Re: American Dutch dialects

From: Rick McCallister
Message: 63542
Date: 2009-03-01

--- On Sun, 3/1/09, Piotr Gasiorowski <gpiotr@...> wrote:

> From: Piotr Gasiorowski <gpiotr@...>
> 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

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.
Daniel Boone's family came via this root, his father's family from Somerset via Bristol, his mother's family were Welsh, named Morgan. Both sides were Quakers. He was also Abraham Lincoln's 2nd cousin. They went down from Lancaster Co PA via the Shenandoah River to the New River Valley in NC, thence to WV, where he led my ancestors. Later he moved on to KY.