British Rhotic Accents Should Be Made A Protected Species
I am going to let you into a secret. Although I'm a Professor of Bristolian I do give private English lessons - to Italians. Many, but not all, of the followers of my Professor of Bristolian facebook page will know that I now live on the Italian island of Sardinia, which is where my wife is from (but we do visit Bristol every year). Anyway, I remember being quite startled when a student of mine said that she'd been told, by another teacher, that in English the 'r' is not pronounced at the end of words like 'bar' or, in words like 'card' when the 'r' comes before another consonant. I told her that, strictly speaking, that isn't the case. It depends whether the accent is 'rhotic' (in which the 'r' is pronounced strongly) or non-rhotic (where the 'r' is pronounced lightly or not at all if it doesn't come at the beginning of a word). Furthermore, in both cases the 'r' is pronounced if it comes at the end of a