'Strong r' in danger of disappearing across North of England, study finds

The study found Blackburn was one of the last places where you can hear a rhotic accent

The "strong r" sound at the end of words may be disappearing across the North of England, a study has found.

Lancaster University (LU) researchers said rhotic speakers, who pronounce "r" sounds in words like car, her and bird, were "becoming a thing of the past" across the region, with one exception.

Dr Danielle Turton said east Lancashire had remained an "island of rhoticity".

However, the study lead said that even there, the "strong r" was in gradual decline among young speakers.

Rhoticity is the term for speaking in an accent where an r is pronounced not only before a vowel, but also before a consonant or at the end of words.

An LU representative said hundreds of years ago, it was common in England "to pronounce strong 'r's", but that has declined as the language evolved and has been most commonly documented in Cornwall and the West Country.

They said "most sociolinguistic studies of rhoticity" focused on the South West and "relatively little" was known about it in the North.

"The study is timely because Northern rhoticity is predicted to disappear in the next few generations, a process which is now complete in many areas of the South West," they added.

'Linguistic homogenisation'

Dr Turton said the study, titled "An acoustic analysis of rhoticity in Lancashire, England", found that speakers from Blackburn and the surrounding area "usually differentiate between pairs of words, such as 'stellar' and 'stella', whereas most of England would consider them to be the same".

"However, for the youngest speakers in Blackburn, these 'r's are very weak, which raises the question of whether future generations will even hear these weak 'r's at all, and whether this distinction will eventually fade away," she said.

"Accent change is often like a puddle: it dries up in most places and leave remnants around the edges, hence why Cornwall and East Lancs behave similarly here today."

The study found the strongest 'r's' were spoken by older men, and were more prominent during formal speaking, which they said raised "interesting questions about social prestige and clearness of speech".

Dr Turton said that for the youngest speakers in Blackburn, the "'r's are very weak"

Researchers also said that while rhotic Blackburn and East Lancashire speakers may be in the minority in England, they were "in the majority across the English-speaking world", as North American, Scottish and Irish speakers also use that pronunciation, "as do many second language learners of English".

Dr Turton said the East Lancashire 'r' was weaker than its non-English compatriots, "possibly as a result of it undergoing change towards the England standard" and could also eventually disappear.

"In recent years, there has been a lot of talk about the disappearance of traditional dialects and the linguistic homogenisation of regions in England," she said.

"Unfortunately, it seems that this is the case for the East Lancashire 'island of rhoticity'.

"In the next few generations, this traditional feature may be lost."

However, she added that all was not lost for the area's accent.

"Blackburn still retains many other vowel features that make it unique, and changes like this often pave the way for further linguistic evolution in the future," she said.

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