On 2009-03-01 22:38, Andrew Jarrette wrote:
> 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.
As late as ca. 1700, *all* of English was rhotic (though variable
non-rhoticity was probably beginning to creep in, judging from sporadic
misspellings like "operer"). Non-rhoticity was first observed and
commented upon by prescriptive grammarians (who treated it as a careless
fashion of recent origin and attributed it mostly to Londoners) about
the middle of the 18th century. By 1800, its status was roughly like
that of /l/-vocalisation in modern "Estuary English": it was already
widespread and imitated (thanks to the linguistic prestige of London at
all social levels), but conservative authorities on "proper English
pronunciation" still hated it. It was only with the advent of non-rhotic
RP as the uniform, supraregional accent of the public boarding-schools,
that the grammarians fell in love with the innovation.
Non-rhoticity also spread to America via the urban elites of Boston,
Providence, New York, Richmond, Charleston, Savannah and Atlanta. Its
further progress and withdrawal in the United States is a complex
sociolinguistic story, partly told by Labov and his collaborators in the
Atlas of North American English (2006). Since WW II the general pattern
has been one of increasing polarisation: non-rhotic England vs. rhotic
America, but of course there is a residue of exceptions on both sides.
> 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?
See Section 8.
Piotr