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75-415: " Tidewater " is a term for the north Atlantic Plain region of the United States. It is located east of the Atlantic Seaboard Fall Line and north of the Deep South . It encompasses the Chesapeake Bay and includes Delaware , the remainder of the Delmarva Peninsula , Southern Maryland and the Eastern Shore of Maryland , Washington, D.C. , Eastern Virginia , and Eastern North Carolina . Culturally,

150-638: A British dependent territory. The lack of consonant /r/ in Cantonese contributes to the phenomenon, but has rhoticity started to exist because of the handover in 1997 and influence by the US and East Asian entertainment industries. Many older and younger speakers among South and East Asians have a non-rhotic accent. Speakers of Semitic ( Arabic , Hebrew , etc.), Turkic ( Turkish , Azeri , etc.), Iranian languages ( Persian , Kurdish , etc.) in West Asia speak English with

225-628: A depth of 100 meters. The continental shelf off the Atlantic Ocean ranges in width from less than 1 km off Florida to more than 420 km off Maine. The average width is about 135 km. The Coastal Plain of the United States includes all or portions of the states of Alabama , Arkansas , Delaware , Florida , Georgia , Kentucky , Maryland , Massachusetts , Mississippi , New Jersey , New York , North Carolina , Oklahoma , South Carolina , Rhode Island , Tennessee , Texas and Virginia . From

300-511: A rhotic pronunciation because of the inherent phonotactics of their native languages. Indian English can vary between being non-rhotic due to the traditional influence of Received Pronunciation (RP) or rhotic from the underlying phonotactics of the native Indo-Aryan and Dravidian languages and the growing influence of American English. Other Asian regions with non-rhotic English are Malaysia, Singapore, and Brunei. A typical Malaysian's English would be almost totally non-rhotic because of

375-539: A specific dialect of English, speak with a strong "r," but they are not the only ones to do so. Older Southland speakers use /ɹ/ variably after vowels, but younger speakers now use /ɹ/ only with the NURSE vowel and occasionally with the LETT ER vowel. Younger Southland speakers pronounce /ɹ/ in third term /ˌθɵːɹd ˈtɵːɹm/ (General NZE pronunciation: /ˌθɵːd ˈtɵːm/ ) but only sometimes in farm cart /ˈfɐːm ˌkɐːt/ (usually

450-626: Is [kɑː] , but car owner is [ˈkɑːrəʊnə] . A final schwa usually remains short and so water in isolation is [wɔːtə] . In RP and similar accents, the vowels /iː/ and /uː/ (or /ʊ/ ), when they are followed by r , become diphthongs that end in schwa and so near is [nɪə] and poor is [pʊə] . They have other realizations as well, including monophthongal ones. Once again, the pronunciations vary from accent to accent. The same happens to diphthongs followed by r , but they may be considered to end in rhotic speech in /ər/ , which reduces to schwa, as usual, in non-rhotic speech. In isolation, tire ,

525-429: Is schwa . For example, the idea of it becomes the idea-r-of it , Australia and New Zealand becomes Australia-r-and New Zealand , the formerly well-known India-r-Office and "Laura Norder" (Law and Order). The typical alternative used by RP speakers (and some rhotic speakers as well) is to insert an intrusive glottal stop wherever an intrusive r would otherwise have been placed. For non-rhotic speakers, what

600-750: Is an endemic plant community found in most of the Atlantic coastal plain, ranging from Virginia to northern Florida. These woodland savannas are reliant on sandy soils and are fire dependent, lest hardwoods start to dominate. Alongside longleaf pine , typically associated flora includes turkey oak and wiregrass . The Florida longleaf pine sandhill extends the longleaf pine forests into central Florida, with South Florida slash pine flatwoods , Florida sand pine scrub and Florida dry prairie stretching into southern Florida. Longleaf pine woodlands also stretch further west, to eastern Texas. These consist of East Gulf and West Gulf longleaf pine flatwoods , bisected by

675-691: Is entirely rhotic except for small isolated areas in southwestern New Brunswick , parts of Newfoundland , and the Lunenburg English variety spoken in Lunenburg and Shelburne Counties, Nova Scotia , which may be non-rhotic or variably rhotic. The prestige form of English spoken in Ireland is rhotic and most regional accents are rhotic, but some regional accents, particularly in the area around counties Louth and Cavan are notably non-rhotic and many non-prestige accents have touches of non-rhoticity. In Dublin,

750-470: Is heavily influenced by the American dialect and because of Spanish influence in the various Philippine languages. Many East Asians in mainland China, Japan, Korea, and Taiwan who have a good command of English generally have rhotic accents because of the influence of American English . That excludes Hong Kong , whose English dialect is a result of its almost 150-year history as a British Crown colony and later

825-717: Is largely non-rhotic, and in some non-rhotic Southern and AAVE accents, there is no linking r ; that is, /r/ at the end of a word is deleted even when the following word starts with a vowel; thus, "Mister Adams" is pronounced [mɪstə(ʔ)ˈædəmz] . In a few such accents, intervocalic /r/ is deleted before an unstressed syllable even within a word if the following syllable begins with a vowel. In such accents, pronunciations like [kæəˈlaːnə] for Carolina , or [bɛːˈʌp] for "bear up" are heard. This pronunciation occurs in AAVE and occurred for many older non-rhotic Southern speakers. AAVE spoken in areas in which non-AAVE speakers are rhotic

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900-442: Is likelier to be rhotic. Rhoticity is generally more common among younger AAVE-speakers. Typically, even non-rhotic modern varieties of American English pronounce the /r/ in /ɜːr/ (as in "bird," "work," or "perky") and realize it, as in most rhotic varieties, as [ ɚ ] (an r-colored mid central vowel) or [əɹ] (a sequence of a mid central vowel and a postalveolar or retroflex approximant). Canadian English

975-463: Is now identified as a global biodiversity hotspot, with over 1500 endemic plant species, and ~70% habitat loss. This endemism is particularly high in the longleaf pine savannas and woodlands , along with the other herbaceous and fire dependent ecosystems of the ecoregion. Despite intermittent flooding, certain refugia have remained continuously terrestrial since at least the late Cretaceous (85-80mya), contributing to endemism. Generally speaking, despite

1050-526: Is now predominantly rhotic. In the late 19th century, non-rhotic accents were common throughout much of the coastal Eastern and Southern United States, including along the Gulf Coast . Non-rhotic accents were established in all major U.S. cities along the Atlantic coast except for the Delaware Valley area, centered on Philadelphia and Baltimore , because of its early Scots-Irish rhotic influence. After

1125-643: Is one of eight distinct physiographic divisions of the contiguous United States . Using the USGS physiographic classification system, the Atlantic Plain division comprises two provinces and six sections. The Coastal Plain province is differentiated from the Continental Shelf province simply based on the portion of the land mass above and below sea level. The lands adjacent to the Atlantic coastline are made up of sandy beaches, marshlands, bays, and barrier islands. It

1200-661: Is optional. In these dialects the probability of deleting r may vary depending on social, stylistic, and contextual factors. Variably rhotic accents comprise much of Indian English , Pakistani English , and Caribbean English , for example, as spoken in Tobago , Guyana, Antigua and Barbuda, and the Bahamas. They include current-day New York City English , most modern varieties of Southern American English , New York Latino English , and some Eastern New England English , as well as some varieties of Scottish English . Non-rhotic accents in

1275-436: Is pronounced [taɪə] and sour is [saʊə] . For some speakers, some long vowels alternate with a diphthong ending in schwa and so wear may be [wɛə] but wearing [ˈwɛːrɪŋ] . The compensatory lengthening view is challenged by Wells, who stated that during the 17th century, stressed vowels followed by /r/ and another consonant or word boundary underwent a lengthening process, known as pre- r lengthening. The process

1350-659: Is the flattest of the U.S. physiographic divisions and stretches over 2,200 miles (3,500 km) in length from Cape Cod to the Mexican border and southward an additional 1,000 miles (1,600 km) to the Yucatán Peninsula . The central and southern Atlantic Coast is characterized by barrier and drowned valley coasts. The coastal Atlantic plain features nearly continuous barriers interrupted by inlets , large embayments with drowned river valleys , and extensive wetlands and marshes . The Atlantic plain slopes gently seaward from

1425-562: Is the flooded river areas below the Fall Line . The Hampton Roads area of Virginia is considered to be a Tidewater region. Southern Maryland and the Eastern Shore , parts of Delaware round out the northern part of the region on the Chesapeake and Delaware Bays. The term tidewater may be correctly applied to all portions of any area, including Virginia, where the water level is affected by

1500-534: The American Revolutionary War , which lasted from 1775 to 1783, reported surprise at the significant changes in the fashionable pronunciation that had taken place. By the early 19th century, the southern English standard had been fully transformed into a non-rhotic variety, but it continued to be variable in the 1870s. The extent of rhoticity in England in the mid-19th century is summarized as widespread in

1575-595: The American South among Whites is found primarily among older speakers and only in some areas such as central and southern Alabama , Savannah, Georgia , and Norfolk, Virginia , as well as in the Yat accent of New Orleans . It is still very common all across the South and across all age groups among African American speakers. The local dialects of eastern New England , especially that of Boston, Massachusetts and extending into

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1650-601: The Cape Province (typically in - er suffixes, as in writ er ). It appears that postvocalic /r/ is entering the speech of younger people under the influence of American English and perhaps of the Scottish dialect that was brought by the Scottish settlers. Standard Australian English is non-rhotic. A degree of rhoticity has been observed in a particular sublect of the Australian Aboriginal English spoken on

1725-577: The General American English of Midwestern, Western, and non-coastal Americans. The prestige of non-rhoticity thus reversed, with non-rhoticity in the 20th century up until today increasingly associated with lower-class rather than higher-class speakers, as in New York City. The biggest strongholds of non-rhoticity in the United States have always been eastern New England, New York City, and

1800-519: The Mid-Atlantic and South Atlantic coastal plains. The Atlantic Plain is generally gently dipping undeformed Mesozoic and Cenozoic sediments, with the sedimentary wedge thickening toward the sea, reaching a maximum thickness of about 3 kilometers (10,000 ft) in the vicinity of Cape Hatteras, North Carolina . Despite being previously overlooked in research, the Atlantic Coastal Plain

1875-599: The Mississippi Alluvial Plain . To the north, the Atlantic Coastal Plain also broaches into the mesic hardwood forests of the Middle Atlantic coastal forests , followed by the northern Atlantic coastal pine barrens . The southernmost Atlantic Plain contains the only Neotropical ecoregion of the continental USA, being the Everglades and Florida mangroves . The following species are largely endemic to

1950-516: The force vowel often remaining non-rhotic. Semi-rhotic accents have also been studied, such as Jamaican English , in which r is pronounced (as in even non-rhotic accents) before vowels, but also in stressed monosyllables or stressed syllables at the ends of words (e.g. in "car" or "dare"). It is not pronounced at the end of unstressed syllables (e.g. in "water") or before consonants (e.g. "market"). Variably rhotic accents are widely documented, in which deletion of r (when not before vowels)

2025-486: The national standard of mass media (like radio, film, and television) being firmly rhotic since the mid-20th century onwards. The earliest traces of a loss of /r/ in English appear in the early 15th century and occur before coronal consonants , especially /s/ , giving modern ass 'buttocks' ( Old English : ears , Middle English : ers or ars ), and bass (fish) (OE bærs , ME bars ). A second phase of

2100-400: The 1870s, but in general rhoticity is increasing quickly. Rhotic New Zealand English was historically restricted to Murihiku (the " Southland burr ") but rhoticity now is widely used in a region stretching from South Auckland down into the upper North Island, and elsewhere particularly among Pasifika communities. This particular rhoticism manifests itself mostly in the nurse vowel, but with

2175-445: The 1930s, in some of Lancashire (north and west of the centre of Manchester , increasingly among older and rural speakers only), in some parts of Yorkshire and Lincolnshire , and in the areas that border Scotland. The prestige form exerts a steady pressure toward non-rhoticity. Thus, the urban speech of Bristol or Southampton is more accurately described as variably rhotic, the degree of rhoticity being reduced as one moves up

2250-592: The 21st century, the non-rhotic dialects include most of those in England , Wales , Australia , New Zealand , and South Africa . Among certain speakers, like some in the northeastern coastal and southern United States, rhoticity is a sociolinguistic variable : postvocalic /r/ is deleted depending on an array of social factors, such as being more correlated in the 21st century with lower socioeconomic status, greater age, particular ethnic identities, and informal speaking contexts. These correlations have varied through

2325-743: The American Civil War and even more intensely during the early-to-mid-20th century, presumably correlated with the Second World War, rhotic accents began to gain social prestige nationwide, even in the aforementioned areas that were traditionally non-rhotic. Thus, non-rhotic accents are increasingly perceived by Americans as sounding foreign or less educated because of an association with working-class or immigrant speakers in Eastern and Southern cities, and rhotic accents are increasingly perceived as sounding more " General American ." Today, non-rhoticity in

Tidewater (region) - Misplaced Pages Continue

2400-487: The American rhotic "r", which creates a pseudo-Americanised accent. By and large, the official spoken English used in post-colonial African countries is non-rhotic. Standard Liberian English is also non-rhotic because its liquids are lost at the end of words or before consonants. South African English is mostly non-rhotic , especially in the Cultivated dialect, which is based on RP, except for some Broad varieties spoken in

2475-608: The Americas include those of the rest of the Caribbean and Belize. There are people with non-rhotic accents who are children of at least one rhotic-accented parent but grew up, or were educated, in non-rhotic countries like Australia, England, New Zealand, South Africa, or Wales. By contrast, people who have at least one non-rhotic-accented parent but were raised or started their education in Canada, any rhotic Caribbean country, Ireland, Scotland, or

2550-630: The Fall Line, where waterfalls or rapids mark the end of the Tidewater and the beginning of the foothill region known as the Piedmont . Tidewater is host to flora commonly associated with the South Atlantic pine forests and lower Southeast Coastal Plain maritime flora, the latter found primarily in southeastern Virginia. The Tidewater region has remained politically competitive since the 2010s, even as much of

2625-466: The Tidewater region usually includes the low-lying plains of southeast Virginia , northeastern North Carolina , southern Maryland and the Chesapeake Bay . The cultural Tidewater region got its name from the effects of the changing tides on local rivers , sounds , and the ocean . The area has a centuries-old cultural heritage that sets the Tidewater region apart from the adjacent inland parts of

2700-510: The United States speak with rhotic accents. Most English varieties in England are non-rhotic today, which stems from a trend in southeastern England that accelerated from the very late 18th century onwards. Rhotic accents are still found south and west of a line from near Shrewsbury to around Portsmouth (especially in the West Country ), in the Corby area because of migration from Scotland in

2775-436: The United States, especially with respect to its distinctive dialects of English, which are gradually disappearing, along with its islands and its receding shoreline. The tidewater region developed when sea level rose after the last ice age, resulting in the flooding of river valleys in the coastal plain. Such flooded river valleys now make up the tidewater since tides continue to affect water levels far inland, in some cases all

2850-736: The Virginia governorship. A distinctive non-rhotic accent of the Old South was spoken in the Tidewater coastal region of Virginia. Known as a Tidewater accent , it is best associated with upper-class white speakers of the 19th and early 20th centuries. In the actual islands of the Chesapeake themselves, a separate, rhotic accent survives among the locals, sometimes known as " Hoi Toider ". Notes Bibliography 36°53′N 76°28′W  /  36.883°N 76.467°W  / 36.883; -76.467 Atlantic Plain The Atlantic Plain

2925-668: The book New Zealand English: its Origins and Evolution : [T]he only areas of England... for which we have no evidence of rhoticity in the mid-nineteenth century lie in two separate corridors. The first runs south from the North Riding of Yorkshire through the Vale of York into north and central Lincolnshire, nearly all of Nottinghamshire, and adjacent areas of Derbyshire, Leicestershire, and Staffordshire. The second includes all of Norfolk, western Suffolk and Essex, eastern Cambridgeshire and Hertfordshire, Middlesex, and northern Surrey and Kent. In

3000-559: The class and formality scales. Most Scottish accents are rhotic. Non-rhotic speech has been reported in Edinburgh since the 1970s and Glasgow since the 1980s. Welsh English is mostly non-rhotic, but variable rhoticity is present in accents influenced by Welsh , especially in North Wales . Additionally, while Port Talbot English is largely non-rhotic, some speakers may supplant the front vowel of bird with /ɚ/ . American English

3075-456: The coast of South Australia , especially in speakers from the Point Pearce and Raukkan settlements. These speakers realise /r/ as [ɹ] in the preconsonantal postvocalic position (after a vowel and before a consonant), though only within stems : [boːɹd] "board", [tʃɜɹtʃ] "church", [pɜɹθ] "Perth"; but [flæː] "flour", [dɒktə] "doctor", [jɪəz] "years". It has been speculated that

Tidewater (region) - Misplaced Pages Continue

3150-581: The coastal areas of West Africa are primarily non-rhotic because of the underlying varieties of Niger-Congo languages that are spoken in that part of West Africa. Rhoticity may exist in the English that is spoken in the areas in which rhotic Afro-Asiatic or Nilo-Saharan languages are spoken across northern West Africa and in the Nilotic regions of East Africa. More modern trends show an increasing American influence on African English pronunciation particularly among younger urban affluent populations, which may overstress

3225-434: The early 19th centuries influenced the American port cities with close connections to Britain, which caused upper-class pronunciation to become non-rhotic in many Eastern and Southern port cities such as New York City , Boston , Alexandria , Charleston , and Savannah . Like regional dialects in England, however, the accents of other areas in the United States remained rhotic in a display of linguistic "lag", which preserved

3300-574: The early 20th century, by which time many speakers of the East and South were non-rhotic or variably rhotic, often even regardless of their class background. The most decisive shift of the general American population towards rhoticity (even in previously non-rhotic regions) followed the Second World War . For instance, rapidly after the 1940s, the standard broadcasting pronunciation heard in national radio and television became firmly rhotic, aligned more with

3375-430: The feature may derive from the fact that many of the first settlers in coastal South Australia, including Cornish tin-miners, Scottish missionaries, and American whalers, spoke rhotic varieties. New Zealand English is predominantly non-rhotic. Southland and parts of Otago in the far south of New Zealand's South Island are rhotic from apparent Scottish influence. Many Māori and Pasifika people, who tend to speak

3450-571: The former plantation region of the South: a band from the South's Atlantic Coast west to the Mississippi River. However, non-rhoticity has been notably declining in all three of these areas since the mid-20th century. In fact, a strongly articulated /r/, alongside full rhoticity, has been dominant throughout the South since then. African-American Vernacular English , meanwhile, continues to be largely non-rhotic since most African Americans originate from

3525-664: The former plantation region, where non-rhotic speech dominated in the past. In most non-rhotic accents, if a word ending in written "r" is followed immediately by a word beginning with a vowel, the /r/ is pronounced, as in water ice . That phenomenon is referred to as " linking R ." Many non-rhotic speakers also insert an epenthetic /r/ between vowels when the first vowel is one that can occur before syllable-final r ( drawring for drawing ). The so-called " intrusive R " has been stigmatized, but many speakers of Received Pronunciation (RP) now frequently "intrude" an epenthetic /r/ at word boundaries, especially if one or both vowels

3600-468: The high diversity of soils, the soil is nutrient poor. This is primarily due to an abundance of well-drained soils, creating a primarily xeric character to the floral makeup of the Atlantic Plain. However, waterlogged soils are also notable, with wetlands and hammocks being important ecological features. The Eastern woodlands are the original, predominant ecosystem of the Atlantic coastal plain. The Atlantic coastal plain upland longleaf pine woodland

3675-522: The inland highlands in a series of terraces. This gentle slope continues far into the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico , forming the continental shelf. The relief at the land-sea interface is so low that the boundary between them is often blurry and indistinct, especially along stretches of the Louisiana bayous and the Florida Everglades . The Atlantic Ocean has a broad, flat continental shelf that reaches

3750-571: The languages of Indians in Brunei , Tamil and Punjabi . Rhoticity is used by Chinese Bruneians . The English in the neighbouring Malaysia and Singapore remains non-rhotic. In Brunei English, rhoticity is equal to Philippine dialects of English and Scottish and Irish dialects. Non-rhoticity is mostly found in older generations. The phenomenon is almost similar to the status of American English, which has greatly reduced non-rhoticity. A typical teenager's Southeast Asian English would be rhotic, mainly from

3825-574: The last two centuries, and in many cases speakers of traditionally non-rhotic American dialects are now variably rhotic. Variably rhotic or semi-rhotic dialects also exist around the world, including many English dialects of India , Pakistan , and the Caribbean . Evidence from written documents suggests that loss of postvocalic /r/ began sporadically in England during the mid-15th century, but those /r/-less spellings were uncommon and were restricted to private documents, especially those written by women. In

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3900-664: The late 19th century, Alexander John Ellis found evidence of accents being overwhelmingly rhotic in urban areas that are now firmly non-rhotic, such as Birmingham and the Black Country , and Wakefield in West Yorkshire . The Survey of English Dialects in the 1950s and the 1960s recorded rhotic or partially-rhotic accents in almost every part of England, including in the counties of West Yorkshire , East Yorkshire , Lincolnshire and Kent , where rhoticity has since disappeared. The Atlas Linguarum Europae found that there

3975-998: The lengthening of /ɑː/ in car was not a compensatory process caused by r -dropping. Even General American commonly drops the /r/ in non-final unstressed syllables if another syllable in the same word also contains /r/ , which may be referred to as r-dissimilation . Examples include the dropping of the first /r/ in the words surprise , governor , and caterpillar . In more careful speech, all /r/ sounds are still retained. Rhotic accents include most varieties of Scottish English , Irish or Hiberno-English , Canadian English , American English , Barbadian English and Philippine English . Non-rhotic accents include most varieties of English English , Welsh English , Australian English , South African English , Nigerian English , Trinidadian and Tobagonian English , Standard Malaysian English and Singaporean English . Non-rhotic accents have been dominant in New Zealand English since

4050-405: The loss of /r/ began during the 15th century and was characterized by sporadic and lexically variable deletion, such as monyng 'morning' and cadenall 'cardinal'. Those spellings without /r/ appeared throughout the 16th and 17th centuries, but they were uncommon and were restricted to private documents, especially those written by women. No English authorities described loss of /r/ in

4125-661: The mid-18th century, postvocalic /r/ was still pronounced in most environments, but by the 1740s to the 1770s, it was often deleted entirely, especially after low vowels . By the early 19th century, the southern British standard was fully transformed into a non-rhotic variety, but some variation persisted as late as the 1870s. In the 18th century and possibly the 17th century, the loss of postvocalic /r/ in some British English influenced southern and eastern American port cities with close connections to Britain, causing their upper-class pronunciation to become non-rhotic, while other American regions remained rhotic. Non-rhoticity then became

4200-475: The most part, of layers of sand and clay which are not yet hardened into sandstone and shale. The Coastal Plain features nearly continuous barrier islands interrupted by inlets, large embayments with drowned river valleys, and extensive wetlands and marshes. The Coastal Plain slopes gently seaward from the inland highlands in a series of terraces. The province's average elevation is less than 900 meters above sea level and extends some 50 to 100 kilometers inland from

4275-431: The nonexistence of rhotic endings in both languages of influence. A more educated Malaysian's English may be non-rhotic because Standard Malaysian English is based on RP. The classical English spoken in Brunei is non-rhotic. A change that seems to be taking place is that Brunei English is now becoming rhotic from the influence of American English, from the influence of Standard Malay, which is rhotic, and from influence of

4350-599: The norm more widely in many eastern and southern regions of the United States, as well as generally prestigious , until the 1860s, when the American Civil War began to shift American centers of wealth and political power to rhotic areas, which had fewer cultural connections to the old colonial and British elites. Non-rhotic American speech continued to hold some level of prestige up until the mid-20th century, but rhotic speech in particular became rapidly prestigious nationwide after World War II , for example as reflected in

4425-521: The northeast, it begins on Cape Cod, Massachusetts and stretches to the southwest to South Padre Island, Texas . This is approximately 1,900 miles (3,100 km). This province consists of the following physiographic sections: the Embayed, Sea Island , Floridian , East Gulf Coastal Plain , Mississippi Alluvial Plain , and the West Gulf Coastal Plain . The rocks in the province consist, for

4500-507: The ocean. The coastal plain is normally wet, including many rivers, marsh , and swampland . It is composed primarily of sedimentary rock and unlithified sediments and is primarily used for agriculture . The Atlantic Coastal Plain includes the Carolina Sandhills region as well as the Embayed and Sea Island physiographic provinces. The Atlantic Coastal Plain is sometimes subdivided into northern and southern regions, specifically

4575-480: The original pronunciation of /r/ . Non-rhotic pronunciation continued to influence American prestige speech until the American Civil War of the 1860s began shifting the United States centers of wealth and political power to areas with fewer cultural connections to the old colonial and British elites. Still, the non-rhotic prestige persisted in the Eastern United States and among the upper class even into

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4650-608: The prominent influence by American English. Spoken English in Myanmar is non-rhotic, but there are a number of English speakers with a rhotic or partially-rhotic pronunciation. Sri Lankan English may be rhotic. The English spoken in most of Africa is based on RP and is generally non-rhotic. Pronunciation and variation in African English accents are largely affected by native African language influences, level of education, and exposure to Western influences. The English accents spoken in

4725-475: The pronunciation of /r/ appeared a century later, in 1740, when the British author of a primer for French students of English said that "in many words r before a consonant is greatly softened, almost mute, and slightly lengthens the preceding vowel." By the 1770s, postvocalic /r/ -less pronunciation was becoming common around London even in formal educated speech. The English actor and linguist John Walker used

4800-576: The region. Amphibian diversity is especially notable in the Atlantic Plain. Some of these species' ranges may extend into the longleaf pine woodlands and savannas of the Gulf Plain. 32°N 83°W  /  32°N 83°W  / 32; -83 Rhoticity in English The rhotic dialects of English include most of those in Scotland , Ireland , the United States , and Canada . As of

4875-579: The rest of the Southern United States has aligned towards the Republican Party. It contains the states of Delaware, Maryland, Virginia, and North Carolina, as well as Washington, D.C. . The heavily Democratic Northeast megalopolis includes Maryland, Delaware, and Northern Virginia. The Eastern Shore of Maryland is strongly Republican. As of 2024, Democrats hold the governorships of Delaware, Maryland, and North Carolina, while Republicans hold

4950-533: The same as in General NZE). Non-prevocalic /ɹ/ among non-rhotic speakers is sometimes pronounced in a few words, including Ireland /ˈɑɪəɹlənd/ , merely /ˈmiəɹli/ , err /ɵːɹ/ , and the name of the letter R /ɐːɹ/ (General NZE pronunciations: /ˈɑɪələnd, ˈmiəli, ɵː, ɐː/ ). The Māori accent varies from the European-origin New Zealand accent. Some Māori speakers are semi-rhotic. That feature

5025-495: The spelling ar to indicate the long vowel of aunt in his 1775 rhyming dictionary. In his influential Critical Pronouncing Dictionary and Expositor of the English Language (1791), Walker reported, with a strong tone of disapproval, that "the r in lard , bard ,... is pronounced so much in the throat as to be little more than the middle or Italian a , lengthened into baa , baad ...." Americans returning to England after

5100-434: The standard language before the mid-18th century, and many did not fully accept it until the 1790s. During the mid-17th century, several sources described /r/ as being weakened but still present. The English playwright Ben Jonson 's English Grammar , published posthumously in 1640, recorded that /r/ was "sounded firme in the beginning of words, and more liquid in the middle, and ends." The next major documentation of

5175-487: The states of Maine and (less so) New Hampshire , show some non-rhoticity along with the traditional Rhode Island dialect , although this feature has been receding in recent generations. The New York City dialect has traditionally been non-rhotic, but William Labov more precisely classifies its current form as variably rhotic, with many of its sub-varieties actually being fully rhotic, such as that of northeastern New Jersey . African-American Vernacular English (AAVE)

5250-680: The tides (more specifically, where the water level rises when the tide comes in). In the case of Virginia, the Tidewater region includes the land east of the Fall Line , the natural border with the Piedmont Region. It includes Hampton Roads , the rest of the Virginia Peninsula , the Middle Peninsula , the Northern Neck , and the Eastern Shore . Planters in the early American colonies extended their tobacco and peanut productions above

5325-527: The traditional local dialect is largely non-rhotic, but the more modern varieties, referred to by Hickey as "mainstream Dublin English" and "fashionable Dublin English", are fully rhotic. Hickey used that as an example of how English in Ireland does not follow prestige trends in England. The English spoken in Asia is predominantly rhotic. In the case of the Philippines, that may be explained because Philippine English

5400-583: The way west to the Fall Line . It is generally flat and low, with large expanses near the tidal shorelines composed of tidal marsh and swamp . Much of the area is covered with pocosin and the higher areas are used for agricultural farmlands. Geographically, in North Carolina and Virginia the Tidewater area is the land between the Suffolk Scarp and the Atlantic Ocean . In Maryland the Tidewater area

5475-402: Was not a compensatory lengthening process but an independent development, which explains modern pronunciations featuring both [ɜː] ( bird , fur ) and [ɜːr] ( stirring , stir it ) according to their positions: [ɜːr] was the regular outcome of the lengthening, which shortened to [ɜː] after r -dropping occurred in the 18th century. The lengthening involved "mid and open short vowels" and so

5550-412: Was once a vowel, followed by /r/ , is now usually realized as a long vowel . That is called compensatory lengthening , which occurs after the elision of a sound. In RP and many other non-rhotic accents card, fern, born are thus pronounced [kɑːd] , [fɜːn] , [bɔːn] or similar (actual pronunciations vary from accent to accent). That length may be retained in phrases and so car pronounced in isolation

5625-472: Was still rhoticity in the West Yorkshire site of Golcar as late as 1976. A study published in 2014 found that there is still some rhoticity amongst older residents of Berwick upon Tweed and Carlisle , both of which are close to the border with rhotic Scotland, but that this was absent from the majority of inhabitants. The loss of postvocalic /r/ in the British prestige standard in the late 18th and

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