Michael: OK, point taken, although in fact both inversions and liaisons are beconming rarer in French.

And Tom: English abounds with letters that no longer contribute to the sounds of the spoken word, but it's very rare to have a sound that isn't represented by any letter (even if the letter sems to be the wrong one, as in "cough"). The intrusive R is out on its own, as far as I know, and it's quite a recent feature of spoken English.

And yes, it's just the way some people speak, and I can't insist that it's wrong just because that's not how I speak. That doesn't mean I have to like or endorse it.

But another thing I notice about this, for what it's worth, is that speakers who use the "intrusive R" are generally among those who don't use the "rhotic R" - that's the R that can be heard (or not?) in words like car, bird, sort, in most areas of the English-speaking world. It's almost as if some speakers are getting so muddled or careless that they have only the vaguest idea whether the word they want is "saw" or soar", so when they need to add "-ing" they just say "soaring" for both. It's this aspect of apparent carelessness that makes it sound lazy and unpleasant to my ears, quite apart from the fact that two unrelated words can end up sounding the same when they needn't.

Marje