A Shibboleth upon their Tongues: Early English /r/ revisited
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Date
2006
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Adam Mickiewicz University
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Abstract
This article discusses the pronunciation of the rhotic phoneme /r/ in early English. The traditional
belief that the dominant pronunciation in Old and Middle English was [r] (an apical trill) is still
supported by some authors, but there is growing consensus that there was a fairly wide range of
/r/ realisations already in early Germanic, and that the pronunciation of /r/ in Old English was
about as variable as it is in present-day English. The article defends this view and goes a step
further, suggesting that the modern distribution of variant rhotic pronunciations in British English
reflects to some extent the distribution of very similar sounds in Old English.
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Studia Anglica Posnaniensia, vol. 42 (2006), pp. 63-76