Monday, March 7, 2011

Rhotic accents and Rhoticity

No idea(r)

Mar 2nd 2011, 11:53 by R.L.G. | LONDON

JOHN WELLS offers today a few puns that depend on "non-rhoticity". Most English people and nearly all city-dwellers don't pronounce the r after a vowel, but rather the r lengthens the vowel, one of the most notable differences between typical English and American pronunciation. (Many of the other Anglophone countries, but not Canada, are also non-rhotic.) Take this joke:
What do you call a deer with no eyes?
  —No idea.
What do you call a deer with no legs and no eyes?
  —Still no idea.
The joke works for most Brits and Australians, of course, but there are a few American dialects in which this joke would work too—because they're hyper-rhotic, and "idea" sounds like "idear".
I myself missed the joke Mr Wells mentions in Shaun the Sheep's name. The name of the cute English clay-mation farm animal is a homophone with "shorn" for most Brits. I missed it completely until I heard my wife (a non-native who learned English English as her first accent) explain it to my son. I didn't let on that I hadn't got it the first time.  I guess non-rhotics would say that Americans and Canadians have an r-ful sense of humour.

Source: http://www.economist.com/blogs/johnson/2011/03/rhoticity

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