Re: American Dutch dialects

--- In cybalist@yahoogroups.com, Piotr Gasiorowski <gpiotr@...> wrote:

>
> On 2009-03-01 19:53, Andrew Jarrette wrote:
>
> > Incidentally Torsten I just spoke on the phone with my sister, who has
> > been to Cornwall and Devon in England where she heard the people there
> > speaking with r's much the same as in Canada or the U.S., i.e. in
> > syllable-final position. She couldn't be sure whether they were
> > retroflex because she does not have training in phonetics, but when I
> > described retroflex pronunciation she thought that was probably what
> > she heard. Also the character on "Coronation Street" who uses these
> > strong retroflex r's is Fred Elliott, in case you might get and/or
> > watch the program in Denmark.
>
> SW England is where the American-type /r/ most likely comes from, and
> it's also the largest surviving stronghold of rhoticity in England. The
> West Country pronunciation of /r/ is usually regarded as retroflex, but
> as I point out in my article, variation between the true retroflex
> (technically, subapico-postalveolar) articulation and the "bunched"
> (mediodorso-mediopalatal) one is probably their natural mode of

existence.

>
> Interestingly, residual rhoticity is still found in the West Midlands,
> but the prevailing realisation of syllable-coda /r/ there seems to be
> apico-alveolar rather than retroflex/bunched:
>
> http://www.leeds.ac.uk/linguistics/WPL/WP2007/5.pdf
>
> Piotr
>

The thing I found most interesting in this paper was the map of
rhoticity in Britain in 1889: even at this relatively late date,
Ellis's survey indicates that roughly half of England was rhotic.
thus there is ample room for migrants from England to be the source or
part source of American and Canadian /r/'s. They could be part source
along with Irish and Scottish settlers (and Welsh if they were rhotic
at this time). The fact that in 1889 roughly half of England was
rhotic suggests that in the 1700's the majority of England would have
been rhotic, and although I don't know the statistics, I would bet
that most immigrants from England immigrated before the 19th century,
when England was predominantly rhotic.

I found this paper somewhat disappointing as it commented little on
the pronunciation of younger speakers. It also seems to say in the
conclusion that today the Black Country is completely non-rhotic --
where did you see that the West Midlands still has residual rhoticity,
Piotr?

Andrew