British Accents: Difference between revisions

This can sometimes create confusion in written communication. For instance, an English writer on an online linguistics forum described children's attempts to pronounce letters as sounding like "ar, ber, cer, der", which confused the North Americans on the forum. It turned out that the kids were saying "ah, buh, kuh, duh"; the English writer added an "r" to every syllable because she expected the "uh" sound to end in the letter "r". In addition, this has influenced the spelling of foreign names and words such as Park<ref>from Korean surname ''Pak''/''Bak''</ref>, Parcheesi<ref>from Hindi ''pachisi''</ref>, Burma/Myanmar<ref>from Burmese ''Bama''/''Myanma''</ref> and char siu<ref>from Cantonese ''chaa siu''</ref>. Scottish accents, however, ''are'' rhotic: the Proclaimers song "Throw the R Away" is a protest against Scottish people being advised to adopt English accents and the anti-Scottish prejudice that gave rise to this advice. Though is should be noted that not ''all'' English accents are ''non-rhotic'' and there are some Brits who would find that offensive.

 

 

Oh, and for our non-British friends, the second of the page quotes can be translated as...