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From: ray@othervax.UUCP (Raymond D. Dunn)
Newsgroups: net.nlang
Subject: Re: Pet Peeves(really: British English)
Message-ID: <722@othervax.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 18-Nov-85 16:51:42 EST
Article-I.D.: othervax.722
Posted: Mon Nov 18 16:51:42 1985
Date-Received: Thu, 21-Nov-85 07:07:23 EST
References: <747@cyb-eng.UUCP> <1900005@datacube.UUCP> <558@utflis.UUCP>
Reply-To: ray@othervax.UUCP (Raymond D. Dunn)
Organization: Philips Information Systems - St. Laurent  P.Q., Canada
Lines: 28

In article <558@utflis.UUCP> chai@utflis.UUCP (Henry Chai) writes:
>
>It is my understanding that while Americans tend to pronounce each 
>syllable of a word distinctly, British practice is to drop or glide 
>over some syllables.  Other examples I can think of are
>
>   particularly -> particuly   (*1)
>   awfully -> awfly            (*2)
>
>Also the British practice of adding an 'r' to the end of a word when
>the word ends in a vowel and the next starts with a vowel
>
>  law and order -> lawrand order  (*3)
>

Lets be *VERY* careful when refering to spoken "British English"!

Of course, no such thing exists per se!  There are probably more variations
of pronunciation and dialect within the British Isles than in the rest of
the English speaking world in total, from pure almost accentless
(Inverness?), to completely unintelligible (Somerset?/Birmingham?  etc - add
your own biases).  Accent and dialect change considerably over very short
distances within the UK.

Specifically, in the above, (*3) is pure London, (*2) is "Home Counties" or
"posh", and (*1) appears to just be sloppiness, rather than an accent!.

Ray Dunn.   ...philabs!micomvax!othervax!ray