American And British Accents: The "r" Sound

One of the most noticeable differences between an American accent and British accent is the pronunciation of the "r" sound. In this post, we shall look at how the two differ and when and were the "r" should be pronounced in British English.

This is not the case with all British accents; for example, many Scottish accents are rhotic. Accents that pronounce most of their "r" sounds are known as rhotic accents and include most North American, Asian and Irish accents.

Accents that have "lost" the pronunciation of some of their "r" sound`s are known as non-rhotic accents and include most English (from England), Australian and South African accents.

Many of my students when they begin, they pronounce their "r`s" in every position that it occurs in written form. This is fine with most American accents, but within a lot of British accents, many of the "r" sounds that are written are actually not pronounced when speaking!

So you may ask, "when do we pronounce the "r" sound then?" Well the general rule for this is.

We only pronounce the "r" sound when the "r" sound occurs before a vowel, but not when it follows a vowel.