Rhotic and non-rhotic accents - Distribution of rhotic and non-rhotic accents - Encyclopedia II

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, Wales, 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 and South Africa. 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 Maritimes. In the United States, large parts of The South were formerly non-rhotic, but this is sharply recessive. Today, non-rhoticity in Southern American English is found primarily among older speakers, and only in some areas like New Orleans, southern Alabama, Savannah, Georgia, and Norfolk, Virginia (Labov, Ash, and Bomberg 2006: 47-48). Parts of New England 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 [ɹ] is deleted before an unstressed syllable. In such accents, pronunciations like [kæəlaːnə] for Carolina are heard)

In some dialects of American English, people will add an /ɹ/ to certain words through hypercorrection, the most common examples being /wɔɹʃ/, /ˈwɔɹtɚ/, /aɪˈdiɚ/ and /dɹɔɹ/ for wash, water, idea and draw.^{[citation needed]} This hypercorrection also occurs in the Canadian and British English pronunciation of /ˈkɑɹki/ for khaki, although this is fading over time and many young Canadians now use the American pronunciation of /ˈkæki/.^{[citation needed]}

Adapted from the Wikipedia article "Distribution of rhotic and non-rhotic accents", under the G.N U Free Docmentation License. Please also see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Main_Page