Researchers fear the British spoken 'r' is ready to roll away from the last bastion of rhoticity (phys.org)

submitted 11 months ago by GreyShuck@feddit.uk to c/unitedkingdom@feddit.uk

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Traditionally, parts of Lancashire have very clearly articulated "r"s, similar to the stereotype of Cornwall and the West Country. The pronunciation of these "r"s towards the ends of words is called rhoticity.

In fact, historically, hundreds of years ago, people throughout England used to pronounce strong "r"s. But now, says the research paper, these strong "r"s are definitely dying out.

In Blackburn, young speakers do mostly say their "r"s, but they are, according to the research team, phonetically very weak and often difficult to perceive. And they pronounce them less frequently than older speakers.

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[-] Flax_vert@feddit.uk 1 points 11 months ago

The "British" denomym applied to the United Kingdom. Not just Great Britain. The term "Britain" in general applies to the United Kingdom. Hence the Great part. In fact, "Great Britain" is occasionally short for "Great Britain and Northern Ireland" such as at the Olympics.

[-] tal@lemmy.today 4 points 11 months ago

Both of you two are right.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Terminology_of_the_British_Isles

Britain is a political and geographic term which can refer to the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland, or the island of Great Britain.

this post was submitted on 19 Dec 2023

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