weird R is, and how English is about the only language that uses that hard R sound. This video is definitely making an appearance the next time a spanish or french song comes up.
Theres nothing hard about the English R
That is factually incorrect. English is far from "about the only language that uses a hard R sound".
@@vidareggum6118
What do you two mean by "hard R"?
Try some Dutch next time.
As mentioned in the video, Mandarin has the alveolar approximant (English R). Also, speakers of Brazilian Portuguese from rural São Paulo have this R. Someone else also mentioned Dutch. I believe it also exists in Yoruba.
i needed speech therapy when i was a kid. most sounds i picked up by first grade, but R followed me until fifth. nothing stopped me from talking a ton but it did take practice to understand me, so i’ve heard. other kids used to ask me if i was british (i am east coast usa) and for the life of me i could not say “race car”. it wasn’t until i was 10 or so and the speech therapist showed me xrays of tongues and taught me to “pull back the corners” of my tongue to touch my molars that it clicked! everyone except her had been trying to teach me the “tap” and “tril”. if im really tired or jittery, i still slip up
I was the same way as a kid! (native English speaker, West Coast USA, yet often people thought I had an "accent.") I was also pulled out of class to meet with a speech therapist a couple of times a week. I never got to see X-rays of tongues, though! I still had "R" issues through sixth grade or so- at least for me, "R"s in the middles of words were much more difficult to pronounce than those at the beginnings. My grandmother's name was Aurora, which was a real tongue-twister to say when I was small! (Woah-wa?)
What an amazing video! As a non-native speaker whenever I try to do a native accent, it's always the r(and sometimes 'p') sound that trips me up. I especially loved your singing and acting bits. The topic, contents, explanation, and your expressions are always interesting. I wish we could see your new videos every week
If you're willing to share, what's your native language? What are the closest sounds to R and P in it?
@@SolomonUcko It's Gujarati, an Indian language
@@maadaaoh The English p is generally ફ, rather than પ .
What was used in old movies was the Trans/mid-Atlantic accent, and it was created as a sort of counterpart to the English "Received Pronunciation"
It was meant to be a "generic" American accent that was a hybrid American-English accent.
It is not a naturally evolved accent.
I hadn't thought about this before, but it makes a lot of sense. When writing loan words in Japanese long R sounds are often written instead as an extension of the length of the preceding vowel. For example star (as in movie star) becomes スタ－ (sta-)
It's more likely because there would be a ru syllable. Also the s(u)taa, (yes there is an u what is formed with mouth but not voiced) is easier to pronounce than s(u)tar(u).
I'd say most of the time アー (aa) or ア (a) sound is used to represent the suffix "er" and things that sound like it:
- ハンバーガー ("hanbaagaa", hamburger)
- ドア ("doa", door)
- スマート ("sumaato", smart)
But there are a few examples of other vowels getting elongated to stand in for an R sound, notably the オ sound:
リポート ("ripooto", report)
ボード ("boodo", board)
Search for (ɹ) on en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Transcription_into_Japanese#Table_of_transcription_from_English and it's mostly ア/アー or the previous vowel plus ラ/リ/ル/レ/ロ
Love the outtakes at the end of these videos ! Another fascinating topic.
You completely missed that R is used as a vowel in several of the Slavic Languages, like Serbo-Croatian, trg, krv, etc. Also found in Slovak and Czech. We trill the r, but can still use it as a vowel. Thus the famous Czech tongue twister 'Strč prst skrz krk'.
Was waiting for her to use my name as an example, always noticed some people hit the hard R (MARcus) and for others it’s (MAHcus). Which could’ve led to Caesar, Czar, dominar/i and other hard Rs derived from Latin
That line from Philadelphia Story is 'mid Atlantic' and was taught by language coaches to actors of the time.
not necessarily, there were a lot of people who talked like that naturally
The little song breaks in between are great 🤣 thank you for yet another fantastic episode of Otherwords :)
1:15 Spitting bars, doc!
The Shavian alphabet (a phonemic spelling reform) has two letters that correspond to R:
• “𐑮”, the consonant “r” in “run”, and
• “𐑼”, the vowel “arr” in “arrange”, which is a combination of “𐑩”, the “a” in “about” plus “𐑮”.
Other vowels have versions combined with “𐑮”, like 𐑓𐑭𐑞𐑼 (father) vs. 𐑓𐑸𐑞𐑼 (farther) and 𐑕𐑷𐑕 (sauce) vs. 𐑕𐑹𐑕 (source).
Many people have a hard time pronouncing the last name 'Rivera' in English. But in Spanish it rolls off the tongue with ease. It's the opposite when it comes to my first name. It's easy for an English speaker to pronounce 'Raymond' but Spanish speakers have a difficult time with it. Many times they just say 'Raymundo' and honestly I just go with it because it's exhausting trying to help them pronounce it.
you have no idea how validating this is! since about mid-January i've been thinking "hey! R sounds a lot more like a vowel than a consonant. it's kinda like a pseudo-vowel!"
Portuguese also has a strong R that I think is more easily associated with arabic (and maybe german?). It will show up whenever R is the first letter of a word, when it's doubled (carro) and when it follows some other consonants in certain situations (genro or guelra, but not litro, crime or pronome). The first-letter-R will sometimes be pronounced as a trill, but I tend to associate it with a posh and/or old-timey way of saying this type of R.
15:15 Almost correct. While it was becoming somewhat fashionable, that evidence from "old films from the period" was actually a trained film accent called the "Transatlantic" or "Mid-Atlantic" accent, used almost exclusively for films; it was not because it was becoming fashionable. It is believed to have been due to the poor quality of microphones used, so words needed to be enunciated clearly so the listeners could understand them. It was used in radios for a "broadcasting voice" and on TV/Films. It stopped being taught because technology got better, we were able to drop microphones closer to people off-camera, and they could pick-up sounds more clearly, so they didn't need to teach the accent anymore.
geoff lindsay has a fantastic video on this subject, debunking many myths surrounding this
I've long argued that R is a vowel in the typical western pronunciation of the word "turtle". People often retort that the schwa before the R sound is the true vowel. I ask "what schwa sound", and then they usually pronounce the word "turtle" very slowly and inject a long schwa sound that doesn't match how a human being pronounces that word. "T-uuuhhhhhhh-rr-d-uuuhhhhhhhh-lll". I'd only pronounce it that way if I had an ice cube in my mouth.
Fun fact: The French style of saying the letter R is considered "wrong" in Finland, and has been dubbed "ärrävika". I know this, because both me and my brother have been bullied in school for saying the letter R using the uvula. The tongue trilling/Spanish way is the correct way of saying R in Finland, but I find it nearly impossible to pull off, which is why I trill the uvula instead, the French way.
I know you covered a lot here, but I'm actually surprised the Intrusive R didn't get a mention given its close connection to vowels! As a non-linguist, I found it to be a pretty interesting topic once I figured out what was going on in dialects that do this.
Scott the Woz would be proud.
Currently learning french. Understanding the r is an uvular fricative helps immeasurably. Merci beaucoups.
In some English dialects, "L" can be realised as the vowels [ɤ̯], [o], or [ʊ]. Do you have a video on that too?
when you said "the sound you'd sustain if you were singing the word" it instantly made sense to me!!!! yes, r would be a vowel in that sense.. so cool!!
I was actually taught (California 1950s) that the vowels were: a, e, i, o, u and sometimes y and w. Including the American variety of r makes sense to me though. Having now lived in England for 50 years, my pronunciation has become less rhotic, but if I consciously pronounce words like bird or girl, I do hear the -ir- more as a simple vowel sound; not even a diphthong.
"Make R a vowel!" - Scott The Woz
I’m 18 and i still cant pronounce r properly, i can say r but not the normal way. Words like horror are especially difficult for me.
Im afrikaans tho so we see not being able to pronounce r and rather rolling all your r’s as a cute thing and call it brei (directly translated that would be knitting)
Well this was an effervescent episode! That vowel-singing and those accents were very much on point.
Speaking German, English and Japanese it really is the most stand-out letter between the three. It seems like almost every language has a unique "R".
For German speakers it's the hardest English letter to pronounce (alongside "th"), and even English speakers who are 99% fluent in German are usually very easy to hear because of this one difference.
The Japanese "R" is also challenging for many Europeans , but the reverse is even harder (and funnier) as Japanese speakers try to guess where to say "R" and where "L" x)
In my German class I pointed out the different pronunciations of "butter" in American, German and British. The -er in the former being rhotic and the latter two being non-rhotic with a Tiefschwa (ɐ).
Absolutely
Whenever I try to speak Japanese I end up using the Spanish r instead. It's a lot easier, and most Americans are familiar with it. It's what we typically default to for softer r sounds, whether it's correct or not. And it usually ends up sounding very strange.
I just started learning German, and I always think to myself "pretend you're British". It's pretty easy to get a hold of pronouncing German sounds though. Most German speakers are fluent in English as well, and you can learn a lot about how Germans speak by their accents when they speak English.
@@WGGplant Is there any real difference between the Mexican Spanish "r" and the Japanese "ra" (or "re" or "ru" or "ri" or "ro")? Japanese certainly doesn't have "rr", but I haven't noticed any difference between the "r" sounds. The Spanish "l" on the other hand, is different.
For instance, the Japanese name "Kirara". I would pronounce that name exactly the same in Japanese or in Spanish. However, translating to English you could also spell it "Kilala" which sounds different in Japanese (but the same as Kirara), English, and Spanish.
@@david2869 its a little further back. spanish r is a flick closer to the front of ur mouth, and is therefore easier to make in fluent conversation
at least thats what everyone tells me. ive been told my japanese r sounds "empty". i dont rly get it, but that's what ive been told
@@david2869 its a little further back. spanish r is a flick closer to the front of ur mouth, and is therefore easier to make in fluent conversation. i think its why japanese ppl tend to mix up their r's and l's sound, in english, while spanish speakers dont.
at least thats what everyone tells me. ive been told my japanese r sounds "empty". i dont rly get it, but that's what ive been told
What a brilliant piece of pedagogy! To absolutely mangle Churchill: "Never have so few minutes, taught so much to so many!"
Waltuh.
Watah.
JESSAY
I've done international folk dancing almost all my life. One of the first dances I learned was called Srbjanka. That's when it first occurred to me that R could be a vowel.
The differences between English dialects are extremely interesting! I hope to see more on the topic
Seeing the visualizations of the tongue movements, I just had a eureka moment on why our languages in the Philippines sometimes use (or used) R as an allophone of either D or L. They tongue movements are actually very similar.
There is a vowel R ( ṛ - ऋ) in Sanskrit. Modern Indian pronounce the vowel r like "ri" (north and east India) or "ru"(south and west India). Exemples: Kṛṣṇa (कृष्ण), vṛt (वृत्), kṛtam (कृतम्), ṛkṣaḥ (ऋक्षः) and even the name of the language: संस्कृत saṁskṛta(m)
It's also interesting to see how R had been added back into words where it isn't. Like Australian and English "No" is often pronounced like "nawr"
My grandfather, Reinald Werrenrath, was a popular singer in the early part of the last century. Recorded hundreds of RCA Victor albums. He was famous for rolling his R's.
Here are a couple of examples:
Star Spangled Banner:
ua-cam.com/video/YuLcM39t7Fo/v-deo.html
Rose Of My Heart
ua-cam.com/video/-YO1_xwAHQo/v-deo.html
Peter Werrenrath
The fact that she said /eɪ/ and /oʊ/ when talking about SINGLE phonemes...
Most major Indian languages, starting from Sanskrit, have both vowel and consonant forms of r. In fact, often their alphabets have not just a vowel r (retroflex) but also a vowel l (dental). The sacred Hindu scripture, Rigveda, arguably the oldest extant text in any Indo-European language, is spelt with the vowel r (thus, the technically more accurately spelt as Rgveda).
I also speak French, Spanish and German and I teach French as a second language so this is absolutely fascinating! And you made this so much fun to watch!
Your singing example fascinates me! When singing, one is taught to drop the hard R sound [Bird is usually sung Bahd] because the constriction needed for a hard R sound makes musical notes sound sharper and thus makes the words harder to interpret.
I think it makes sense now that why devnagari script groups ऋ (ri/ru) along with the vowels instead of the consonants, although there exists a consonant र (ra). Similarly other indic scripts do this too. It makes much more sense now.
Didn't know that there's this kind of content on youtube. It's so good.
In Bengali alphabet, for example, ঋ (sounde like "ree") is considered to be a vowel. ঋণ("rin"), ঋতু("ree-tu") are some of the words consisting this letter. However, the letter has become redundant as the aforementioned words are generally pronounced as hard 'r'. In Bengali র is used to denote that sound.
Information, not all of the UK is non rhotic. The Westcountry still has rhoticism, as does Scotland, north Lancashire, Northern Ireland and the Welsh speaking araes of Wales. The Westcountry has the retroflex 'r', also found in Ireland and America/Canada. Northern England till recently had the 'tap', rather than the retroflex 'R, which you can here if listening to old recordings of Cumvrian and Northumbrian. Listen to English from say Devon, even the cities of Plymouth and Exeter, and it is a retroflex 'r'. Call it the Westcountry 'r', taken to and adopted in America. We invented it in the English language, even the Cornish and Irish languages adopted the retroflex 'r'. From Cornwall, in the west of the Westcountry. PS I agree that a retroflex 'r' has vowel like characteristics, which may explain why it was lost in the 1700s in East Anglia and London, spreading north and west overtime.
Until only a couple of decades ago, there was the Northumbrian "burr" found in Northumberland which, I assume was the uvular fricative only pronounced before vowels (as with "r" in British Received Pronunciation) e.g. in the word "road". My uncle who died in the mid-1970s spoke that way. It has gone now, sadly.
@@MrBulky992 I used to live and work in the Scottish Borders in a rural industry (forestry) and was made aware of the Northumbrian 'r' as it was so close by. Never heard it, but was reliably informed by a Geordie I worked with, that there as some still who used it. I suspect older speakers near the Scotish Border. Listening to old recordings from the early 20th C of old speakers, I have heard that uvular 'r' or a tap down to north Yorkshire. I suspect mostly gone now. Glad we still have the retroflex 'r' down here in the Westcountry.
Hi, I'm fairly sure that the CCs mean to display "up-glided the vowel R when it preceded a consonant", not "when it proceeded a continent" (5:37)
Well, this info needs to spread all through the internet.
Thanks for making Scotland and Ireland just a footnote. Really gets me in the feels
Scott the Woz would probably appreciate R being a vowel
Clever choice skipping over an example of the dropped R in modern black american dialect. But it is incredible how important and culturally significant it is to drop that one R. And you’ve done an unprecedented job of providing all of the context for that here. Incredible video, thank you.
this also notes something interesting that i had never noticed until taking phonetics classes - "R" as in red, aura, etc. is different from "R"'s role in bird, lower, fervor, etc. the former, to me, is a consonant for sure, whereas the latter is the vowel version. super interesting.
Just wondering where you're from or where it is you are learning English? In Canada and probably 70% of the US "R" only has one sound. Just hard R. In the US it's just some of the Southern States and Boston where they pronounce a lot of stuff with a big accent. But for most of us in Canada and US all those other words you mentioned, the R sound would be exactly the same.
We learned in school that R is half vocal (Im from Serbia) In Serbian R is commonly a vocal ( like in words Grb, Srb, smrznuto, krc)Here are some examples of words that Anglo-saxons couldnt pronounce and simply addeed a vocal before R to make it easier. Thorn - Trn, Mlin - Mill Crush - Krš
Prdi - Fart Vrtlog - Vortex Mrz - Freeze
All these words have same meaning in English and Serbian
The "English" R pronounced ah, is only in South East England. The other areas such as Cornwall, Somerset, Midlands etc. all pronounce the R as "ahr." It is not a coincidence that South East England was Norman-French. In Australia, the R on the end of a word has become a short U as in the word "up." Wintuh, Summuh, Decembuh.
No, it is much more widespread than just South East England.
I am from 300 miles away in North East England and we do not pronounce r's unless they are followed by a vowel e.g. "far" is pronounced "fah" or, if you have a broad accent, "fa-a-a" - no r in evidence at all. I think the same applies in Yorkshire and further down the country including the East Midlands, East Anglia and, as you mentioned, London and the Home Counties.
It seems only to be in the South West that r's are pronounced where there is no vowel following and in Lancashire in a few places.
Loved this! I need to check if you have a video explaining why I say TAWK for talk. Lol (As I’m sure most can guess, I grew up in NJ about 10 miles from Manhattan.)
2:59 I think the uvular trill is considered to be quite rare in France. Most speakers use an approximant, usually transcribed [ʁ̞], which is the sound you produced, while others use a simple fricative [ʁ]. The uvula does not make the motion displayed in the image for those phones.