The strong ‘r’ sound found in British accent variations of the English language may be in danger of disappearing, a study has found.
Researchers at Lancaster University (LU) suggested that ‘Rhotic’ speakers who pronounce a strong ‘r’ sound in words like car, her, and bird, were mostly “becoming a thing of the past” – with just one exception.
Subsequent to the LU study, Dr Danielle Turton explained that the region of east Lancashire – a county in the north of England, had remained an “island of rhoticity”. However, overall – the research lead said that even in east Lancashire, the “strong r” was in gradual decline among young speakers.
Linguistically, Rhoticity is the term for speaking in an accent where an r is pronounced before a vowel, but also before a consonant or at the end of a word. The Rhotic ‘r’ remains in American English, but is less likely in Australian and British English.
According to the BBC, an LU representative said that in centuries past, the pronunciation of “strong ‘r’s”was common in England, but that has declined as the language evolved. It has been most commonly documented in Cornwall and the West Country (west of England).
They added “most sociolinguistic studies of rhoticity” focused on the South West and “relatively little” was known about it in the North.
“The study is timely because Northern rhoticity is predicted to disappear in the next few generations, a process which is now complete in many areas of the South West,”.
Dr Turton expressed that the study: An acoustic analysis of rhoticity in Lancashire, England“, found that speakers from Blackburn (East Lancs) and the surrounding area “usually differentiate between pairs of words, such as ‘stellar’ and ‘stella’, whereas most of England would consider them to be the same”.
“However, for the youngest speakers in Blackburn, these ‘r’s are very weak, which raises the question of whether future generations will even hear these weak ‘r’s at all, and whether this distinction will eventually fade away,” she said.
Adding “However, for the youngest speakers in Blackburn, these ‘r’s are very weak, which raises the question of whether future generations will even hear these weak ‘r’s at all, and whether this distinction will eventually fade away,”.
“Accent change is often like a puddle: it dries up in most places and leaves remnants around the edges, hence why Cornwall and East Lancs behave similarly here today.”
The study showed the strongest ‘r’s’ are spoken by older men, and were more prominent during formal speaking. This finding raised “interesting questions about social prestige and clearness of speech”.
Researchers from LU emphasized that while rhotic Blackburn and East Lancashire speakers may be in the minority in England, they were “in the majority across the English-speaking world”. North American, Scottish and Irish speakers also use Rhotic pronunciation, “as do many second language learners of English”.
According to Dr Turton, the East Lancashire ‘r’ was weaker than its non-English counterparts, “possibly as a result of it undergoing change towards the England standard” and has the potential to eventually disappear.
“In recent years, there has been a lot of talk about the disappearance of traditional dialects and the linguistic homogenisation of regions in England,” Dr Turton said.
“Unfortunately, it seems that this is the case for the East Lancashire ‘island of rhoticity’ – “In the next few generations, this traditional feature may be lost.”
