20 July 26
Rhoticity
As someone fascinated by language, I find my YouTube feed often contains sometimes quite arcane posts on linguistics. Dr. Geoff Lindsay is a linguist originally from Manchester. I just came across this piece on rhoticity (the pronunciation of the letter “r” in places other than before a vowel) in the northwest of England. There is a small slot that runs from Blackburn and Darwen (east of Preston) down to about Clitheroe, where “r” is (or was; this is a disappearing linguistic feature) pronounced in words like “park” (where most of England, including Lancashire, pronounces this word as “pahk” or even “pohk”). This small pocket is shown on the map at right. It’s worth noting that 60 years ago, a lot of the region and much of the West Country would have shown up as bright red, not yellow as it is now and shrinking.
Rhoticity in England is devalued, made fun of by us schoolkids who said “ooh arr ooh arr” in the 70s to mock a Somerset or Cornwall accent, slow country bumpkin Worzel-Gummidge types. But rhoticity in Blackburn is given high prestige in the community (according to the linguist interviewed by Lindsay); it’s fascinating.
My father was from Blackburn, but moved away to attend university in Leeds (still in the north but in Yorkshire on the other side of the Pennines), then to London as a management trainee and finally to California via the Antipodes. Growing up, I always imagined his rhoticity to be an American contamination, but it turns out it wasn’t. He did incorporate some American expressions into his speech which you’d expect, but “that’s a right load of tripe” and “I wouldn’t give a tin of beans for it” held on throughout his life.
I must have been eight or so when he said — discussing the first world war and his disgust with incompetent military personnel — that “Earl Haig was a butcher.” Rhotic “r” in Earl and butcher; the “but” in “butcher” pronounced like “but” the conjunction.
Previous: Lining the Cardigan Next: