Talk:Rhotacism

message: Rhotacism the speech disorder is a different thing from rhotacism the phenomenon of linguistic phonetic change.  Even though both articles would be short, there should be a different article for each of those subjects.  Suggestions:
rhotacism (speech disorder)
rhotacism (language change)  —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mark Foskey (talk • contribs) 19:51, 15 July 2008 (UTC)
thread_title:  This article should be split into two. 

message: The article says:
    
    * war vs gewesen (from Germanic *was vs *wēzun)
Doesn't this contradict the general rule that the z (result of Verner's Law) devolopes into r, while the s doesn't? Is it possible that the forms in parenthesis are wrong and that gewesen comes from a form with s and not from *wēzun, which should be past plural and not participle (cf. English and Dutch), while war comes from one with z or maybe is just formed in analogy with plural waren?  Wikijens (talk) 08:44, 12 February 2009 (UTC)
replies: text: I don't get why Dutch and English are categorized with Germanic languages.  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.150.16.1 (talk) 21:37, 7 January 2010 (UTC)
replies: text: They're both descended from Proto-Germanic.  — Æµ§œš¹ [aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi] 23:45, 7 January 2010 (UTC)

text: According to the reconstructions found on Wiktionary, Proto-Germanic *wesana- and Proto-West-Germanic *wesan did not actually have a past participle, so Old High German giwesan may have been formed after the model of lesan : gilesan as the infinitive form was still wesan. Of course, one wonders why gilesan in turn does not show the effect of rhotacism – presumably yet another analogy but I'm not completely sure of the details. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 00:05, 22 December 2022 (UTC)
thread_title:  German 

message: This section seems to only give instances of the fact that was already mentioned as holding for all Germanic languages, so should the Dutch section be removed entirely?
Easwaran (talk) 12:46, 14 September 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Dutch 

message: /l/ exists in the syllable coda?? Not even in careful or read speech. As a non-native speaker, but someone who resided near Vitoria, ES, I will tell you that /l/ in the coda becomes an off-glide, ex: Brasil > [bra.ziw], pulga > [puw.ga]. However, from my interaction with less educated or rural speakers, rhotacism of /l/ in the onset can be common: ingles /i~.glez/ > [i~.grez] or through a sort of metathesis: problema /pro.ble.ma/ > [po.bre.ma]  —Preceding unsigned comment added by 131.91.153.106 (talk) 17:47, 8 December 2009 (UTC)
thread_title:  Brazilian Portuguese 

message: I removed the "L-vocalizing" example in Portuguese. Old Portuguese didn't undergo L-vocalizing, the example given was actually a case of L-dropping, which was fairly common in Old Portuguese: celo > ceo > céu (compare to palo > pao > pau and salir > sair). Recently, Brazilian Portuguese has vocalized syllable-final Ls though, which is a different phonomenon. I would have added an actual example of L-vocalizing in modern Portuguese, but it is not what this article is about.  — Preceding unsigned comment added by Matheus de Aguilar (talk • contribs) 03:52, 24 May 2013 (UTC)
thread_title:  L-vocalizing in Portuguese 

message: At least they do when the r is prevocalic. The statement under "English" that "[p]ronouncing the letter "r" is common in many dialects of American, Canadian, Irish, Welsh and Scottish English and less common in the English of most of England, Australia, and New Zealand" is not helpful. It is only postvocalic r that tends to be silent in England, Australia, and New Zealand. Seems to me this is really a matter of rhotacization, not rhotacism, however. --Haruo (talk) 22:55, 20 March 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  The English, even the Aussies, pronounce their r's 

message: Why is the first example of rhotacism a Looney Tunes character? It suggests that rhotacism is simply a suitable subject for comedy rather than a serious speech impediment. We wouldn't refer to other disabilities in the same way. Headhitter (talk) 08:14, 6 May 2012 (UTC)
replies: text: Elmer Fudd, the character, may represent a mockery of a speech disorder: the placement of the character here as an illustration of a speech disorder is, in my opinion a) not and b) the best choice for the article. I cannot think of a clearer, more widely-known single instance (even if parodic) to offer a reader to whom textual description hasn't sufficed. It doesn't suggest to me that we should laugh at the rhotically-afflicted, but if it suggests it to you, I'd find a comparably well-known non-comedic replacement more than welcome.  • Lainagier • talk • 00:33, 1 June 2012 (UTC)
thread_title:  Mocking people with speech impediments 

message: The article says:
Pronouncing the letter "r" is common in many dialects of American, Canadian, Irish, Welsh and Scottish English and less common in the English of most of England, Australia, and New Zealand.
This seems to be the opposite of my experience. I'm not quite sure to make of it, and there is no inline reference for this. A casual look at the most famous people with speech impediments reveals most famous people with rhotacism are from a region where a non-rhotic dialect of English predominates:
**Stephan Jenkins - California
**Roy Jenkins - Wales/England
**Shane MacGowan - England
**Frank Muir - England
**Kele Okereke - England
**General Montgomery - England
**Jonathan Ross - England
**Joe Strummer - All over the world, but had British parents, and settled in Surrey and Wales
**Matthew Bellamy - UK
**Barbara Walters - Boston (non-rhotic regional accent)
For every other Canadian or non-rhotic American speaker I can think of, there are several more non-rhotic Americans or Brits. Tom Brokaw, yes, of course - he is from the Midwest U.S. But then there's Roy Hodgson (of the BBC) and Terry Jones (of Monty Python).
Others have also noticed the trend being common among people from the British Isles, , with a video, and mentioning traces of this in others from the UK, even Catherine Zeta-Jones on occasion. 
I don't know what kind of source could be found to support the original assertion, but I don't even think it is true. Ufwuct (talk) 14:09, 18 March 2013 (UTC)
replies: text: Are you taking the sentence you quote as speaking about people with speech disorders, or as speaking about whether a dialect pronounces r after a vowel? — Eru·tuon 16:30, 18 March 2013 (UTC)
thread_title: Less common among those from England???

message: In Lancashire and much of the Southwest of the UK 'r' is pronounced much as it is in many parts of the USA. Pamour (talk) 18:23, 16 February 2014 (UTC)
thread_title:  English 

message: Sometime in the history of Greek, Ancient Greek ἀδελφός changed to αδερφός, which Wiktionary says is used in about 22% of cases in the Hellenic National Corpus. This change also occurred in Arvanitika as opposed to  and Albania. Not sure when or in what form of the language it happened, but with a source it could be mentioned. — Eru·tuon 06:17, 15 February 2015 (UTC)
thread_title:  Greek 

message: The list of languages suggests that rhotacism is an issue in the Indo-European languages. The only example that is non-IE is Korean. Is that the mere lack of sources, or are other issues relevant here? --2607:EA00:107:3C01:1968:AEB4:1079:7DD (talk) 20:23, 24 May 2016 (UTC)
thread_title:  An indo-european issue?