Pronunciation of water

[Machiavellian]

To me it's wor-ter. I keep hearing 'wor-eh'. Is this not lazy? Why is the t being excluded? Am I being snobbish for thinking it sounds so lazy and uneducated?

I've lived in Bristol too! They pronounced the r at the end of the word. They still wouldn't say an r in the middle like the r at the start of roof. Maybe we are talking at cross purposes.

I think you’re a bit confused. You asked first about the pronunciation of “start” but now you are talking about “water”.

Rhotic speakers sound the “r” in the word “start”. We don’t add an “r” sound in the middle of “water”!

I suspect a lack of education on your part if you haven't yet grasped the concept of regional accents and variation in pronunciation.

Beautifully put

What nonsense. A glottal stop is not "wrong". Bonkers statement

You can hear different pronunciations of the word start in the link below if that helps @Statsinyoureyes.

The British and Australian speakers have non-rhotic accents so they don't pronounce the r in start. The American speakers have rhotic accents and do pronounce the r. The first American speaker says it particularly clearly. It's still one syllable. Most NI and Scottish accents are rhotic too I think.

https://forvo.com/word/start/

British? Please don’t say British when you mean English. Scotland, Wales and NI are British too. Like most Scots, I pronounce r’s quite noticeably in words such as murder.

She didn't say all British speakers are non-rhotic. She said the one in the link is.

If it were wor-ter it would be spelled worter. It's water.

Fair enough, I apologise. I didn’t read it properly, but Britain being used when people mean England does happen.

It's watter is this ouse!

Or "council pop"

Oh yes, yes it does!

(It's about time for people to call troll on any back to school threads, right?)

Yes, I agree. Dropping the t comes across as lazy rather than a regional dialect, to me.

I’ve never come across a professional in my line of work who does this.

Exactly what I'm thinking. You don't hear it on the News?

I'm with you now! Thanks!

Except no one is omitting an R

I’ve never come across a professional in my line of work who does this.

If you worked in Scotland with a lot of Scots you would. Because while they would all speak SSE and pronounce both the T and the R when talking to someone English they will use Scots among themselves.

And, to answer a comment by a PP, accent isn't just about vowel sounds, as can be seen by the fact that several people from England have said that Americans can't understand their English accent when they say water, it's the strong T and the dropped R that causes the problem, not the vowels.

I had a funny conversation with an American colleague yesterday, he could understand my Scottish accent easily (regularly called 'strong' by southerners, but clearly middle class in Scotland) but said he thought his English boss had a really strong and difficult to understand accent 😂.

If you are English, unless you come from the West Country, you are absolutely dropping an R.

Exactly.

I find this fascinating. I’ve listened to those clips of different accents saying start. Initially I thought I could hear all of them saying the ‘r’ and was a bit confused. But I think that the English and Aus pronunciation is the ‘r’ as in the name of ‘r’ but the Americans say it phonetically, the way we teach children how to say sounds.

Is that right or am I still confused?

@Tulipvase
I think non rhotic speakers don't pronounce the r at all in words like start, but it does alter the way they say the vowel. So start isn't said the same as stat because the vowel is lengthened in start.

Does that make sense?

Rhotic speakers do pronounce the r phonetically no matter its positioning in a word.

It does make sense, I think!

Perhaps I’m thinking it makes an ‘r’ sound as there is an ‘r’. Rather than just changing the way the ‘a’ is pronounced. It’s very hard to explain.

You say start like a pirate says arrr, rather than staht. The tongue curls more at the sides, and is higher up in starrt than start. It's not the same as the r in red or road, where the tongue starts at the front top of the roof of the mouth. It doesn't hit the roof of the mouth in starrt, but the sides of my tongue do hit the roof of my mouth at the sides next to my molars. I think. I no longer know how I say anything, having been sitting here, saying words to myself and thinking about how I physically say it, what my tongue is doing.

@Tulipvase

No I get it. I didn't really notice it either until I really started listening to the sounds.
It might be easier to hear the difference between rhotic and non rhotic when the r is at the end of a word? I've linked voice clips for 'car'.

https://forvo.com/word/car/#google_vignette