Saturday, December 18, 2021

Pronunciation of /r/ in Liverpool English

The accent of Liverpool has many features which distinguish it from others. Though the accent is non-rhotic, the pronounciation of pre-vocalic /r/ is often a flap. This is also true in onset clusters and intervocalic position.

In the accent of Liverpool the /r/ is often flapped in the following words:

agreement
brush
dry
free
horror
orange
proud
sorry
train
very

The /r/ can be pronounced in many ways. In non-rhotic accents of English, it is either deleted or pronounced as a schwa in the syllable-coda. For other positions, it is often an alveolar approximant, but in the Liverpool accent, it is often realized as an alveolar flap.


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