Intrusive R

It's not uncommon for non-rhotic (R-dropping) speakers to add an R to the end of a word when it links into another word. Here's an introduction to this tendency for what's called an "Intrusive R" - not necessarily rude at all...

This kind of intrusive R tends to happen in England, with Cockney accents, in the accents of Yorkshire, for people from Birmingham, and most other accents. 

 It also happens for R-dropping non-rhotic accents in the US, like New York City accents, Boston accents, and the Yat accent of New Orleans. 

A transcript of the video:

Hey there, Jim Johnson for Accent Help, and I want to talk about intrusive Rs in accents.

So I talked really recently about a linking R, and that's when you've got an R, like at the end of a word that would get dropped in a non-rhotic accent, which means that it's an R-dropping accent: "fear." That R might come back in if it's linking into a vowel, like in "fear of" "fear" "fear of." So that's a linking R: "fear of." That R coming back in in order to link in to the vowel that follows which can happen in separate words, or it can happen within a word so that's that linking R, where the R comes back in.

Now what else can happen is that you can get an intrusive R in these non-rhotic accents. And that's where if you've ever heard that somebody saying that someone might put the R on the end of the word IDEA, where it becomes "idear." "That's a really good idear." You don't tend to have that happen unless it's a non-rhotic accent, and what follows the word IDEA starts with a vowel sound: "You got a crazy idea-r-about." "-dea-r-about" "You've got a crazy idea. This idea-r-about..." So that R might come back in when it's acting sort of like this, linking into a vowel.

Whereas FEAR all by itself the R would just drop: "fear" "fear" "fear of." It comes back in there. Same thing with a word like IDEA. "idea" "idea-r-of" There you might get an R that comes in, in this act of trying to link between vowels, even though an R doesn't tend to exist that will - doesn't, does not exist in that word there, and that people don't tend to say that sound.

You will very rarely hear somebody say "idear" but you might hear them say "idea-r-about" "idea-r-of." So it may come in to link into a vowel.

This will be really common after what comes out as a schwa sound. It may also happen after an ah or an aw sound, so you may have it happen after the word SAW: "I saw-r-im" or "we went to the spa-r-and had a nice day." "The spa." Right? So it may come in after these.

This is where you're gonna hear it a ton, partially because there are so many things that end with a schwa like that. Like think about various continents and countries: "Africa-r-is" "Asia-r-is" "America-r-is." You're gonna get that intrusive R that may happen for all of those various locations. Really really common to happen there.

So that's what's commonly called an intrusive R, and it will usually only happen when it's transitioning into a vowel at the beginning of the word that follows. There you go.

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