them winging." Peter Trudgill discussed McCartney's hyper-rhotic pronunciation in this song in "Acts of Conflicting Identity: The Sociolinguistics of British Pop-Song Pronunciation" (in On Dialect, Blackwell, 1983). Huh--I never heard that at all, till there was your post. I'm a native non-rhotic speaker and when I try to pronounce words in the American way I sound like I'm pretending to be a pirate. posted by yoink at 3:17 PM on January 3 [ 1 favorite ] My non-native English speaking husband can't grasp that there's no second H in the fine town of "Holyoke" so it's just a damn good thing we don't live in Worcester is what I'm saying. posted by sonika at 3:28 PM on January 3 [ 2 favorites ] Growing up listening to what is now "classic rock", I learned that flower rhymes with hour. Although I am with those who think "flower' and "flour" are distinct. In my case, watching myself pronounce the two words in a mirror makes it clear that "flower" is more labialized , at least when I say it. I snarled before I even got to the poem. "If you can pronounce correctly every word of this poem..." AARG it'd flow so much better if it was "If you can CORRECTLY PRONOUNCE". Then I started reading it out loud. When I got to the line ending in Terpsichore, I knew to pronounce it to rhyme with "trickery" without that cue, and I was all "aaargh you are so close to making