Quote:
Originally Posted by SLippi
In Boston and parts of the surrounding area they can't pronounce Rs correctly they say H instead. Car becomes Caah, Worcester becomes Wooh-ster. Outside of the greater Boston area the Worcester pronunciation stayed with no R but mostly everything else is goes back to having Rs.
|
As a linguist, I can't begin to tell you how many things are wrong with this explanation.
1) People in Boston (and most of eastern New England) are not incapable of "pronouncing Rs correctly." The /r/ is articulated the same as any other English speaker when it precedes a vowel, as in '
rat' or 't
rack', for example.
2) The /r/ is NOT pronounced as [h]. People approximate the pronounciation as "cah" to indicate the long [a] vowel, not because there's actually an [h] sound there.
3) The reason why /r/ is not articulated in words like "car" is because it is the result of a
systematic, rule-governed process that deletes [r] in positions where it does not precede a vowel. This process is active in many English dialects across the world, including most in England, Australia, and New Zealand. These are called
non-rhotic dialects.
4) The origins of the pronunciation of "Worcester" have
nothing to do with the non-rhotic dialect of eastern New England. It is pronounced the way it is because that's how the (original) city of Worcester in England is pronounced.
Also consider towns like Gloucester (GLAWSS-ter) and Leicester (LESS-ter), whose pronunciations were also imported from England to Massachusetts. These names have no /r/ in the middle of them, further discrediting your theory.
As for why Worcester and these other English town names evolved to their current pronunciations -- I'm not sure. But language inevitably changes over time, and town names in England have had hundreds (if not thousands) of years to evolve. There are a plethora of other examples. Consider, for example, the section of London named Marleybone, which is roughly pronounced MARR-uh-bun.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
