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Linguist explains why Brits add an 'r' sound to words that end in vowels, but only sometimes

This is why "Anna is cute" becomes "Anner is cute" in British English.

Photo credit: Canva

American English vs. British English

Learning to speak English must be confusing when it's not your first language, especially considering how many distinct English accents there are. If you learn English strictly from American teachers, you'll end up pronouncing the language differently than if your teachers are British, Australian, or New Zealander.

One difference between American and British English is the way the two treat the "r' sound. American English uses the hard "r" sound (which is one of the rarest linguistic sounds in the world) a lot. Brits generally drop it at the end of words—father becomes "fath-uh," water becomes "wat-uh," and so on—and yet, Brits also insert "r' sounds where there isn't a letter "r," which is super confusing for Americans.

letter R, r sound, rhotic, non-rhotic, english accents How Brits use the "r" sound is confusing to Americans. Photo credit: Canva

Case in point: I watched Hamilton on stage in London, and in the final number, the whole cast sang "Angelic-er and Eliza were at his side when he died." How did they turn Angelica into Angelic-er? (Especially when they were supposed to be using American accents?)

A linguist named Derek explains that the inserted "r" in British English serves a specific purpose—as a placeholder to distinguish between the vowel sound at the end of one word and the vowel sound at the beginning of the next word.

@derek__ling

Answering more accent questions #language #linguistics #accents #english

So "America is" becomes "Americ-er is" and "banana is" becomes "banan-er is." (Or "banana rizz" as one clever commenter pointed out.) It's called an "intrusive R" and it sounds downright strange to the American ear. We're used to hearing "r" sounds all the time, but not in places where there isn't actually an "r" anywhere to be found.

When a word ends in a vowel and the next word begins with a vowel, Americans just slide the vowels together or sometimes put a little glottal stop in between the vowel sounds. British English differentiates them with an "r" sound. It's an unspoken rule—they don't learn it at school or anything, as it's dialectical, not grammatical. In fact, Brits often don't even realize they're doing it until it's pointed out to them.

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So if British people are perfectly capable of pronouncing an "r" at the end of a word, why do they not pronounce the "r" at the end of words that actually have a letter "r"? That's an interesting, if not totally clear, story.

People might assume that Americans were the ones who added the "r" pronunciation to English or that it must be a carryover from Scottish accents that pronounce the "r" with gusto. But in actuality, British people in general used to pronounce the "r" as well. That's right. British English actually used to sound more like American English, not the other way around.

How exactly the change happened has been a topic of some debate among linguists, but the gist is that England's non-rhotic accent (the accent that doesn't pronounce the "r") came about as a bit of socioeconomic snobbery in the 18th century. Certain classes of Brits started putting on the accent as a way of differentiating themselves from those of lower classes, at least in certain parts of England. Toss in a trendy fascination with the French around that time, and voila! Bye-bye "r" sounds.

R sound, rhotic, non-rhotic, linguistics, peewee herman Americans love the "r" sound. Giphy

But back to the present confusion about when the "r" gets pronounced. As Derek points out, both British and American folks often get it wrong when imitating one another's accents. Brits will add "r" to the end of words that end in a vowel simply because they think that's what Americans do, and Americans will remove the "r" sound where it's actually used in British English. For instance, British pronunciation of "father" would be "fathuh," but not when a word that starts with a vowel comes after it, like "my father and I." In that case, the Brit would pronounce the "r" but an American imitating a British accent would probably say, "my fathuh and I."

Tricky, isn't it? But now we know. If the next word starts with a vowel, Brits say "r" at the end of words ending with a vowel or with an "r."

You can follow Derek on TikTok for more linguistic fun.

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Video does a perfect job of showing how American English sounds to non-English speakers

You'll never hear the language the same again.

via Brian and Karl/YouTube

Karl Eccleston and Fiona Pepper star in "Skwerl."

If you are a native English speaker, it is probably hard to imagine what people who don’t speak the language hear when you are talking. “Skwerl,” a short film by Karl Eccleston and Brian Fairbairn, attempts to demonstrate what English sounds like to people who don’t speak the language.

The film was created in 2011 for Kino Sydney, “a monthly open-mic night for filmmakers” based in Sydney, Australia. Since being posted to YouTube 12 years ago, it has received over 52 million views.

The short film stars Eccleston and Australian actress Fiona Pepper as a couple whose special evening is disrupted when underlying relationship tensions creep up.

Warning: Strong language

Here's a sample of the script:

THE MAN

So I ran to yourk around the wash today.

THE WOMAN

Oh?

THE MAN

Yeah. That doll's areen blunderface. Can berave that mory alpen john. Joo flan by the long blatt call?

THE WOMAN

Yeah. I coon by the mex areen. Oh you bleed that pribadium by the ronfort line today?

The video received some thoughtful reactions in the comments section. The SkyWolfie6655 summed it up perfectly: “As an English speaker, it feels like I SHOULD be understanding this and I'm just not, like I've heard them wrong or something, this is really well done.”

The film also connected with people who learned English as a second language. “Man, that's exactly what I used to hear when I was younger, before learning English properly. This is actually quite nostalgic,” another wrote.

The video also is an excellent example of what people with a disability may hear even if they speak the language. “This is kind of what it feels like to have auditory processing disorder,” HorseFace1044 wrote. “It's super frustrating because you can almost get what the person is saying, but not quite enough to understand what in the world they are talking about.”


This article originally appeared two years ago.

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Here's why airlines now charge separately for checked bags and the price keeps going up

Checked bags are $99? Are you kidding me?

via James Emery/Flickr

A group of travelers waits patiently to check their bags.

Maybe you’re one of those elite travelers who’s mastered packing for an entire trip using only carry-on luggage. If so, you’re likely haughty and won’t stop crowing about the convenience of hopping off the plane and jetting to your destination.

We know: The airlines lost your bag in 1986 and you vowed never again. So, now you roll three garments, one pair of shoes, a tiny bottle of 5-in-one body wash, and a Kindle into your backpack, and you're good to go.

For the rest of us mere traveling mortals, especially those with kids, checking bags is a necessary evil—a necessary and costly one.

If it seems to you like checked bag fees have been steadily climbing, that’s because checked bag fees have been steadily climbing. According to this article, bag fees on American Airlines rose 33% just last year from $30 per bag to $40 and 5 of the 6 biggest carriers raised their fees last year.

Why is the entire industry upping their checked-bag fees? There’s a specific reason involving an arcane bit of tax code, which accounts for why the fees are tacked on separately versus rolled into the price of the ticket.

​Jay L. Zagorsky, a business school professor who studies travel, says 7.5% of every domestic ticket goes to the federal government. Airlines dislike this, claiming it raises ticket prices for consumers. But as long as the bag fee is separate, it is excluded from the 7.5% transportation tax.

Estimated bag fees for 2023 topped 7 billion. By making the bag fees separate, airlines saved themselves about half a billion dollars. If that savings has been passed down to the customer, then we all got a bit of a break, too.

​Perhaps you automatically dislike the separate fees because you’re Gen X and remember a time when a ticket was all-inclusive. Now, it feels like you’re paying for stuff you used to get for free.

Turns out that more and more travelers actually like the separate charges.

​“One thing that our research has shown,” Henry Hartevedlt, president of travel industry analytics firm Atmosphere Research told USA Today, “is that more than two-thirds of U.S. leisure airline passengers now feel that the unbundling of the coach product and letting people buy what they want and need on an à la carte basis is actually something they like because it helps them stick to their budget.”

This is a positive way to look at something that’s undoubtedly here to stay. And now if you hear someone complain about bag fees at the airport, you’ll know why it’s done the way it’s done, which is really sweet satisfaction in itself.

Of course, there's always this unusual workaround courtesy of Reddit user Old_Man_Withers, "I Fedex my luggage to the hotel and carry nothing on the plane but my laptop for work. It doesn't matter if it's 2 days or two months, I ship it. The hotel has it waiting in my room when I get there and I ship it back home from there when I'm done. No random inspections, no chances of loss without recompense, fully trackable... I see no downside that isn't worth the 50-100 bucks it costs."

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Four people from diverse backgrounds discover they aren’t as different as they thought

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We're not just a nation of immigrants; each of us is our own walking family tree. At a time when so much seems to keep us apart, developing cross-cultural understanding through shared connections is an increasingly vital way to bridge our societal gaps. It's almost impossible not to feel empathy when we discover that our worlds are actually intertwined.

Dr. Henry Louis Gates Jr., the renowned Harvard professor and genealogy expert, met with four people from different backgrounds to discuss how genealogy can connect us with people across cultures."There's a curious and ironic relationship between identifying your ancestral heritage, which you think might divide you from other people, but finding that it only ties you to other people," Gates says. "Each of our ancestors has a story to tell and it's our job to find them and give them a voice."

Gates connected with Crystal Gonzales, a Hispanic educator originally from New Mexico; Darnell Head, an educator and African American Detroit native; Michelle Mardsen, an African American art teacher from Pennsylvania; and Paula Shagin, a social worker from European Jewish descent. While their backgrounds were different, they all had one thing in common – a thirst to discover their family's origins.

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Through family history research on Ancestry, Mardsen discovered there were four Civil War veterans in her family, three of whom were people of color. "Two different sides of the tree were in the same tent together," she says, adding that these details give her "a sense of grounding."

Head never had access to his family history. His background is so complex he doesn't even have either of his parents' surnames. Now that he's become a parent himself, he recognizes the importance of knowing where he came from and the value of sharing his family history with his two boys. "In the black community, it's important for us to understand the struggles of the past so that we, in a way, protect ourselves from ever having to experience that again," he says.

DNA testing also gives us more insight into our backgrounds and can reveal stories that are unknown even to our families. "For us, that was affirming some of the things we heard about," Gonzales says. She found out that her family DNA results were 35% Native American, and on her father's side, 26% from the Iberian Peninsula.

Ancestry

As the group learned more about each of their unique family origins, they came to realize one undeniable fact: "We're more alike than we are different," says Head.

After all, how can we be divided if we share the same universal human experience? People from every corner of the Earth now call themselves Americans. "Everyone's ancestors have something that they've overcome," Shagin says. "Everyone came to this country for a reason. Getting here wasn't always an easy route, and everyone has a story."

"Ultimately, we're Americans," Gates adds. "And beyond that, we're human beings."

When you know what your family went through, history truly becomes personal and not just words on a page you have to memorize for a test. They're real events that happened to real people. Their migratory patterns shaped who you are today. Above all, you learn that even though history had its ups and downs, your family got through it all, and you're here today to set the course for tomorrow's generations.

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