Quoting Roger Mills <[log in to unmask]>:

> Chris Bates wrote:
> > Well, RP of course lol. I'm joking... I'm not sure, but I think a
> > compromise could be reached... people who speak non-rhotic dialects of
> > english will still know how to pronounce a world if we keep on sticking
> > rs where some people pronounce them,
>
> Which is exactly what written English does.  I've suggested in that past
> that the _underlying_ phonology of _all_ Engl. dialects (the standard-ish
> one, at any rate) does have /r/ in all the positions where it is written.
> Intervocalic and final-prevocalic /r/ are almost always retained.
> Pre-consonantal /r/ is the problem:  but for each dialect it is predictable
> whether it is realized as 1. a rhotic-- 2. a schwa-like offglide-- 3.
> various other off-glides (e.g. [j]-like in the "bird=boyd" dialects)-- 4.
> length and (4a) sometimes change of vowel quality (5. have I missed
> anything?).

The "vanilla rice" dialects would seem to be the main trouble with a such
analysis, altho I guess they're non-standard-ish.

5. would be zero, I guess, in words like "shatter" - surely the 'e' was schwa
already before RP (or its ancestor) went non-rhotic.

                                                           Andreas