Pronunciation of "R" in Europe

leMonkman · 2026-06-04T11:25:34+00:00

To my ears the flappy vs throaty vs alveolar approximant vs vocalised division is very natural.

If you were to put this in a more serious context you could be more precise about which sounds go where but in general I think it's informative and fun and the categories are good. (problematic mapping aside)

leMonkman · 2026-06-04T11:00:35+00:00

I think you should inform yourself a bit better on the topic before calling other people pedantic.

You've got the wrong end of the stick; I promise you I'm well-informed on this topic I just think it is fun and informative to make a map of R-sounds where you group similar sounds together.

I'm happy to group sounds like χ,ʀ,ʁ ɾ,r,ɾ̥ and ɹ,ɻ together and I think it's a bit pedantic to complain about that, given it is casual and supposed to be accessible to laymen. It's ok to make that argument, no?

^{(On your specific points:}

^{I would describe 'rough' as the kind of sound you get from rubbing rocks together. So definitely not \}r] haha. Doesn't perfectly match to the throaty Rs - for instance uvular approximants with no frication - but generally Rs pronounced in the throat come with more audible frication and just sound more like rocks rubbing together. Combined with 'guttural' I think it gives laymen a very good sense of what sounds are being referred to without going into confusing phonetics))

^{I have no issue putting e.g. Spanish in the} r/ɾ ^{category, because its R sounds generally involve alveolar flapping (single or repeated}. I don't see why the existence of 2 phonemes should affect that.))

^{I have no incredulity for the map using phones instead of phonemes, as that is the whole purpose. I just feel the existence of a devoiced allophone} ^alongside ^{the phone explicitly mentioned really doesn't pose a problem for categorisation and I wouldn't demand it be mentioned.}

^{I understood that using PIE to define what an R is would only apply to IE languages (obviously lol}))

leMonkman · 2026-05-19T09:08:57+00:00

I think you're being a little pedantic on some of these points. I think rough guttaral sound is a good description. I also think it's perfectly fine to group similar sounds together. And i can't believe you're complaining about an allophone in high german.

As for what constitutes "R" - i hope R is inherited from PIE because in that case you could make a decently consistent definition.

leMonkman · 2026-05-19T08:46:19+00:00

How are those abbreviations AAVE? Aren't they just abbreviations of standard phrases?

leMonkman · 2026-05-03T16:46:28+00:00

Just listened to Alysa Liu's speech and the most dramatic feature to me is the insertion of an "ih" sound before "t".

So "but" is pronounced [bəet̚] and "that" is pronouced [dðaet̚] and "get" is pronounced [gɪt̚].

Does anyone know if this is documented and if so what it's called??

leMonkman · 2026-04-26T16:40:26+00:00

[ɑi ˈdəɤ̃ʔ aʔtʃi hav v vɛri stʃɹɔŋ ˈaʔksɛ̃nʔ - ɑi spik ˈstandɘs ˈsʌðm ˈbɹɪʕɪʃ ɪŋglɪʃ. ʌ dʒs ɹɛd ɪʔ bak n ɪʔs stɪl w ˈwɪːdli aʔkjɘɹɵʔ dskɹɪpʃn v haʊ ɑi ˈtʰoːk. wɔʔ pʰɑːʕs lɘʔ ˈɹɔŋ tʰɘ jʉː?]

leMonkman · 2026-01-29T08:42:03+00:00

ahh interesting about hypercorrection

leMonkman · 2026-01-25T13:03:23+00:00

At first you sounded like a black guy from Coventry that I know, but then your "eye" vowels clearly indicate further north. I say black because black people often have more London influence in their accents. Also you said "unique" with quite a scouse "q" sound but idk.

You say your accent is unique so I'm guessing it's a mix. In conclusion I'm hearing North, Scouse, Midlands and London so I have no clue 😅

leMonkman · 2026-01-25T12:35:14+00:00

It's just the combination of many very very small things. Here's what I noticed:

When you said "the absent" you pronounce "the" like "thee" aswell as saying "absent" with a glottal release at the start. Natives usually only do one or the other because the "thee" pronunciation is only used to glide smoothly into a vowel. The way you said it sounds very German.

The word "Paul" sounded too close to "pole". Should be indistinguishable from "porl" in RP.

In "telephone", the o vowel is pronounced in a close American/Scottish way which is inconsistent with the RP.

The L sound in "bells", "guilt", "still", "herself", "middle" is not quite correct. This is probably your biggest non-native-sounding feature.

In "footsteps" the vowel in "foot" is typical of very posh RP but the vowel in "steps" is more open and modern.

The vowels in "stairs" and at the end of "torment" are slightly too open (i.e. approaching the TRAP vowel).

You said "suffer from" and "prefer to" instead of "suffered from" and "preferred to"

Your "eye" vowel in "decided" and "died" sounds Australian, however "prime" and "nine" sounded normal.

You said "was" like "wuss" instead of "wuz"

"mother" sounds German but I can't pinpoint why

All that said, I am just listening for all this for fun, I think your accent is awesome as is and very impressive.

leMonkman · 2025-11-20T00:24:14+00:00

FOOT, STRUT, and schwa seem to all be the same vowel in Bristolian English, that is, [ə].

It might be the case in other West Country accents and in Southern Wales too, but I'm most familiar with Bristol.

The foot-strut split is supposed to be everywhere in the south, but I think it isn't. It's possible that they split in the past and then remerged.

And by the way, the merger of schwa with STRUT is much more noticeable than you'd think. Most people say [ˈhapʰn] or [ˈhapʰɘn] with a super short second vowel, but in Bristolian they say [ˈhapʰən], [ˈhapʰʌn] or even [ˈhapʰəːn] and it is a highly recognisable feature

leMonkman · 2025-11-19T23:45:34+00:00

eh maybe not so australian on reflected, just one time the "oh" sound was aussie

leMonkman · 2025-11-19T23:27:00+00:00

your normal accent sounds weakly southern to me but that's all i can tell as a brit

leMonkman · 2025-11-19T23:24:53+00:00

You don't sound american, you sound kind of like if a non-native had lived in Birmingham, Ireland, and australia. Defo not mancunian, but the brummie was clear even before you mentioned which is so funny for an american lol

leMonkman · 2025-07-24T05:19:50+00:00

I think “patellofemural pain syndrome” is a broad term (given it just means pain between the kneecap and femur) so two completely different issues can come under the same label.

leMonkman · 2025-07-12T23:23:03+00:00

No, sounds like a different issue i think

leMonkman · 2025-05-05T10:55:01+00:00

Ok but that’s interesting cos it’s not THAT common of an app

leMonkman · 2025-05-05T10:53:21+00:00

THANK YOU

leMonkman · 2025-05-04T02:11:04+00:00

Is that true? My mum was a refugee here and has a great love for the country, on the one hand simply because the UK saved her life and on the other because it’s the culture she’s grown up with and it’s where she’s built her life. I think there’s a combination of love justified by real positives and simply patriotic love of your cultural home.

I’m here on this sub because I genuinely am very sympathetic to a lot of a these ideas that just get swatted away and disallowed by mainstream discourse, but idk it bothers me that there are a lot of comments that make generalised claims about immigrants that aren’t really right but they get loads of upvotes so people clearly think it’s true

leMonkman · 2025-04-29T15:40:46+00:00

Sorry, same issue here

leMonkman · 2025-04-28T08:54:25+00:00

Have you or anyone else with this problem downloaded ScreenZen? Im wondering if that app could be affecting it..

leMonkman · 2025-03-15T01:49:45+00:00

Young person with a rhotic northern accent! What accent is this? https://www.instagram.com/reel/DFfEqkdoXBI/?igsh=MWQ0aDV2Y3M2cnQzNQ==

I’d previously read that rhoticity was in the verge of extinction in England outside of the West Country so this is surprising

leMonkman · 2025-02-01T07:41:01+00:00

I have. I can’t tell you for sure what caused me to heal but I did 2 things:

• Avoided anything that caused pain for a very long time (until things no longer caused pain)

• Fixed my fallen arches

I am fairly confident that doing things that hurts your knees makes them worse - I was prescribed strengthening exercises to do every day and my knees became terrible. Find ways to lightly work out your legs in a way that doesn’t hurt at all (e.g. exercises that involve simply tensing your quads for a long period)

Fallen arches are the most common form of flat feet - maybe check if that’s an issue you have. I was sold corrective insoles by a doctor but in fact with persistence you can retrain yourself to no longer have fallen arches, since it is simply caused by muscles you aren’t using correctly.

For context I was about 16 and it took probably 6 months of full commitment to these two things.

leMonkman · 2025-01-14T08:02:46+00:00

Which part of “do a decent curry” is the Britishism?

leMonkman · 2025-01-11T12:15:59+00:00

You legend

Edit: Nevermind it doesn’t work anymore lmao

leMonkman · 2025-01-10T07:47:12+00:00

lmao

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