Linking R in French

[äreo]

Nearly every French person I hear has a 'linking R' between vowels across words. For example, fuseau horaire is something like [fyzoʁ̞ɔʁɛeʁ̞].

I've searched and searched but I find no mention of it anywhere.
Has anyone else noticed this?

[MadBrain]

Hmm, never heard that one. "Pays" (/pe.i/) and "Péri" (/peRi/) are not pronounced the same. Maybe I'm mistaken but I think that's just a normal hiatus.

[Astraios]

That's not normal... Are you sure it's not just a syllable break between two vowels that you're hearing?

[Legion]

Nearly every French person I hear has a 'linking R' between vowels across words. For example, fuseau horaire is something like [fyzoʁ̞ɔʁɛeʁ̞].

what

[äreo]

Hmm, never heard that one. "Pays" (/pe.i/) and "Péri" (/peRi/) are not pronounced the same. Maybe I'm mistaken but I think that's just a normal hiatus.

I said across words, not within them.

Nearly every French person I hear has a 'linking R' between vowels across words. For example, fuseau horaire is something like [fyzoʁ̞ɔʁɛeʁ̞].

what

I hear it all the time in French movie dubs! Another example is "dis-le encore une fois" pronounced (to my ears) like "dis-leur encore une fois". The context made it clear that it had to be the former, but it sounded like the latter.

That's not normal... Are you sure it's not just a syllable break between two vowels that you're hearing?

It doesn't sound very strongly articulated, at least not much more strongly than syllable-final /R/, but it doesn't sound like a mere syllable break. I could be wrong. I'll try to find a recorded example online.

[RTLPM]

Nearly every French person I hear has a 'linking R' between vowels across words. For example, fuseau horaire is something like [fyzoʁ̞ɔʁɛeʁ̞].

what

Same thing: what?

I'm a native French speaker (as Legion) and I don't do this. Maybe it's only in my Canadian dialect (which allows much more hiatuses than Standard French).

[Yiuel Raumbesrairc]

Never heard of that.

((Canadian) French native on board.)

[jmcd]

Noone ever does that this side of the equator either.

I think you're maybe too used to hearing non-rhotic English accents that you hear r's when they're not there in other languages as well.

[sirdanilot]

This does occur in English and Dutch (the latter only for people who have [ɹ] for /r/ in coda-position, an ongoing language change in the West of the country). Well, for the latter, I only know one person who does this a lot, but it does happen apparently.

It would be interesting if this is something that happens more often in languages with [ɹ]. Sadly, this sound is not that common cross-linguistically.

Leiden Dutch (only has [ɹ] and no [r]) just rhoticizes every single vowel close to an [ɹ], and American English seems to do the same. Standard Dutch /koːʔɔrdiˈnɪːrə/ -> Leiden Dutch [kʌ˞ːɹːdiˈnɪ˞ɹə]. (for "coördineren" "coordinate")

I have not heard this in languages with guttural /r/'s, like Portuguese, German or, indeed, French. It also doesn't happen in Dutch dialects with guttural /r/'s like Brabants.

[Skomakar'n]

[kʌ˞ːɹːdiˈnɪ˞ɹə]

Ew. The Stockholmers of The Netherlands.

I don't know why I'm not troubled by the approximant ars in Faroese, but in Stockholm Swedish and Dutch I just find them repulsive (although I guess they can be kind of nice when sentences tend to be almost the same as in English, because that's very interesting). I do prefer English with more [r]-like rhotics, I do, but I'm okay with approximants in English (they don't sound good in American English, though).

[/rant]

[sirdanilot]

As someone who still has [r] in coda position (everyone in my region does, except for 'imported' people), I too find the approximant repulsive, but because I study in Leiden now I hear the general variety with [ɹ] in coda-position much more often, so I have gotten used to it. The real Leiden Dutch as I described above is only spoken by people of lower social classes and elderly people, really. This is the fate of many dialects in the West of the Netherlands. However, people who are originally from Leiden do have the specific quality of /ɹ/ that their real Leiden Dutch-speaking ancestors did; phonetically, I could describe it as some sort of bunched [ɹ̟ʷʲ] or something like that (it sounds very palatal and slightly labialized).

[Travis B.]

[kʌ˞ːɹːdiˈnɪ˞ɹə]

Ew. The Stockholmers of The Netherlands.

I don't know why I'm not troubled by the approximant ars in Faroese, but in Stockholm Swedish and Dutch I just find them repulsive (although I guess they can be kind of nice when sentences tend to be almost the same as in English, because that's very interesting). I do prefer English with more [r]-like rhotics, I do, but I'm okay with approximants in English (they don't sound good in American English, though).

[/rant]

I am personally not familiar with [r]-like rhotics in English (as spoken natively), period. Where do you come into contact with them, by chance?

(They seem to natively appear only in some varieties of Scottish English and Irish English, as far as I can tell, even though I am not all that familiar with the details of non-standard English English varieties.)

As for North American English rhotics... they really are all over the place, so it is hard to really pin them down categorically. In general, I am used to some mixture of postalveolar approximant coronal articulation (whose details may vary), velar to uvular approximant dorsal articulation, and possibly also epiglottal articulation, where at last one of the first two must be present in some way but where all the rest of the details can differ. So when you say they "don't sound good", I am wondering what sort of rhotic in NAE you are specifically referring to.

(My own dialect's rhotics could very easily come off as sounding pretty awful except in the most conservative of speech therein, but I doubt you are referring to them. Probably the closest thing to them I can think of that you might know of are Danish /r/s, but apparently those still sound rather different therefrom, and obviously Danish is non-rhotic whereas my English is very much rhotic.)

[Imralu]

IMD, we insert /r/ after any of the following vowels when they are followed by another vowel:

/ɪə/ /eː/ /aː/ /ɜː/ /oː/ /ə/

This /r/ that appears almost seems to be part of the vowel, in that analogy has caused it to appear whatever the historical origin of the vowel. It occurs after

dear and idea

floor and flaw

Peter and Peta

Americans coming here always say "You don't pronounce your r's and you add extra ones in."

It doesn't seem to follow the word "yeah" in most people's speech, nor unstressed "you" (ie. "ya"). We have slight epenthetic [w] or [j] after other vowels (not as strongly articulated as /w/ and /j/ however) so it's very unusual for us to have hiatus. I tend to find hiatus difficult when I'm learning other languages and have avoided it in my conlangs until recently. One phrase that does have hiatus in it is See ya, Andy [siː.jə.ˈæːn.di] ... saying a full See you feels wrong. As a replacement for "Goodbye", it must be /siːjə/ not /siːjʉː/, and it's just wrong to throw in /r/ there. But with hiatus, that utterance seems so unclear. I work with a guy called Andy and it's often a problem for me. I often say "Hey Andy! I'll see ya tomorrow, ey?" just to avoid the hiatus.

[Yng]

A Romanian friend of mine pointed out to me the other day that I have [dɹɒːɹɪŋ] for <drawing>. I'd never thought about this before.

[----]

Older speakers of Southern English tend to have intrusive R at the end of words (I haven't the faintest idear), but interestingly enough, it's virtually completely absent from the speech of younger speakers.

[finlay]

Idea is a funny word because I've heard quite a few Scottish people (i particularly noted that my english lit teacher had it when I was 15-17) with an intrusive R in that word but nowhere else; it'd always be [aidiəɹ], no matter whether it was followed by a consonant, vowel or pause. My english teacher seemed to balance it out by having [mɪrɐ] for 'mirror' (ie not having an /r/ where one would be expected).

[----]

My grandmother on my father's side does that EXACTLY. Words that don't have an r at the end get an r, but words that do have an r at the end lose it.

[finlay]

My grandmother on my father's side does that EXACTLY. Words that don't have an r at the end get an r, but words that do have an r at the end lose it.

But for this woman it was only those two words. It was quite idiosyncratic.

[sirdanilot]

A Romanian friend of mine pointed out to me the other day that I have [dɹɒːɹɪŋ] for <drawing>. I'd never thought about this before.

That's some pretty logical progressive assimilation. Children do it all the time. It's easier to pronounce, so why not?

[Travis B.]

Idea is a funny word because I've heard quite a few Scottish people (i particularly noted that my english lit teacher had it when I was 15-17) with an intrusive R in that word but nowhere else; it'd always be [aidiəɹ], no matter whether it was followed by a consonant, vowel or pause.

My former team lead, who speaks some sort of what is otherwise General American and has apparently lived in the Greater Washington DC area his entire life, similarly has an intrusive R at the end of idea and nowhere else. I never really got this before, and even now, I am not sure how the hell he got it. (It is not normally part of GA, and I think his parents are from Korea...)

[Yng]

A Romanian friend of mine pointed out to me the other day that I have [dɹɒːɹɪŋ] for <drawing>. I'd never thought about this before.

That's some pretty logical progressive assimilation. Children do it all the time. It's easier to pronounce, so why not?

I don't think it's assimilation, but rather intrusive r (so not interesting, just I'd never noticed it). Many other BrE speakers (of my age at least) I've spoken to have it too. I also have it in <sawing>.

[Drydic]

Idea is a funny word because I've heard quite a few Scottish people (i particularly noted that my english lit teacher had it when I was 15-17) with an intrusive R in that word but nowhere else; it'd always be [aidiəɹ], no matter whether it was followed by a consonant, vowel or pause.

My former team lead, who speaks some sort of what is otherwise General American and has apparently lived in the Greater Washington DC area his entire life, similarly has an intrusive R at the end of idea and nowhere else. I never really got this before, and even now, I am not sure how the hell he got it. (It is not normally part of GA, and I think his parents are from Korea...)

I've heard this idea-er [ajdiɹ̩] before, from people with mostly GA accents (as well as with another accent, but I have yet to figure out what to call that accent/find out where it's from, so...yeah). It isn't by any means common, but it does occur.

[Imralu]

I think idea is an interesting word. The only words that have /ɪə/ in my dialect without a historical /r/ that I can think of are "idea" and "theatre". "Idea" is the only one of the pair that can have that /ɪə/ followed by a vowel. Maybe that's connected to how this intrusive /r/ is creeping in even in rhotic dialects.

And "drawing" pronounced [droːɹɪŋ] is completely normal for me. /oː/ is one of the vowels that is always followed by /r/ when the following sound is a vowel. Draw, as far as I'm concerned, could just as easily be spelt dror, and drawing could be droring - there's no historical basis for it, but the /oː/ sound is the one that is usually spelt <or>, <aw> or <au>.

[Bob Johnson]

"Idea" is the only one of the pair that can have that /ɪə/ followed by a vowel

Wait what? ... Oh, the other vowel is in the next word...?

[finlay]

Well, yeah, exactly.

If I try to pronounce "drawing" as "droring" I choke a little bit because it's so unnatural to me. For me it's [dɹɔ.ɪŋ]. It's not a CHOICE vowel, though, which would be [ɔi], but it's close. (the [ɔ] in both is either of, or somewhere between, [ɒ] and [ɔ])

As for /ia/, there's idea, Maria, Sophia, and quite a few other proper names and a whole slew of countries with -ia.