Rhotic vs Non-Rhotic Accents

One major subdivision of accents/dialects is whether they are rhotic or non-rhotic: do they drop their R's or not? When the R's drop after vowels ("hard" = "hahd") this is called a "non-rhotic accent." Here's the overview:

Most American accents are rhotic, while most accents of England are non-rhotic, but both countries have some exceptions... 

Rhoticity

So accents are usually subdivided into Rhotic or Non-Rhotic. What rhotic means or rhoticity means is R-ness. Is there, basically, an R sound that exists in there.

Now there's a whole bunch of different R symbols in the phonetic alphabet. The one that we're actually going to focus on is really the little diacritic right that I did a little bit of a simplified version of in the video, which is called rhoticity. So you're adding rhoticity to this schwa sound, so it becomes more like "er" as in "other."

Now in some accents when this R-ness gets dropped, "otheh," that becomes a non-rhotic accent. When the R is on there, as in my own speech that's called a rhotic accent. "Other" er er.

Some people make the R's even harder, and some people make the R's go away completely.

American Rhoticity

So a lot of Southern accents in the States, for example, tend to have a slightly harder R that happens. "Harrrd." Tongue bunching. The tongue pulling back and bunching up to make that R a little bit stronger.

In general, another funky thing Americans tend to do is that we tend to take our R sounds in general, the various ones, and we tend to round them slightly. So we add a little bit of rounding to them. "Red." Which doesn't happen as much in many other cultures. "Red." "er" That rounding is more common in American accents. 

So when you drop the R, that's called non-rhotic.

Most of America is rhotic, but when you get into certain parts of like New England, non-rhotic. When you get into parts of the South, it's mostly rhotic now, but there used to be much more non-rhotic. That Southern kind of droppin' your R kind of Southern that doesn't exist very much anymore, that's non-rhotic.

But you do still hear it in some places, like a lot in southern Louisiana, both in New Orleans, the way you get those R's droppin there, and also when you get into the Cajun country dropping those Rs. So those are non-rhotic accents that exist in the US.

Also African American vernacular tends to be, in its stronger forms, a non-rhotic accent where the Rs drop.

English Rhoticity

Now we usually associate non-rhotic with England and rhotic with the US, but there are actually, most British accents are actually non-rhotic, but like when you get into the the accent of Hagrid down there in the West Country, far south and west in England, that becomes more of a rhotic accent there. That Devon accent that you might hear in a play like Warhorse or in the movie Warhorse. Though they did it mostly non-rhotic in that, but that is a rhotic accent in England, where we tend to think of it as non-rhotic.

So that's what we mean by the terms Rhotic versus Non-Rhotic as a subdivision of accents.