To wonder why people put "r"s where they don't belong?

[somebloke123]

A trivial matter in the grand scheme of things of course but:

I first noticed this as a school boy "oop north" when a teacher from down south joined the staff and caused great hilarity by saying "drawrings" instead of "drawings".

It seems to be a southern phenomenon but not at all a type of chavspeak. Some of the worst offenders are media types who speak middle class "received" or "BBC" English.

It amounts to an inability to pronounce two successive vowel sounds without putting an "r" between.

A few examples I have heard in the radio, mainly over the past week or so:

West Brom managed a one-all drawragainst Aston Villa.

Planning the withdrawral from Afghanistan.

Chris Grayling is seeking a change in the lawron reasonable force against burglars.

The police are trying to restore Laura Norder.

And on Radio 4's "Poetry Please" in an otherwise moving reading of Oscar Wilde's "Ballad of Reading Jail":

"But I never sawraman who looked
So wistfully at the day.
I never sawraman who looked
With such a wistful eye."

Grrrrrrrrr!

Minnie All English-speaking children have to learn incongruous spellings. Rough etc. :)

Pull sounds like, well, pull. Pool on the other hand sounds like poow.

I have discovered that I have a slight little lift in the middle of oar , to make it different from or.

ds2 now thinks I have gone completely bonkers.

I spend a lot of time on the Irish baby names threads, discussing the "little lift" we have in so many Irish words. I expect I carry that across a bit when I'm speaking English.

I used to work with some Irish people (in a pub) and their pronunciation of 'bar' was similar to the way I would say 'bear'. That threw me a bit at first. 'Get behoind the bear' etc.

I can hear the difference in pull and pool.

Horrah my ears aren't that stupid then!

waterlego, yes clicks terrify me. My friend's language has nasal clicks - WTF.

Couthy I suspect my accent is very similar to yours. Do you say dowphin and miwk?

Dear Lord Fair, they must surely sound like someone clearing their nose?

What are these clicks of which you speak?

(MaryZed, I'm thinking you say Audi correctly then and not the odd "or-dee' way

My grandmother spent her whole life in Lincolnshire. A relative married someone from Kent and grandma was just fascinated by his speech. Apparently he used to drink "caps of tea"! DH is a southerner and DS2 has stared saying "mammy" (mummy with a posh accent as opposed to actual mammy).

I am desperately trying to work out wtf miwk is?

water, some Irish accents are incomprehensible, even to Irish people. Especially if they have been behind a bar for a while!

Oh, yes, Awe-dee, that would be the way they say it here.

I told you, I had a Protestant mother, she taught me to speak proper-like

dh used to teach the kids to call me mammy [shudder] until I put my Foot Down Very Hard.

Moln Lots of African languages have click sounds in them! Some of which are easy enough for English speakers to do, others not so much. Xhosa is one example. Have a listen...

m.youtube.com/?reason=8&rdm=3706#/watch?v=D_l7ty_MH_Y&desktop_uri=%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DD_l7ty_MH_Y

Dowfin, and miwk. So near enough.

I think there are slight nuances between a South Essex accent (Estuary accent) and a North Essex accent though.

There are quite a few words that my DC's pronounce differently to me, some that make me scratch my head. Millak for miwk? Murra for mirra. Pahth instead of pahff.

See, in South Essex, 'th' at the end of a word becomes 'ff', but in North Essex it stays as 'th'. Quite perplexing!

Oh, this one is even better...

m.youtube.com/?reason=8&rdm=4938#/watch?v=gytCi5a7AJg&desktop_uri=%2Fwatch%3Fv%3DgytCi5a7AJg

Miwk = milk.

HTH MaryZed which I spent years mispronouncing before you changed it.

My kids call me Mammy (i like it) though the eldest is getting to the stage were it'll be to babyish and I am detecting that Ma, in a lovely Dublin (non RTE) creeping in.

Will send him to boarding school first thing - it's the only way

where I am we have unsilent K

thinkingk
hopingk
longingk

no idea why?

A click is a consonant sound that sounds like, well, a click. Think of the clop sound you can make with your tongue to imitate the sound of a horse. That's a click. Or the tut sound you can make by inhaling and pulling your tongue away from the roof of your mouth. There are many more, but they can be hard to do or distinguish between if you don't speak a language with them.

In some languages, almost all of which are in southern Africa, clicks are just a normal part of the inventory of consonants.

There are lots of recordings here.

Um Couthy, what language do you speak?

Isn't it weird how we can all understand all these when we hear them, but write them down phonetically and they make no sense at all.

Miwk = milk

My FIL, who is from East London, says 'miw' for meal.

MIL used to call our car (aah caah) ordee. Now she just says ford.

ivy are you in (near) Birmingham?

I think there is a bilabial click too, which is a sort of 'pop' sound with your lips- starting closed and then opening them while inhaling a bit. I don't imagine that makes sense but it's hard to describe these things.

I say miw for meal too. I was born in East London, to a mother born and bred in E. London, and a Scottish father that mostly spoke with a South Essex accent.