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RHOTIC AND NONRHOTIC ACCENTS English pronunciation is divided into two main Accent groups, the rhotic and the '''nonrhotic''', depending on when the phoneme (the letter "r", equivalent to Greek Rho ) is pronounced. Rhotic speakers pronounce written "r" in all positions (although many rhotic speakers omit it in French Loan Words where "r" is silent, such as ''dossier''). Non-rhotic speakers pronounce "r" only if it is followed by a Vowel (see " Linking R "). In Linguistic terms, non-rhotic accents are said to exclude in the Syllable Coda . This is commonly referred to as ''post-vocalic "r"'', although that term can be misleading because not all r's that occur after vowels are excluded in non-rhotic English. Development of nonrhotic accents The earliest traces of a loss of in English are found in the environment before in spellings from the mid-15th century: the Oxford English Dictionary reports ''bace'' for earlier ''barse'' (today "bass", the fish) in 1440 and ''passel'' for ''parcel'' in 1468. In the 1630s, the word '' Juggernaut '' is first attested, which represents the Hindi word ''jagannāth'', meaning "lord of the universe". The English spelling uses the Digraph ''er'' to represent a Hindi sound close to the English Schwa . Loss of coda apparently became widespread in southern England during the 18th Century ; John Walker uses the spelling ''ar'' to indicate the Broad A of ''aunt'' in his 1775 dictionary and reports that ''card'' is pronounced "caad" in 1791 (Labov, Ash, and Boberg 2006: 47). A non-rhotic speaker pronounces the in ''red, torrid, watery'' (in each case the is followed by a vowel) but not the written "r" of ''hard'', nor that of ''car'' or ''water''. However, in most non-rhotic accents, if a word ending in written "r" is followed closely by another word beginning with a vowel, the is pronounced—as in ''water ice''. This phenomenon is referred to as " Linking R ". Many non-rhotic speakers also insert Epenthetic s between vowels (''drawring'' for ''drawing''). This so-called " Intrusive R " is frowned upon by those who use the non-rhotic Received Pronunciation but even they frequently "intrude" an epenthetic at word boundaries, especially where one or both vowels is schwa; for example ''the idea of it'' becomes ''the idea-r-of it'', ''Australia and New Zealand'' becomes ''Australia-r-and New Zealand''. For non-rhotic speakers, what was historically a vowel plus is now usually realized as a '' respectively have one and two Syllable s; in some non-rhotic speech, this may be insufficient for distinguishing them. . Distribution of rhotic and nonrhotic accents Most speakers of American English have a rhotic accent. Outside of the United States, rhotic accents can be found in Barbados , most of Canada , Ireland and Scotland . In England , rhotic accents are found in Northumbria , the West Country , and parts of Lancashire . Other areas with rhotic accents include India (particularly in southern India and Maharashtra where the R's are Rolled ), Philippines , and Otago and Southland in the far south of New Zealand's South Island , where a small Scottish influence is apparent. Areas with non-rhotic accents include Africa , Australia , Malta , most of the Caribbean , most of England (especially Received Pronunciation speakers), most of New Zealand , South Africa and Wales . Singapore and Malaysia are also two examples of countries in Asia with a non-rhotic accent. In Canada, non-rhotic accents are found in the are non-rhotic as well as New York City and surrounding areas. The case of New York is especially interesting because of a classic study in Sociolinguistics by William Labov showing that the non-rhotic accent is associated with older and middle- and lower-class speakers, and is being replaced by the rhotic accent. African American Vernacular English is largely non-rhotic. There are a few accents of Southern American English where intervocalic is deleted before an Unstressed Syllable . In such accents, pronunciations like for '' Carolina '' are heard) In some dialects of American English, people will add an to certain words through Hypercorrection , the most common examples being , , and for ''wash'', ''water'', ''idea'' and ''draw''. This hypercorrection also occurs in the Canadian and British English pronunciation of for '' Khaki '', although this is fading over time and many young Canadians now use the American pronunciation of . L-VOCALIZATION In linguistics, l-vocalization is a process by which an sound (a Lateral Consonant ) is replaced by a Vowel or Semivowel sound. This happens most often to the Velarized Alveolar Lateral Approximant . L-vocalization in English L-vocalization is a notable feature of certain dialects of English , including Cockney and Estuary English , in which an sound occurring at the end of a word or before a consonant is replaced with a Vowel sound, variously transcribed , or resulting in pronunciations such as , for ''milk'', and , for ''middle''. Especially in Cockney, l-vocalization can be accompanied by Phonemic Mergers of vowels before the vocalized . For example, ''real'', ''reel'' and ''rill'', which are distinct in Received Pronunciation , are homophones in Cockney as . Other possible mergers include ''Val''/''veil''/''vowel'', ''full''/''fool''/''fall'' and ''dole''/''doll''. In the accent of Bristol , syllabic vocalized to , resulting in pronunciations like (for ''bottle''). By Hypercorrection , however, some words originally ending in had this sound replaced by syllabic : the original name of the town was ''Bristow'', but this has been altered by hypercorrection to ''Bristol''. In the United States, the dark L in African-American Vernacular English may change to an o, w, or be omitted altogether (i.e. fool becomes foo', roll becomes ro' or row). L-vocalization in other languages
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