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
>

I must apologize. The author repeatedly mentions throughout that there
are remnants of rhotic speech in his study of 2003-2006. I don't know
why I misread so much. Probably fatigue from staying up most of the
night. However, his evidence for surviving rhoticism is, if I am not
mistaken, limited to three elderly speakers 79 years or older. I
discounted this without thinking because they are so close to passing.
Other than them, he says "the speech of the overwhelming majority is
non-rhotic". So rhoticism is definitely vanishing in this small
region of England.

Andrew