Ruud Udderhaaf thinks that the British government should start a campaign to stop the English from adding an ‘r’ to words ending in vowels, for example: ‘Barcelonar’, ‘Annar’ and ‘Emmar’.
Why do they do it? I wanted to find out for once and for all. So, I trawled around for a while, read a few articles about phonetics and this is my take on it:
R
emember learning about that thing in your throat that makes sounds as air passes across them, the vocal chords, not those.. the other thing that opens and closes to makes the sound of consonants – the glottis? This is known as the glottis stop. Well, the glottis stays open when you make a vowel sound which evidently causes a bit of a strain on the vocal chords so the ‘r’ sound is inserted to avoid this overload. Also, the pronunciation of two vowel sounds one after the other is apparently a bit of a no no in the English language because of the danger of the words not sounding as they should thereby, risking misinterpretation.
Now that I understand why they do it, I’m wondering why other English speaking nations don’t.
Are the English, as the originators of the language, the only nation to have learned how to preserve their vocal chords whilst speaking it? Or perhaps the rest of us are still subliminally rebelling against having to speak the language at all.
My suggestion is that it has evolved out of laziness, after all, it is easier to add the ‘r’ onto a word ending in a vowel. This might also explain why they drop the ‘r’ from words that end in ‘r’, say ‘sikth’ instead of ‘sixth’ , ‘ff’ in place of ‘th’ and use the unaspirated ‘h’.
May the people’s Princess rest in peace, but how many frigging times do I have to hear about Dianar and Dodi, Dianar and Elton, Dianar in death etc etc. I think the problem largely goes away if we can, erm, kill everyone in Sky News. Joking, internet police! Jus’ a lil joke.
(No really, we should.)
Hi Nick,
You are the first to leave a comment on our new blog! THANK YOU!
As yes, Sky – they employ beautiful women to do the sports reporting and all but one sound like ducks. My other half, who is particularly sensitive to these things, calls them ‘The Duck Ladies’. He’s right! If you have the TV on Sky Sports and either turn the volume down low or move to another room so that you can can’t hear what they are saying but can still hear their voice, you can clearly hear the sound of quacking.
Their male counterparts don’t do it – neither are they particularly beautiful. Equality in the workplace? Hmmm… a way to go I think.
Very interesting! … That has always irritated me!
Sky Sports? … What is it with them?
‘Chelsea’s strike force of Drogbar and Anelkar are giving Barcelonar a lot of problems” FUCK OFF WITH YER ‘DROGBAR’ ! … Say the man’s name proper yiz bollixes!!
But then even the legendary DAVID BOWIE does it as in – “Rule Brittaniar is out of bounds …” but we’ll forgive HIM.
… and how about the ‘tss’ sound the Brits put at the end of words like lot, hot, what … or should that be ‘wot’? … or even on words ending in ‘d’ for God’s sake … as in “Wotts is thatts? … It’s Shitts that’s wotts itts is!!
http://www.speakyerownfeckinlanguageproperly.co.uk