The Mudcat Café TM
Thread #141002 Message #3242724
Posted By: JohnInKansas
21-Oct-11 - 07:05 PM
Thread Name: Why the 'r' between vowels?
Subject: RE: Why the 'r' between vowels?
One from Boston isn't really a fair example, since the characteristic is quite common there among "educated" speakers, and is sometimes called "a Harvard accent."
It was common in the speech of the Kennedys, both the President and Senators. The extra "r"s are taken from places where they should be, so that Harvard is actually pronounced Hawvud, providing two of 'em in just one word - that is used with excessive frequency by those affecting that accent.
The particular affectation is uncommon among "working class" New Englanders, whose patois most resembles a cage full of guinea pigs under some sort of moderate stress, and would be almost completely unintelligible to the general public in broader regions of the US.
The "Harvard Accent" is sufficiently close to what many in the US accept as "cultured British" to have some intermingling of abberations, and is adopted by some public speakers, notably news broadcasters, on the ridiculous presumption that "sounding British" implies some unknown quality of being "socially cultured" and/or the equally preposterous presumption that sounding like one "educated at Harvard" makes them appear "intellectually cultured."
The two deviances are sufficiently similar that most who make a pretense of them don't really know which they're affecting, although they tend to be quite smug about the ability to pretend to either - or often to a mixture of both.
John (not educated at Hawvud, but a little down the road where "those kind" of twits are quite frequently observable)