Letters

R-less Speech

How It's Used

“[William] Labov, who is seventy-seven, is the director of the linguistics lab at the University of Pennsylvania. He is small and wiry and fit-looking. At N.Y.U., he was asked a lot of questions about the local dialect, commonly known as Brooklynese. Its three most prominent features are the raised 'a' in words like 'past' (peahst), the 'aw' sound in words like 'coffee' (cawfee), and, of course, the dropped 'r' in words like 'water' (watta). Labov explained his contention that the city’s dropped 'r' has its origins in posh British speech: when F.D.R. dropped his 'r's ('The only thing we have to feah is feah itself') and Katharine Hepburn dropped hers ('My, she was yah'), it sounded upper class. But after the Second World War, Labov said, with the loss of Britain’s imperial status 'r'-less British speech ceased to be regarded as 'prestige speech'—William F. Buckley was a consuvative, but George W. Bush is not—and the dropping of 'r's became exclusively working class.”

"I've even been doing a bit of moonlighting myself—launching the US edition of my new book, Death by Leisure.

"It's too early to know if it's selling, but it has achieved at least one thing: a furious debate between blogging linguists on how the American (rhotic) pronunciation of my surname sounds hilariously similar to a certain British (non-rhotic) term for the derrière."

"When Ford first unveiled the Ka—its curiously curved and delightfully playful city car—12 years ago, the only part of the package that didn't add up was the name. Ka, which we were told to pronounce as in 'car', caused as much debate as the controversial design of the vehicle itself. There was talk of hard and soft 'A's, long and short syllables, rhotic and non-rhotic accent groups. To this day, even the good people in Ford's own press office can't decide whether to say 'Kaaah', 'Cah' or even 'Kay Aay'. But the Ka's quirkiness and its thrilling go-kart handling, not to mention the tear-drop dash and bubble-shaped panels, soon gave the little Ford iconic status. It went on to sell 1.4m around the world and even at the end of its reign it was still the market leader in its class."

Also Known As (AKA)

Rhotic-less Speech, Non-Rhotic Speech, Non-Rhotic Accent

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