It’s a matter of taste of course, but McWhorter adds a lot when he’s reading an essay or book. This is especially true when he’s talking about accents. It would be challenging for a transcript to convey his points. All that said, the Apple podcast app has a transcript available.
In Samuel Richardson's *Clarissa* (1748), the title character, in one of her letters, represents a female servant as saying to her, "*Lawd*, Miss!" The fact that Clarissa uses this spelling to represent the servant's pronunciation of the word "lord" indicates that the deletion of /r/ after vowels was underway in southern England well before 1776, but also that it was initially characteristic of the lower classes and not of proper ladies like Clarissa. It is an interesting question of historical sociolinguistics when and where non-rhoticity became prevalent. On the American side, it looks as if it did so mainly in the large coastal cities (Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Charleston), with the peculiar complications that (1) it spread far inland in the South but not in the North, and (2) it went from being prestigious to being denigrated (cue the references to Labov).
you are right. I can’t remember where I read it, but the gradual loss of the R was attested to as starting before 1800. It was first described as being softly or barely pronounced — much like many working class New Yorkers do today, when they pronounce a word like Harlem not as Hahlem but something more like Hah-uh-lem — before disappearing entirely from the speech of southeastern England.
Interesting observation. I take it to be clear that, in the sort of accent that we now think of as "English"--roughly, the accent or accents that prevail among native speakers of English in southern England in the middle and upper classes--the /r/ phoneme can only occur immediately before a vowel. This is what it means for an accent to be "non-rhotic." But I don't think that this accurately describes American accents that are sometimes so characterized, such as working-class New York and Boston accents, or accents of the Southeast and of a lot of black Americans. In the U.S., it seems to me that the post-vocalic /r/ phoneme never disappears altogether, but merely gets "dropped" with various degrees of frequency; hence Labov's observations about how a selection of New Yorkers said "fourth floor." I once listened carefully to a video of Gina McCarthy, the former head of the EPA, who has a Boston accent that you can recognize a mile off, and carefully notated which post-vocalic /r/'s she pronounced and which ones she did not pronounce. I could find no pattern, and I don't think that there is any pattern!
I feel intuitively that there is at least a statistical pattern. In imagining the people I grew up with, the r was often dropped before a nasal consonant in words like “born,” “storm,” and “tournament,” and sometimes between two stressed syllables in a phrase like the “er” in “soccer tournament” and “water bottle.” But the r was barely ever dropped in monosyllabic words like “hurt,” girl,” or “bird.” New Yorkers in the 1950s might say things like “goyl” and “boyd,” but that no longer existed by the 1980s.
Ah, you are subtle! But I think that the distinguishing characteristic of the monosyllables that you mention (where /r/ is pronounced) is not that they are monosyllables but that they have a central vowel in a stressed syllable before /r/ (with no immediately following vowel). I think it is exactly the same with the stressed syllables of "merchant," "averse," etc.
To get back to your comment, from which I drifted rather far: I suspect that the schwa that you mention in the pronunciation of "Harlem" is a realization of an /r/ phoneme.
I think that’s right. I think such speakers don’t necessarily realize they are not exactly pronouncing an /r/
R insertion is one piece of evidence. When I was a kid and visited my cousins in California, I remember one of them asked me why I pronounce words that end in “a” as if they end in “er,” like “bananer” or “Americker.” I didn’t realize I was doing this and it could have been due to a merger of “uh” and “er” in my sound production. It makes sense because as a kid I pronounced “draw” and “drawer” as homophones, and into adulthood, I noticed a temptation to pronounce the word “drawing” as “drawring.” A few of my teachers in school said “idear” instead of “idea,” but this sounded strange enough for me to notice even as a kid.
As I lived on the West Coat until adulthood, I used to think that nobody in unaffected speech actually says "idear," except before a vowel, as in "The idea(r) is"; but then I made a friend from Norwell, Massachusetts, who, even though most of the time she sounds as though she could be from anywhere in the U.S., will quite unself-consciously say "idear" even if it's at the end of a sentence. I thought initially that she was saying it to be funny; but it was entirely natural to her. It is interesting, by the way, to see English actors who can mimic American accents with uncanny accuracy get this detail wrong. I once saw a television comedy sketch in which two English actors played a couple of American tourists from "Badiddlyboing, Odo-idaho," imitating their accents and manners with deadly accuracy; but then they recited a little rhyme in which "Jehovah" was made to rhyme with "Rover," with an audible "r" at the end of both. This spoiled the illusion for me (though I'm sure that hardly anyone in their British audience would have noticed the oddity), as it is absolutely impossible for Americans from anywhere but a little strip of the Northeast!
Love learning about this, especially that the "Y" in "Ye" Olde English was called a "Thorn" and pronounced as a "th."
Fascinating to find that our language had more letters in the alphabet than today.
Totally changing the subject, but I just discovered another, about which John will perhaps one day elucidate us, the "Wynn". Eventually became a UU and turned into a true double "U" or "W".
I know the W sound is uncommon in German and Eastern European languages, and pronounced as "V" by some non-native English speakers.
Makes me wonder that my Yiddish-speaking grandparents would be more likely to say "Vat" is dees"; not"What is this"
I was earlier this week discussing with a friend John's position that *for performances* it would be good to modernize / clarify some of the obsolete forms or meanings. So it was a fine tickle to hear it come up in this episode, with the whisper-voice remark that they really ought to!
I really wish this was a transcript by the way. I come to Substack to read. I don’t care what the voices of my favorite writers sound like.
It’s a matter of taste of course, but McWhorter adds a lot when he’s reading an essay or book. This is especially true when he’s talking about accents. It would be challenging for a transcript to convey his points. All that said, the Apple podcast app has a transcript available.
I'm glad for the narration I can listen to it while I'm doing something else. I wouldn't have experienced it at all if it hadn't been audio!
lol, no
In Samuel Richardson's *Clarissa* (1748), the title character, in one of her letters, represents a female servant as saying to her, "*Lawd*, Miss!" The fact that Clarissa uses this spelling to represent the servant's pronunciation of the word "lord" indicates that the deletion of /r/ after vowels was underway in southern England well before 1776, but also that it was initially characteristic of the lower classes and not of proper ladies like Clarissa. It is an interesting question of historical sociolinguistics when and where non-rhoticity became prevalent. On the American side, it looks as if it did so mainly in the large coastal cities (Boston, New York, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Charleston), with the peculiar complications that (1) it spread far inland in the South but not in the North, and (2) it went from being prestigious to being denigrated (cue the references to Labov).
you are right. I can’t remember where I read it, but the gradual loss of the R was attested to as starting before 1800. It was first described as being softly or barely pronounced — much like many working class New Yorkers do today, when they pronounce a word like Harlem not as Hahlem but something more like Hah-uh-lem — before disappearing entirely from the speech of southeastern England.
Interesting observation. I take it to be clear that, in the sort of accent that we now think of as "English"--roughly, the accent or accents that prevail among native speakers of English in southern England in the middle and upper classes--the /r/ phoneme can only occur immediately before a vowel. This is what it means for an accent to be "non-rhotic." But I don't think that this accurately describes American accents that are sometimes so characterized, such as working-class New York and Boston accents, or accents of the Southeast and of a lot of black Americans. In the U.S., it seems to me that the post-vocalic /r/ phoneme never disappears altogether, but merely gets "dropped" with various degrees of frequency; hence Labov's observations about how a selection of New Yorkers said "fourth floor." I once listened carefully to a video of Gina McCarthy, the former head of the EPA, who has a Boston accent that you can recognize a mile off, and carefully notated which post-vocalic /r/'s she pronounced and which ones she did not pronounce. I could find no pattern, and I don't think that there is any pattern!
I feel intuitively that there is at least a statistical pattern. In imagining the people I grew up with, the r was often dropped before a nasal consonant in words like “born,” “storm,” and “tournament,” and sometimes between two stressed syllables in a phrase like the “er” in “soccer tournament” and “water bottle.” But the r was barely ever dropped in monosyllabic words like “hurt,” girl,” or “bird.” New Yorkers in the 1950s might say things like “goyl” and “boyd,” but that no longer existed by the 1980s.
Ah, you are subtle! But I think that the distinguishing characteristic of the monosyllables that you mention (where /r/ is pronounced) is not that they are monosyllables but that they have a central vowel in a stressed syllable before /r/ (with no immediately following vowel). I think it is exactly the same with the stressed syllables of "merchant," "averse," etc.
To get back to your comment, from which I drifted rather far: I suspect that the schwa that you mention in the pronunciation of "Harlem" is a realization of an /r/ phoneme.
I think that’s right. I think such speakers don’t necessarily realize they are not exactly pronouncing an /r/
R insertion is one piece of evidence. When I was a kid and visited my cousins in California, I remember one of them asked me why I pronounce words that end in “a” as if they end in “er,” like “bananer” or “Americker.” I didn’t realize I was doing this and it could have been due to a merger of “uh” and “er” in my sound production. It makes sense because as a kid I pronounced “draw” and “drawer” as homophones, and into adulthood, I noticed a temptation to pronounce the word “drawing” as “drawring.” A few of my teachers in school said “idear” instead of “idea,” but this sounded strange enough for me to notice even as a kid.
As I lived on the West Coat until adulthood, I used to think that nobody in unaffected speech actually says "idear," except before a vowel, as in "The idea(r) is"; but then I made a friend from Norwell, Massachusetts, who, even though most of the time she sounds as though she could be from anywhere in the U.S., will quite unself-consciously say "idear" even if it's at the end of a sentence. I thought initially that she was saying it to be funny; but it was entirely natural to her. It is interesting, by the way, to see English actors who can mimic American accents with uncanny accuracy get this detail wrong. I once saw a television comedy sketch in which two English actors played a couple of American tourists from "Badiddlyboing, Odo-idaho," imitating their accents and manners with deadly accuracy; but then they recited a little rhyme in which "Jehovah" was made to rhyme with "Rover," with an audible "r" at the end of both. This spoiled the illusion for me (though I'm sure that hardly anyone in their British audience would have noticed the oddity), as it is absolutely impossible for Americans from anywhere but a little strip of the Northeast!
The Irish accent came first :D
Love learning about this, especially that the "Y" in "Ye" Olde English was called a "Thorn" and pronounced as a "th."
Fascinating to find that our language had more letters in the alphabet than today.
Totally changing the subject, but I just discovered another, about which John will perhaps one day elucidate us, the "Wynn". Eventually became a UU and turned into a true double "U" or "W".
I know the W sound is uncommon in German and Eastern European languages, and pronounced as "V" by some non-native English speakers.
Makes me wonder that my Yiddish-speaking grandparents would be more likely to say "Vat" is dees"; not"What is this"
I have a notion that Irish must have had an influence on American English. Is there any of that?
I was earlier this week discussing with a friend John's position that *for performances* it would be good to modernize / clarify some of the obsolete forms or meanings. So it was a fine tickle to hear it come up in this episode, with the whisper-voice remark that they really ought to!
The way we was…do keeping on John.
Fascinating stuff that you never really think about. Good to know.
I had learned this a few years ago. Glad you’re bringing it up now. It’s amazing how this came about.