Re: Rs

BP Jonsson wrote:

> At 01:28 1.4.2003 -0500, Tristan McLeay wrote:
>
>> For us non-rhotics, pronouncing /r/ in that position
>> can be mighty difficult. Not that we'd want to, of course. I can't
>> imagine
>> what possible benefit it would offer.
>
> A smaller number of homophones?
True, but that's wasted on Americans who pronounce 'cot' and 'caught'
the same. And it's not as if the homophones cause much trouble; context
normally sorts it out. And the homophony has meant that we've finally
sorted out when you should use 'farther' and when you should use
'further' (you use 'farther' when you can't spell and are talking about
a male parent, and 'further' when talking about distance).

BTW: a vaguely related question. How do languages which don't mind
hiatus deal with sequences of the same vowel? How would a
non-intrusive-R speaker pronounced something like 'data about' (I say
/d6:t@r@b&ut/ for anyone who might wonder why I ask. And I'm not at all
concerned with the first vowel of 'data').

Tristan (born non-rhotic, and will die non-rhotic)

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