From: Rick McCallister
Message: 63542
Date: 2009-03-01
> From: Piotr Gasiorowski <gpiotr@...>If the Welsh borderlands had rhoticity at that time, this would fit in very well with the initial British settlement of the Mid-Atlantic, which was typically Wales or West Country to Philadelphia via Chester or sometimes Bristol.
> Subject: Re: [tied] Re: American Dutch dialects
> To: cybalist@yahoogroups.com
> Date: Sunday, March 1, 2009, 2:38 PM
> 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