Re: Is BBC English non-rhotic ?

Richard Herring wrote:

In message <1151018862.089700.207590@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>,
Richard Wordingham <jrw0602@xxxxxxxxxxx> writes
Seán O'Leathlóbhair wrote:

Using r to indicate vowel quality is very common. It is even used in
transliterations of other languages, most transliterations of Thai do
it. Thai does not have final "r" or "r" before a consonant (a written
r sounds like n in this context) yet you would not know this from
typical transliterations.

Actually, there does seem to be some correlation between the presence
of a final "r" or penultimate "r" in the Thai spelling and its use in
informal transliteration to indicate the vowel. Thus you have "Nakorn"
'city' (final "r" pronunced /n/, but also influencing the Thai vowel
sound) and "Samart" 'capable', also a brand name (penultimate "r" - the
vowel is already long in Sanskrit). Some authors (I hesitate to say
schemes) seems to use "aa" when there is no "r" in the Thai and "ar"
when there is an "r" in the Thai.

Yet they don't use <r> in other contexts where it would help, for
example the usual romanization <koh> for "island", which positively
encourages a long (and wrong) vowel, although <kor> would suggest
something much closer to approximation to the real pronunciation [kO?].

No, it wouldn't!

There's no /r/ in either <Burma> or <Myanmar>, but we pronounce them;
there's no /r/ is <Sade>, but when she first became popular we were told
to pronounce her name "shar-DAY," and so we did!
--
Peter T. Daniels grammatim@xxxxxxx
.

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  • Re: Is BBC English non-rhotic ?
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