Rhoticity and the Norm in English and American Dialects

Rhoticity is all about the after-vowel R sound. Jim Johnson explores the tendency towards rhoticity in the US and non-rhotic accents in England - though both have exceptions and had even more in the past!

You can hear samples of American dialects and various dialects of England on each accent's page on the AccentHelp website. 

Here's a transcript of the video:

Hey there, Jim Johnson here for Accent Help, and I want to talk about rhoticity. 

So the concept of rhoticity is whether their Rs stay on or whether they're dropped so you have what are called Rhotic accents and that would mean that the Rs tend to stay on. So most American accents are rhotic accents, for example, and you also have non-rhotic accents, so you have accents where they tend to drop the Rs, and most accents of England are non-rhotic.

What oftentimes occurs is that people start to move towards what is normalized or what is the main version of rhoticity or non rhoticity within their country. If they're in that minority they may start shifting.

So for example, in the US, up in the Northeast, it used to be much more non-rhotic. In New York, Boston, New England, overall it's probably becoming a little bit more rhotic because most of America is rhotic, so that's sort of the norm, so there can be a pull in that direction.

You'll also experience that non-rhotic element in the US and a number of other accents, in New Orleans, much of African American vernacular, in Cajun accents, and the older Southern accent that's really fading out. That used to be a very commonly non-rhotic accent is much more commonly becoming rhotic and that's happening overall.

You'll experience the same thing in England. Most people think that all British accents, all accents of England ,are non-rhotic. But down in the West country, down in the sort of toe of the boot, if you imagine England and down here in the southwest. That's where you will very commonly have some people who have rhotic accents, where they keep the Rs on. But a lot of those rhotic speakers are now shifting a little bit more towards being non-rhotic because non-rhotic for England is much more the norm. You could think of Hagrid as an example of this rhotic accent in England.

But oftentimes because non-rhotic is much more than norm there's a pull in that direction, so people will shift in that direction. It's happening in both of these countries.

And then when you get to other countries you also have other occurrences. By and large South Africa, Australia, many other english-speaking nations are non-rhotic, but they may get pulled the other direction depending on what the big influence is, and what people see as the norm.

For more info on accents check out AccentHelp.com.