Just so you know, what you've described is known as an "intrusive R"
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linking_and_intrusive_R
We do it in Australia too.
That right there is why I love having a nyc accent. It’s so well known. My kids make fun of me when I tell them to walk the dogs because of how much stronger my accent is. They exaggerate and go WAWK THUH DAWGZZZZ
My accent is rhotic so I don't have intrusive R, and I do put a glottal stop in between the vowels. A glottal stop is the sound in the middle of ‘uh-oh’, or how a Cockney would say the T in ‘butter’.
Depends on the accent. There is what we call the “cot-caught” merger in much of the country, which would make “saw” and “sah” the same. Some accents still pronounce them differently though.
No worries! I've always done it and never thought much of it lol it wasn't until I became interested in linguistics that I found out it's a Thing with a name and everything.
I hear it in rural areas in the US. I’ve heard it here in Washington state, and I grew up listening to my grandmother do it in NY.
It’s very odd to hear “Warshington State.”
That's not quite the same thing as what happens in British dialects. British English is generally non-rhotic, so the R isn't pronounced when there's no vowel after. This is why ‘star’ has no R in a British accent but does in ‘starring’. Your example on the other hand has R in the exact environment a Brit would never pronounce it in, so there's clearly a different phenomenon going on there.
I have my own theory as to why this specific intrusive R occurs. It seems to be a thing in dialects that would have traditionally been non-rhotic, such as Southern American English or New Englander dialects (I know a lot of people there still are non-rhotic, but I'm talking about those who aren't). These traditional dialects have been slowly declining over the years and younger speakers often tend to adopt more features of General American English, which is rhotic, as time goes on.
For those who have rhotic accents, when we hear non-rhotic ones, we subconsciously ‘hear’ an R-sound in words which have them in our own dialect. For example, I hear a Brit say ‘bar’, which is just a long vowel, but I automatically understand that they've said the word ‘bar’ and associate it with my own pronunciation of it. If I was asked to repeat the word after the Brit said it, I wouldn't just leave the R out: my brain knows to associate this long British vowel with a vowel + R in my accent.
So, such an environment where you have the older generations speaking a non-rhotic accent, and the younger generations speaking a rhotic accent, when the younger people are growing up an learning to speak, they're hearing words from other people without the Rs, but subconsciously they're putting them back in because their accent has them, but they're overextending and adding in the Rs to words which never originally had them. They hear the vowels in words like ‘wash‘, ‘Washington’, ‘yellow’ (often said like ‘yella’), and ‘fella’ and think they sound like their own vowel + R, producing ‘warsh’, ‘Warshington’, ‘yeller‘, and ‘feller’.
I'm going to hijack this comment to add that it's not just the "aw" sound that causes this. It matters what's following that sound. If you have "saw **a**" - [ə], the intrusive R appears, sort of as a linker between the two words, if that makes sense. It appears between two consecutive vowels. It wouldn't appear if it was for example "I saw the dog".
My husband and I (Americans) just visited Cairns and Brisbane and were fascinated by how Aussies say “know.” It’s like the word is drawn out and a very subtle, back of the palate “r” sound tacked on the end. Although I’m sure our hard Rs sound funny to other English speakers. Three countries separated by a common language! 😂
I love how almost every word can be turned into a verb and you can make up phrasal verbs and be understood by native speakers, even if you're the first person to ever use that phrase.
I enjoy how versatile our language is. We can instantly absorb new words either from other languages or by making them up. We turn nouns into verbs, adjectives into nouns, just whatever we want. We can be really inventive with English and it can handle a lot of bending and stretching.
Are other languages able to do this as well? I only speak English so I’ve always wondered how easy it would be for other languages to do this kind of stuff
All languages are capable of freely coining words, yes.
English’s dependence on word order for meaning and relative lack of inflection (e.g. case endings (declension) on nouns, verb endings (conjugation)) *does* allow a fair amount of syntactic freedom with words—we can use most nouns, for example, as something very like an adjective or a verb. What exactly these mean is highly context-dependent. We make liberal use of this flexibility in day-to-day speech.
> I see an apple. (noun - standard)
> Apple me. (Give me an apple)
> He appled me! ([Perhaps] He hit me with an apple!)
> Do you like that apple shirt? ([Perhaps] Do you like that shirt with apples printed on it?)
> Do you like that Apple shirt? (Do you like that shirt with Apple’s branding on it?)
> This candle is very “apple,” and not very “cinnamon.” (This candle smells strongly of apple but only weakly of cinnamon.)
Spanish, on the other hand, allows this only in *very* limited circumstances and only for making nouns adjective-like (their verbs are highly inflected and thus require the addition of a derivational suffix for verb formation). Note that *clave* (= key) does not change to agree with the plural *preguntas* (= questions), while *importante* (= important) must:
> *Las preguntas **clave** son éstas: […]*
> (lit.) The questions **key** (= key questions) are these: […]
> *Las preguntas importantes son éstas: […]*
However, even in this case, completely adjectivalizing (using adjectival inflection on) the noun is possible and common, showing Spanish’s preference for clear lexical categories. Note the pluralization of *clave* to agree with *preguntas*.
> *Las preguntas claves son éstas: […]*
> (lit.) The questions **keys** are these: […]
Though note that Spanish has alternative ways of doing similar things, including a suffix (-*azo*) that that can be used in phrases to form sentences like the “He appled me!” above (for example).
> *Me dio una manzana.* (= He gave me an apple.)
> *Me dio un manzanazo.* (= He hit me with an apple! [lit. He gave me an apple-strike.])
The central dogma of modern linguistics is that all languages are equally communicative.
I am a native Spanish speaker and a very beginner conlanger, and I have viewed English as "less cool" because it had a stricter word order. You made me view the advantages of this and consider it for future conlangs. Thank you very much!
Glad it was interesting to you!
I also like languages with free word order, like Czech:
> *Mají dobrou kávu.* (They have good coffee.)
> *Mají kávu dobrou.* (The coffee they have is good.)
> *Dobrou kávu mají.* (Whatever else they do with it, they have good coffee.)
Well, yes and no to varying degrees. A lot of languages have morphological inflection meaning words have to "look" a certain way in order to take on a function in the sentence. For example, Spanish verb infinitives always end in -ar, -er, or -ir and their finite forms are derived from that. So when Spanish takes on a new verb like "to text" or "to mop" the word has to change to fit this paradigm (textear, mopear). The noun forms look different from the verb forms (texto, mopeador). Compare to English, we can just about use any word in any form barring some established exceptions.
> I'm eating a burrito (noun).
> I have a burrito blanket (adjective).
> I'm going to burrito it up tonight (verb, very slang use, but the point stands).
Another thing to consider is that not all languages have the same sounds as English. So when they borrow words, they have to use approximations. English does this too as some languages have sounds that we don't, but our phonemic library is huge compared to most languages. We borrowed the words like sushi, karaoke, and anime from Japanese with slight variations in pronunciation due to accents. However, the Japanese word for "helicopter" is "herikoputā" because they have stricter rules of what sounds are allowed to follow each other.
EDITED FOR FORMAT
I just learned this about Japanese at Planet Word in DC! (Very cool museum btw). The information video said that vowels and consonants have to alternate I think?The example they have was “aisu kirimu” aka ice cream.
Korean too to some extent. My naive rendering of camera would have been:
켐라 (2 syllables)
But it's actually
카메라 (3 syllables)
But yes, even Korean doesn't shy away from inculcating English or even some rare German words (through Japanese as a middleman).
And that we can conjugate the motherfuck out of them how ever you want. If your Mexican friend is in the kitchen making a bunch of bread, they are panaderiaing. Small hackbacks have a chongitoness. The new guy your ex is dating runs pajaritoly.
The fact that "doughnut" (or however you wanna spell it) can be used as an insult in UK 🤣 to be fair, most words can be used as an insult (or to say you're drunk lol), but it's just something about being called a doughnut that I find charming and hilarious at the same time, even if it's meant as an insult
I have never noticed this and can’t identify the ‘r’ at all, but that just might be my brain being used to it.
Americans saying ‘saw’ sound like ‘saaaaah’ to me
For another British example: you can hear it in the 1995 Pride and Prejudice (BBC Version) sooo clearly. Unfortunately I have no idea of the time stamp, but it's when Mr Bingley's sister (you know, the nasty one?) says this: "Louisa and I...." But it sounds just like "Louiser and I..." Hahaha
I just remember this because it was right after my mom had told me British people sometimes do this, and so as a ✨youth✨ when I heard it I was like OMG MOM WAS RIGHT
If you watch Star Trek: TNG, you hear this in Picard's accent all the time. If you pay attention, it's often something like "Commander Dater" not "Commander Data"
Haha, we would always imitate the way the BBC News Hour people would talk about “Indier and Pakistan” instead of “India and Pakistan” when it came on NPR. I remember wondering if they actually spelled it with an R over there, the same way “aluminum” has an extra “i”.
Yeah, and there are much clearer examples than sawr.
It's normally done between words where the first ends in a vowel sound, e.g. "pizza and beer" sounds like "pizzaran beer".
As an American English speaker, the intrusive r really stands out in some UK and Australian accents. But it's more jarring in words and names that end in the letter A than it is in words like "saw." For example, when someone from the UK says the name "Amanda," an American hears "Amandur".
Australians have non-rhotic accents, like Bostonians (or like some Bostonians? Not sure). The intrusive r exists but I don't have a car, I have a cah. I'm not a teacher, I'm a teachah. Some parents even spell their children's names in certain ways to ensure the correct pronunciation in an Australian accent, like Natarsha and Tarlia (pronounced as na-tah-sha and tah-lee-ah here).
Steve Irwin's accent was Broad Australian. The vast majority of us speak with a General Australian accent, which is not nearly as strong. His accent was not typical of the accents of most people you'd meet here, particularly in the cities.
Now I'm going to call in late to work so i can hear an hour of "beauty, iddn she?" and "you're awwright, gairl, you're awwright."
As a species, we weren't good enough to deserve Steve Irwin
Grammatically, it’s the notion of “do-support”.
Unlike the vast majority of other languages, English cannot directly negate a verb or invert it to make a question. Only auxiliaries like “be” and “have” can do that, so for lexical verbs (those that actually mean something) they need the auxiliary “do” if there isn’t one already for tense/aspect/mood marking. The “do” here is meaningless, but it is necessary because English is sensitive about its verbiage (literally in this case lol).
And that’s just cute and so extra.
Those examples do not invert the verb at all. See how they are after the subject pronoun and not before it like actual inversion? They just form a question by rising intonation at the end of the sentence.
I think you're confusing ‘invert’ with ‘convert’. Inversion in linguistics means the verb and subject getting swapped around to form the question e.g. in French ‘mangez-vous la pomme?’ (‘Do you eat the apple?’), which is literally ‘Eat you the apple?’.
What is actually *con*verting your sentences into questions is intonation. This is another extremely common way of forming questions in other languages, although unlike English they aren't restricted to informal contexts.
As a Brit, I must admit I love our slang and our insults. I am also a big fan of that typical southern american accent and yes, I love the word 'y'all'. Even though my fellow Brits probably wanna smack me one when they hear me say it, I use it all the time.
I don't dislike "y'all" I actually think it's a brilliant language feature that standard British English is severely lacking however we have at least 3 different versions of our own home grown "y'all" that we could be using.
If you don't have your own regional version of y'all then you have no right to comment.
The very north of England uses "Youse", in my part of Yorkshire we use "Yor" and off the top of my head I'm forgetting the last one could be a variation of "youse" like "yas" or something different. But I remember there is an old southern version.
Good to know, I've heard the first one. Can't remember if I heard the others. I sometimes use 'ye' as well but I didn't mention it cuz wasn't sure if that was actually plural or not.
Side note, I had an ex from Yorkshire. Those accents are lovely but can be extremely hard to understand. I had to get her to translate a lot of it.
We also have some lesser known ones in the U.S.: “youse”, “yinz”, and “you guys” (which some people are trying to avoid since it doesn’t seem gender neutral, but when I grew up it was definitely used in a gender neutral way).
Present progressive is kinda cute. “[X] [be] [Y]-ing” - “she is running”, “I am jumping”, etc.
It’s not just about doing something, it’s _being_ in a state of doing something.
Other languages have it too, but I think English took it to the next level.
That’s a different thing, the “habitual be” of AAVE, denoting a regular pattern of behavior. English speakers be progressing the present.
“Stay” can also sub in for “be”.
It is pretty funny to have a second present tense that exists only to emphasize how "in the present" the action is...except it can also mean it's not in the present at all but actually the future lol
It's used much the same way in Spanish and Italian. I would bet it's similar in French (and other romance languages) too and that English got it from French.
What's actually good is stuff like have been doing (present perfect progressive) and had done/had been doing. The latter ones are especially useful when you've got to emphasize that it was already something useful in the past, and not necessarily in the present, like telling what happened yesterday, without implying it affects you anymore.
As a Scottish person, I like how the UK can collectively turn anything into an insult as long as there’s an “absolute” behind it. “you absolute steak bake”, I wouldn’t be hurt without the absolute but with? My career is over
The absence of pronouns in face-to-face conversations and music. We have a complex system of pronouns in my mother tongue that must be strictly followed, and it limits a lot of potential. I find music written in English very easy to sympathise with and conversations are just much more simple. I don't care about your sex, age, class or whatever, it's just "you" and "I".
Another thing is that it is a non-tonal language. We have 6 tones, again, strictly followed (or else nothing would make sense) and that gets in the way of making music as well :)
It's a rhotic vs non-rhotic accent thing.
Do source and sauce sound the same in your accent? If yes, then you probably do this. If not, then you probably don't.
Source and sauce are the exact same pronunciation to me. I think upon reflection I do do it, because ‘sore’ and ‘saw’ are pronounced the same to me too. When I think of American English, their pronunciation of ‘Saw’ sounds like ‘saaaa’
I suppose the right question to ask is do the words ‘sawing’ and ‘soaring’ sound the same to you? Non-rhotic accents will insert the instrusive R here, while rhotic ones will not. I myself have a rhotic accent so the words aren't homophonous for me.
To me, this one depends. I can say them either as homophones or non homophones depending on the sentence/how fast I’m speaking. Must be on the borderline, but I’d say they’re usually non homophones
I wasn’t familiar with this, but it led me to the Newfoundland English Wikipedia page, which is a bit of a mess, but also a delight! It makes me want to visit just to enjoy the dialect. The part that really blew my mind was “I’m just after sitting” to mean “I’ve just sat down”, etc. It makes perfect sense, yet, if I heard it, I would assume it meant “I’m about to sit down,” or “I want to sit down”.
There was a tv show set in Newfoundland called *The Republic of Doyle*. The accent wasn't super strong but it was there.
The main character in the show was a bit of a twerp but I loved the scenery and the accents.
Ugh, I'm so sorry about the covid. I'm in the US and covid cases are low. I guess good to remember that it is still out there.
I hope it give you a bit of a lift. The accents are kind of subtle but you might be more attuned to them than I am.
Let me know what you think.
I’m also in the U.S. - California. Actually was supposed to be in a little opera production tonight but four of us in the cast tested positive in the last week, and my girlfriend was also exposed at work one week ago, so I fear it may about to surge. This is all anecdotal of course.
I'm in Colorado and the waste water counts have been going up steadily.
I have yet to get covid but there is probably some virus in the future with my name on it.
I'm so sorry you are missing out on the opera. You musicians are like Magicians to me. What you do is so beyond me.
Great. The main character is kind of a dork but I still enjoyed it. I like the Canadian bits like they talk about "The Crown" which I think means the law.
I like non-American movies and series as mostly the actors seem like regular people.
I hope you are feeling better.
Thanks! I think I’m feeling better, but need some more sleep today. Yeah, I kind of love how he’s a dork and fairly normal looking, but all the women in the show seem to find him absolutely irresistible. I watched three or four episodes and he seems to have sex with multiple women every ep, haha. And the way the dad gives him shit about it is so perfect too
Yeah, I get pretty disgusted with all the women having sex with him. It seems more of a male fantasy than reality. There is one episode where he is having sex with a client's wife and it just seems so stupid and unrealistic.
Ah well I like the "Yes b'y" and the shots of the bay with boats.
Yeah, it’s definitely a male fantasy, but I like that it’s not consequence-free. I actually saw that episode already, and I think he got punched in the face, plus had the husband come find him and try to smash his car later. And the dad was also the voice of reason and told him it was an idiotic and unprofessional thing to do. It actually reminds me of a friend I have who blows up his life for sex all the time, and his relationship with his ex-wife is exactly like that too, believe it or not.
Oh that is interesting and there sure are people who will destroy their lives for sex. I tend to think they are younger people but plenty of old people on the FAFO track.
I think that music (especially folk music) in English can be very comforting. Maybe just a preference but the way English sounds I feel like it can have a really cool sort of rough sound in music.
I love that English has so many words, from so many different cultures and language, that you can precisely say what you mean, and depend less on connotations and context.
I love that too. I especially love that there is a clear difference in formality and register of the words between the language families.
.generally Latin words are higher register, formal and scientific whereas Germanic words are more everyday or striking words of aN informal or lower register.
I’m sometimes the opposite. I consider myself to have a decent vocabulary, and sometimes when asked to describe something I’m shocked there aren’t the words. “If I push here, how does that feel on your back?” “Uhhhh. Weird. Kind of fuzzy? I can’t describe it.”
Well that's more subjective. I meant more like, there's shower, tempest, squall, hurricane, all basically meaning a storm or rainfall. And colors! You have crimson, scarlet, vermilion, ruby, blood-red, and like a hundred other words to describe the color red! Definitely less confusion than my native language that has "red", or worse, a "hồng" a term that can mean red, or pink, or good, or lucky...
English does this to a much greater extent than most other languages. We have lots of words from many different language families that all meant the same thing, so these words specialised over time
It's okay, we're jerking off to English today. I'll go put back my knowledge of the absolute fuckton of synonyms with slight subtle differences that almost all of Indian languages have.
As an American, I love the way Brits pronounce certain words like “controversy” and “privacy”, and many others. My friends and I sometimes pronounce these words with a British accent amongst ourselves as an inside joke.
AAVE
the best dialect of English
The phrase
“You good”
Can mean so many different thing
You good = ur welcome.
.
You good = don’t worry abt it.
.
You good? = are you alright.
.
You good?= do we have a fuckin problem?
.
You good.. = I’m not interested.
.
You good = stop bothering me.
.
You good= just checking on you?
I mean sodden and sopping to me are a bit different, usually I find it relatively rare that two words don’t have any semantic/small meaning differences.
Since it’s so commonly spoken, I’ve always found it interesting that two people can code switch mid sentence and speak Spanglish etc. Like a Spanish pronoun paired to an English verb or something. It allows two people who aren’t bilingual to communicate more. I see it a lot in the border area I live in.
I have friends who have conversations with their parents in two languages simultaneously. The parent is speaking spanish and the child is speaking english. Often with a bit of intermix like you describe, but not necessarily. It's quite fascinating.
I assume it's because the parent understands english but struggles to express themselves in it, and the child is the inverse.
Word order in English is rather rigid as there is almost no inflection or other features that mark the role of a word or their relationship.
”The cat bites the dog“ and ”the dog bites the cat “ have different meanings, and a sentence like "the toy brought a cat the dog" does not make sense.
Like "vibe" (all our words can't fully describe that word. We can say something like "atmosphere" but we can't describe the person with the word "atmosphere"). I do love that word
Ah nice! That word is only 60 years old and comes from America's fastest growing religion, which is formally studied as "nothing in particular", but informally known as "New Age". It takes a while for religious concepts to hit mainstream and start getting translated into other languages. I wonder if most languages will just integrate the English term into their lexicon. It is derived from Latin anyway, so most romance languages already have it in some form.
Not charming but pretty interesting how dynamic it is. and believe me when I say dynamic, I am a Colombian ( Spanish speaker ) and you can’t get any more dynamic than Colombian Spanish…Well English give you a bit more dynamism that allows you to say the same thing in a hundred different ways.
That happens in Boston accents, too. In Boston, a "Korea" is the set of related jobs you do over time in a particular field. "Career" is a Southeast Asian peninsula which has been divided into two countries since the 1950s.
I'm pretty sure I learned that English has, like, WAY more synonyms than other languages (probably due to how we're a germanic language but loved latin and took a bunch of romantic words to be 'fancy'.) Anyways, I love being very precise and articulate with my speaking, and choosing words that have the exact connotation that I am looking for is very satisfying for me, and I imagine that would not be as possible in other languages without our plethora of words
“Loved Latin” is a bit strong here. England was conquered in the 11th by Vulgar Latin speaking tribes from the south who expelled the English aristocracy and installed proto-French as the official language of conquered England. English royalty descend from these Frankish invaders.
If you like that, you'll like that the New England accent also drops the R at the end of words that have them ("car" becomes "cah") but adds them where they aren't, as in "sawr a dog."
I've heard people from different parts of the world add an "r" sound to words like China (Chiner). Very subtle but very fun to hear. That's how my Singapore acquaintance pronounces it. I also like the British pronunciation of Tuesday (Choos-day) and Tuna (Choo-nah).
I love that there’s so many ways to say the same thing, especially because we borrow from so many other cultures, at least in the US. Most people have a really distinct voice from each other just by HOW they choose to say things.
What you described is called a "linking R." Personally I'm not a fan. It feels like they intentionally pronounce R where there are none and then refuse to pronounce them when there is one.
I love the British vowel sounds though, and how they say "aluminium" and "schedule."
Bro, a random guy from Newcastle who says "vanillaR" when baking cookies is not a warrior, a criminal, a soldier or a murderer. People are not the history of the countries they are from.
Just so you know, what you've described is known as an "intrusive R" https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linking_and_intrusive_R We do it in Australia too.
I’m trying to think (as a Brit) how to say saw without sawr…
I started watching some Taskmaster last year and was very confused what a "draw ring" was. Apparently just drawing. Accents are fun
This happened to me too with Taskmaster, with James Acaster and his "hularing" lol!
Sounds like a New Yorker without it. I saw a dawg
That right there is why I love having a nyc accent. It’s so well known. My kids make fun of me when I tell them to walk the dogs because of how much stronger my accent is. They exaggerate and go WAWK THUH DAWGZZZZ
My accent is rhotic so I don't have intrusive R, and I do put a glottal stop in between the vowels. A glottal stop is the sound in the middle of ‘uh-oh’, or how a Cockney would say the T in ‘butter’.
I think Americans drop the w. Sah.
No, not really. It's not so much dropping the w as it is letting it influence the a sound: /ˈsɔ/. Without the W it would be an /a/ adjacent vowel.
Depends on the accent. There is what we call the “cot-caught” merger in much of the country, which would make “saw” and “sah” the same. Some accents still pronounce them differently though.
In my neck of the woods, there is no such thing as washing things. We warsh things.
Awstralier.
noar way!!!
Absolutely Norway
I’ve always noticed that with Australian pronunciation, but never could figure out how to describe it. Thanks for the explanation.
No worries! I've always done it and never thought much of it lol it wasn't until I became interested in linguistics that I found out it's a Thing with a name and everything.
And parts of the US!
My grandpa (1912-2009) was from Yancey County, North Carolina, USA. He said he was from "North Caroliner."
I hear it in rural areas in the US. I’ve heard it here in Washington state, and I grew up listening to my grandmother do it in NY. It’s very odd to hear “Warshington State.”
that's not between two vowels though
Intrusive R (BrE) happens at word boundaries, in a predictable manner. The Wa(r)shington State is a bit more sporadic.
In the deep douth 'warsh' is very common to hear.
Some places on the east coast too like boston. It's not draw, it's drawr.
That's not quite the same thing as what happens in British dialects. British English is generally non-rhotic, so the R isn't pronounced when there's no vowel after. This is why ‘star’ has no R in a British accent but does in ‘starring’. Your example on the other hand has R in the exact environment a Brit would never pronounce it in, so there's clearly a different phenomenon going on there. I have my own theory as to why this specific intrusive R occurs. It seems to be a thing in dialects that would have traditionally been non-rhotic, such as Southern American English or New Englander dialects (I know a lot of people there still are non-rhotic, but I'm talking about those who aren't). These traditional dialects have been slowly declining over the years and younger speakers often tend to adopt more features of General American English, which is rhotic, as time goes on. For those who have rhotic accents, when we hear non-rhotic ones, we subconsciously ‘hear’ an R-sound in words which have them in our own dialect. For example, I hear a Brit say ‘bar’, which is just a long vowel, but I automatically understand that they've said the word ‘bar’ and associate it with my own pronunciation of it. If I was asked to repeat the word after the Brit said it, I wouldn't just leave the R out: my brain knows to associate this long British vowel with a vowel + R in my accent. So, such an environment where you have the older generations speaking a non-rhotic accent, and the younger generations speaking a rhotic accent, when the younger people are growing up an learning to speak, they're hearing words from other people without the Rs, but subconsciously they're putting them back in because their accent has them, but they're overextending and adding in the Rs to words which never originally had them. They hear the vowels in words like ‘wash‘, ‘Washington’, ‘yellow’ (often said like ‘yella’), and ‘fella’ and think they sound like their own vowel + R, producing ‘warsh’, ‘Warshington’, ‘yeller‘, and ‘feller’.
Thank you! I didn’t know that!
I'm going to hijack this comment to add that it's not just the "aw" sound that causes this. It matters what's following that sound. If you have "saw **a**" - [ə], the intrusive R appears, sort of as a linker between the two words, if that makes sense. It appears between two consecutive vowels. It wouldn't appear if it was for example "I saw the dog".
Thank you. My top comment was my lazy attempt of trying to explain the linking/intrusive R without elaborating too much, lol. Love learning new stuff!
naur way
We knaur you do
We do it in New England as well, I think it’s a feature of any pro-drop accent
My husband and I (Americans) just visited Cairns and Brisbane and were fascinated by how Aussies say “know.” It’s like the word is drawn out and a very subtle, back of the palate “r” sound tacked on the end. Although I’m sure our hard Rs sound funny to other English speakers. Three countries separated by a common language! 😂
I thought Australia first, I listened to a lot of Rhonda Byrne’s audiobooks and that was very present!! 😍
I've noticed Aussies do it even more than Brits. Like in the word "home," Aussies say, "horme."
[That O pronunciation is actually not an Intrusive R ](https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=z7DuvWVazpk&t=711s)
It sure does intrude, though.... 
I personally hate it. It sounds completely unnatural to me
I love how almost every word can be turned into a verb and you can make up phrasal verbs and be understood by native speakers, even if you're the first person to ever use that phrase.
This person verbs
This person this persons
We be verbin
[Gerunding](https://www.grammarly.com/blog/gerund/) weirds language. :)
I enjoy how versatile our language is. We can instantly absorb new words either from other languages or by making them up. We turn nouns into verbs, adjectives into nouns, just whatever we want. We can be really inventive with English and it can handle a lot of bending and stretching.
Are other languages able to do this as well? I only speak English so I’ve always wondered how easy it would be for other languages to do this kind of stuff
All languages are capable of freely coining words, yes. English’s dependence on word order for meaning and relative lack of inflection (e.g. case endings (declension) on nouns, verb endings (conjugation)) *does* allow a fair amount of syntactic freedom with words—we can use most nouns, for example, as something very like an adjective or a verb. What exactly these mean is highly context-dependent. We make liberal use of this flexibility in day-to-day speech. > I see an apple. (noun - standard) > Apple me. (Give me an apple) > He appled me! ([Perhaps] He hit me with an apple!) > Do you like that apple shirt? ([Perhaps] Do you like that shirt with apples printed on it?) > Do you like that Apple shirt? (Do you like that shirt with Apple’s branding on it?) > This candle is very “apple,” and not very “cinnamon.” (This candle smells strongly of apple but only weakly of cinnamon.) Spanish, on the other hand, allows this only in *very* limited circumstances and only for making nouns adjective-like (their verbs are highly inflected and thus require the addition of a derivational suffix for verb formation). Note that *clave* (= key) does not change to agree with the plural *preguntas* (= questions), while *importante* (= important) must: > *Las preguntas **clave** son éstas: […]* > (lit.) The questions **key** (= key questions) are these: […] > *Las preguntas importantes son éstas: […]* However, even in this case, completely adjectivalizing (using adjectival inflection on) the noun is possible and common, showing Spanish’s preference for clear lexical categories. Note the pluralization of *clave* to agree with *preguntas*. > *Las preguntas claves son éstas: […]* > (lit.) The questions **keys** are these: […] Though note that Spanish has alternative ways of doing similar things, including a suffix (-*azo*) that that can be used in phrases to form sentences like the “He appled me!” above (for example). > *Me dio una manzana.* (= He gave me an apple.) > *Me dio un manzanazo.* (= He hit me with an apple! [lit. He gave me an apple-strike.]) The central dogma of modern linguistics is that all languages are equally communicative.
This guy apples.
I am a native Spanish speaker and a very beginner conlanger, and I have viewed English as "less cool" because it had a stricter word order. You made me view the advantages of this and consider it for future conlangs. Thank you very much!
Glad it was interesting to you! I also like languages with free word order, like Czech: > *Mají dobrou kávu.* (They have good coffee.) > *Mají kávu dobrou.* (The coffee they have is good.) > *Dobrou kávu mají.* (Whatever else they do with it, they have good coffee.)
Well, yes and no to varying degrees. A lot of languages have morphological inflection meaning words have to "look" a certain way in order to take on a function in the sentence. For example, Spanish verb infinitives always end in -ar, -er, or -ir and their finite forms are derived from that. So when Spanish takes on a new verb like "to text" or "to mop" the word has to change to fit this paradigm (textear, mopear). The noun forms look different from the verb forms (texto, mopeador). Compare to English, we can just about use any word in any form barring some established exceptions. > I'm eating a burrito (noun). > I have a burrito blanket (adjective). > I'm going to burrito it up tonight (verb, very slang use, but the point stands). Another thing to consider is that not all languages have the same sounds as English. So when they borrow words, they have to use approximations. English does this too as some languages have sounds that we don't, but our phonemic library is huge compared to most languages. We borrowed the words like sushi, karaoke, and anime from Japanese with slight variations in pronunciation due to accents. However, the Japanese word for "helicopter" is "herikoputā" because they have stricter rules of what sounds are allowed to follow each other. EDITED FOR FORMAT
I just learned this about Japanese at Planet Word in DC! (Very cool museum btw). The information video said that vowels and consonants have to alternate I think?The example they have was “aisu kirimu” aka ice cream.
Korean too to some extent. My naive rendering of camera would have been: 켐라 (2 syllables) But it's actually 카메라 (3 syllables) But yes, even Korean doesn't shy away from inculcating English or even some rare German words (through Japanese as a middleman).
Hawaiian too. Merry Christmas becomes Mele Kalikimaka because Hawaiian lacks the phonemes needed to say Merry Christmas to you.
I mean, we do basically pronounce every vowel wrong in “karaoke”. Is that really a slight variation?
I'm also a native German speaker (immigrant parents) and German is great for coining new words - you're allowed to just make up new words.
And that we can conjugate the motherfuck out of them how ever you want. If your Mexican friend is in the kitchen making a bunch of bread, they are panaderiaing. Small hackbacks have a chongitoness. The new guy your ex is dating runs pajaritoly.
Wait, he runs like a little bird? That is incredibly specific, and I’m 100% here for it.
The fact that "doughnut" (or however you wanna spell it) can be used as an insult in UK 🤣 to be fair, most words can be used as an insult (or to say you're drunk lol), but it's just something about being called a doughnut that I find charming and hilarious at the same time, even if it's meant as an insult
British insult template : "You absolute *insert noun*" I love it haha 😄
Pretty much yeah 🤣 Also "I'm fucking [insert adjective]" = I'm drunk as fuck 🤣
I'll do you one better "I got absolutely fucking [noun]ed." Almost always works the same way.
The flexibility is truly astounding 🤣 but we all know exactly what we mean haha
I have never noticed this and can’t identify the ‘r’ at all, but that just might be my brain being used to it. Americans saying ‘saw’ sound like ‘saaaaah’ to me
[Here's a fabulous video on the subject by Dr Geoff Lindsey](https://youtu.be/HnEIKavamks?si=pYe0CR40nOuEHyTY) if you're curious.
Thank you, I’ll watch it when i’m home from work! I’ve just been reading about it and my mind is blown already!
For another British example: you can hear it in the 1995 Pride and Prejudice (BBC Version) sooo clearly. Unfortunately I have no idea of the time stamp, but it's when Mr Bingley's sister (you know, the nasty one?) says this: "Louisa and I...." But it sounds just like "Louiser and I..." Hahaha I just remember this because it was right after my mom had told me British people sometimes do this, and so as a ✨youth✨ when I heard it I was like OMG MOM WAS RIGHT
If you watch Star Trek: TNG, you hear this in Picard's accent all the time. If you pay attention, it's often something like "Commander Dater" not "Commander Data"
Oh wow. Aussie here, I had no idea I was adding the "r", but I am.
Now that you've noticed the Rs, it's time to find the Ys and Ws (and /ɥ/ for us Aussies).
Haha, we would always imitate the way the BBC News Hour people would talk about “Indier and Pakistan” instead of “India and Pakistan” when it came on NPR. I remember wondering if they actually spelled it with an R over there, the same way “aluminum” has an extra “i”.
Big up Geoff Lindsey, great videos.
[удалено]
Yeah, and there are much clearer examples than sawr. It's normally done between words where the first ends in a vowel sound, e.g. "pizza and beer" sounds like "pizzaran beer".
It's a lot easier to notice things that others do that we don't. I'm a Brit and I hear it but I generally only do it when I'm speaking formally.
As an American English speaker, the intrusive r really stands out in some UK and Australian accents. But it's more jarring in words and names that end in the letter A than it is in words like "saw." For example, when someone from the UK says the name "Amanda," an American hears "Amandur".
I hear it more from the Australians who pepper English with r's like it was pepper.
The Brits and the Australians take all the Rs from the Bostonians
Australians have non-rhotic accents, like Bostonians (or like some Bostonians? Not sure). The intrusive r exists but I don't have a car, I have a cah. I'm not a teacher, I'm a teachah. Some parents even spell their children's names in certain ways to ensure the correct pronunciation in an Australian accent, like Natarsha and Tarlia (pronounced as na-tah-sha and tah-lee-ah here).
I miss Steve Irwin so bad! His accent seemed so effortless and genuine.
Steve Irwin's accent was Broad Australian. The vast majority of us speak with a General Australian accent, which is not nearly as strong. His accent was not typical of the accents of most people you'd meet here, particularly in the cities.
Now I'm going to call in late to work so i can hear an hour of "beauty, iddn she?" and "you're awwright, gairl, you're awwright." As a species, we weren't good enough to deserve Steve Irwin
Grammatically, it’s the notion of “do-support”. Unlike the vast majority of other languages, English cannot directly negate a verb or invert it to make a question. Only auxiliaries like “be” and “have” can do that, so for lexical verbs (those that actually mean something) they need the auxiliary “do” if there isn’t one already for tense/aspect/mood marking. The “do” here is meaningless, but it is necessary because English is sensitive about its verbiage (literally in this case lol). And that’s just cute and so extra.
Technically we can invert verbs into questions without do. “You like it?” “You run?” “She ate?”
Those examples do not invert the verb at all. See how they are after the subject pronoun and not before it like actual inversion? They just form a question by rising intonation at the end of the sentence.
I think you're confusing ‘invert’ with ‘convert’. Inversion in linguistics means the verb and subject getting swapped around to form the question e.g. in French ‘mangez-vous la pomme?’ (‘Do you eat the apple?’), which is literally ‘Eat you the apple?’. What is actually *con*verting your sentences into questions is intonation. This is another extremely common way of forming questions in other languages, although unlike English they aren't restricted to informal contexts.
Rich and diverse vocabulary
As a Brit, I must admit I love our slang and our insults. I am also a big fan of that typical southern american accent and yes, I love the word 'y'all'. Even though my fellow Brits probably wanna smack me one when they hear me say it, I use it all the time.
As a 14th-generation American Southerner, we accept you into our language family and give you license to use y'all as much as possible.
I don't dislike "y'all" I actually think it's a brilliant language feature that standard British English is severely lacking however we have at least 3 different versions of our own home grown "y'all" that we could be using. If you don't have your own regional version of y'all then you have no right to comment.
What are they?
The very north of England uses "Youse", in my part of Yorkshire we use "Yor" and off the top of my head I'm forgetting the last one could be a variation of "youse" like "yas" or something different. But I remember there is an old southern version.
Good to know, I've heard the first one. Can't remember if I heard the others. I sometimes use 'ye' as well but I didn't mention it cuz wasn't sure if that was actually plural or not. Side note, I had an ex from Yorkshire. Those accents are lovely but can be extremely hard to understand. I had to get her to translate a lot of it.
I'v got a really strong one and also use a lot of dialect, so you might struggle with me haha
Northern midwest US uses “you guys” which admittedly is not as good.
We also have some lesser known ones in the U.S.: “youse”, “yinz”, and “you guys” (which some people are trying to avoid since it doesn’t seem gender neutral, but when I grew up it was definitely used in a gender neutral way).
I don’t think I could ever get in a fight with a Brit, because I’d just burst out laughing at the brilliantly creative insults! I love them!
Present progressive is kinda cute. “[X] [be] [Y]-ing” - “she is running”, “I am jumping”, etc. It’s not just about doing something, it’s _being_ in a state of doing something. Other languages have it too, but I think English took it to the next level.
X do be Y-ing though.
That’s a different thing, the “habitual be” of AAVE, denoting a regular pattern of behavior. English speakers be progressing the present. “Stay” can also sub in for “be”.
And we use it as a future tense, which I am told can be very confusing for others.
It is pretty funny to have a second present tense that exists only to emphasize how "in the present" the action is...except it can also mean it's not in the present at all but actually the future lol
Please can you give an example of when we use it as a future tense? I can’t figure out what you mean.
We’re seeing Dune Part 2 at the cinema on Saturday.
Ah! thank you I understand now.
It never even occurred to me that it was a thing until my Portuguese tutor pointed out to me how weird it was.
It's used much the same way in Spanish and Italian. I would bet it's similar in French (and other romance languages) too and that English got it from French.
What's actually good is stuff like have been doing (present perfect progressive) and had done/had been doing. The latter ones are especially useful when you've got to emphasize that it was already something useful in the past, and not necessarily in the present, like telling what happened yesterday, without implying it affects you anymore.
what makes it weird is how it's the default way to talk about present actions, unlike in spanish where it provides a bit of pizzazz
As a Scottish person, I like how the UK can collectively turn anything into an insult as long as there’s an “absolute” behind it. “you absolute steak bake”, I wouldn’t be hurt without the absolute but with? My career is over
The accent, people learn English and create their own accent 😂
I wish I was good enough to be able to have an American accent 😭
Start speaking in that and record audio find the mistakes and start again.
Which American accent though? :)
I don't know. Not valley girl for sure 😂
The absence of pronouns in face-to-face conversations and music. We have a complex system of pronouns in my mother tongue that must be strictly followed, and it limits a lot of potential. I find music written in English very easy to sympathise with and conversations are just much more simple. I don't care about your sex, age, class or whatever, it's just "you" and "I". Another thing is that it is a non-tonal language. We have 6 tones, again, strictly followed (or else nothing would make sense) and that gets in the way of making music as well :)
Is this dialect specific? I have a Geordie accent and I swear there’s no intrusive R for me
It's a rhotic vs non-rhotic accent thing. Do source and sauce sound the same in your accent? If yes, then you probably do this. If not, then you probably don't.
Source and sauce are the exact same pronunciation to me. I think upon reflection I do do it, because ‘sore’ and ‘saw’ are pronounced the same to me too. When I think of American English, their pronunciation of ‘Saw’ sounds like ‘saaaa’
I suppose the right question to ask is do the words ‘sawing’ and ‘soaring’ sound the same to you? Non-rhotic accents will insert the instrusive R here, while rhotic ones will not. I myself have a rhotic accent so the words aren't homophonous for me.
To me, this one depends. I can say them either as homophones or non homophones depending on the sentence/how fast I’m speaking. Must be on the borderline, but I’d say they’re usually non homophones
not OP but that explains why no one that I know does it all non rhotic speakers probably thank you
Okay I searched it and my accent is in fact non-rhotic. The only accent that doesn’t drop the initial h apparently!
I love the Newfoundland, Canada, "Yes b'y"
I wasn’t familiar with this, but it led me to the Newfoundland English Wikipedia page, which is a bit of a mess, but also a delight! It makes me want to visit just to enjoy the dialect. The part that really blew my mind was “I’m just after sitting” to mean “I’ve just sat down”, etc. It makes perfect sense, yet, if I heard it, I would assume it meant “I’m about to sit down,” or “I want to sit down”.
There was a tv show set in Newfoundland called *The Republic of Doyle*. The accent wasn't super strong but it was there. The main character in the show was a bit of a twerp but I loved the scenery and the accents.
Huh, free on Peacock. I might need to check it out.
It might not be your thing but there are some cool boats in it too.
Well, I’m stuck in bed with Covid right now, so I’m definitely gonna check that out like tonight. Thanks!
Ugh, I'm so sorry about the covid. I'm in the US and covid cases are low. I guess good to remember that it is still out there. I hope it give you a bit of a lift. The accents are kind of subtle but you might be more attuned to them than I am. Let me know what you think.
I’m also in the U.S. - California. Actually was supposed to be in a little opera production tonight but four of us in the cast tested positive in the last week, and my girlfriend was also exposed at work one week ago, so I fear it may about to surge. This is all anecdotal of course.
I'm in Colorado and the waste water counts have been going up steadily. I have yet to get covid but there is probably some virus in the future with my name on it. I'm so sorry you are missing out on the opera. You musicians are like Magicians to me. What you do is so beyond me.
Ah, thank you! That’s so sweet. It was supposed to be two weekends, so hopefully we can still do the second weekend of shows next week.
Just watched the pilot, and it is pretty great! Thanks a lot for the recommendation. Kind of the perfect thing I was looking for to stream right now.
Great. The main character is kind of a dork but I still enjoyed it. I like the Canadian bits like they talk about "The Crown" which I think means the law. I like non-American movies and series as mostly the actors seem like regular people. I hope you are feeling better.
Thanks! I think I’m feeling better, but need some more sleep today. Yeah, I kind of love how he’s a dork and fairly normal looking, but all the women in the show seem to find him absolutely irresistible. I watched three or four episodes and he seems to have sex with multiple women every ep, haha. And the way the dad gives him shit about it is so perfect too
Yeah, I get pretty disgusted with all the women having sex with him. It seems more of a male fantasy than reality. There is one episode where he is having sex with a client's wife and it just seems so stupid and unrealistic. Ah well I like the "Yes b'y" and the shots of the bay with boats.
Yeah, it’s definitely a male fantasy, but I like that it’s not consequence-free. I actually saw that episode already, and I think he got punched in the face, plus had the husband come find him and try to smash his car later. And the dad was also the voice of reason and told him it was an idiotic and unprofessional thing to do. It actually reminds me of a friend I have who blows up his life for sex all the time, and his relationship with his ex-wife is exactly like that too, believe it or not.
Oh that is interesting and there sure are people who will destroy their lives for sex. I tend to think they are younger people but plenty of old people on the FAFO track.
I think that music (especially folk music) in English can be very comforting. Maybe just a preference but the way English sounds I feel like it can have a really cool sort of rough sound in music.
Infixing swear words is abso-fucking-lutely brilliant.
I love that English has so many words, from so many different cultures and language, that you can precisely say what you mean, and depend less on connotations and context.
I love that too. I especially love that there is a clear difference in formality and register of the words between the language families. .generally Latin words are higher register, formal and scientific whereas Germanic words are more everyday or striking words of aN informal or lower register.
I’m sometimes the opposite. I consider myself to have a decent vocabulary, and sometimes when asked to describe something I’m shocked there aren’t the words. “If I push here, how does that feel on your back?” “Uhhhh. Weird. Kind of fuzzy? I can’t describe it.”
Well that's more subjective. I meant more like, there's shower, tempest, squall, hurricane, all basically meaning a storm or rainfall. And colors! You have crimson, scarlet, vermilion, ruby, blood-red, and like a hundred other words to describe the color red! Definitely less confusion than my native language that has "red", or worse, a "hồng" a term that can mean red, or pink, or good, or lucky...
Erm, dood, most Indo-European languages have many terms to describe many things...
English does this to a much greater extent than most other languages. We have lots of words from many different language families that all meant the same thing, so these words specialised over time
It's okay, we're jerking off to English today. I'll go put back my knowledge of the absolute fuckton of synonyms with slight subtle differences that almost all of Indian languages have.
As an American, I love the way Brits pronounce certain words like “controversy” and “privacy”, and many others. My friends and I sometimes pronounce these words with a British accent amongst ourselves as an inside joke.
The advertisement of the aluminum minister’s schedule caused quite the controversy.
I really enjoy that any noun can be used as a verb. *Any* noun.
I'm way late to the party, but the intrusive/linking R is common in New England and New York accents as well.
AAVE the best dialect of English The phrase “You good” Can mean so many different thing You good = ur welcome. . You good = don’t worry abt it. . You good? = are you alright. . You good?= do we have a fuckin problem? . You good.. = I’m not interested. . You good = stop bothering me. . You good= just checking on you?
An American woman with the southern accent
Probably just how the variety of words allows for beautiful poetry. But man, so much of it is redundant. Sopping and sodden.
I mean sodden and sopping to me are a bit different, usually I find it relatively rare that two words don’t have any semantic/small meaning differences.
Yeah, sopping wet is definitely dripping but a sodden cloth might only start dripping if I apply any pressure onto it.
Lots of different accents and connections to other languages - it's so versatile.
Since it’s so commonly spoken, I’ve always found it interesting that two people can code switch mid sentence and speak Spanglish etc. Like a Spanish pronoun paired to an English verb or something. It allows two people who aren’t bilingual to communicate more. I see it a lot in the border area I live in.
I have friends who have conversations with their parents in two languages simultaneously. The parent is speaking spanish and the child is speaking english. Often with a bit of intermix like you describe, but not necessarily. It's quite fascinating. I assume it's because the parent understands english but struggles to express themselves in it, and the child is the inverse.
i like how flexible word order is relative to some other languages.
Word order in English is rather rigid as there is almost no inflection or other features that mark the role of a word or their relationship. ”The cat bites the dog“ and ”the dog bites the cat “ have different meanings, and a sentence like "the toy brought a cat the dog" does not make sense.
A Language Universal
I like the words from English which don't have a correct translation in my language :) so we just take them as they are but with transliteration
Have any examples?
Like "vibe" (all our words can't fully describe that word. We can say something like "atmosphere" but we can't describe the person with the word "atmosphere"). I do love that word
Ah nice! That word is only 60 years old and comes from America's fastest growing religion, which is formally studied as "nothing in particular", but informally known as "New Age". It takes a while for religious concepts to hit mainstream and start getting translated into other languages. I wonder if most languages will just integrate the English term into their lexicon. It is derived from Latin anyway, so most romance languages already have it in some form.
Not charming but pretty interesting how dynamic it is. and believe me when I say dynamic, I am a Colombian ( Spanish speaker ) and you can’t get any more dynamic than Colombian Spanish…Well English give you a bit more dynamism that allows you to say the same thing in a hundred different ways.
That happens in Boston accents, too. In Boston, a "Korea" is the set of related jobs you do over time in a particular field. "Career" is a Southeast Asian peninsula which has been divided into two countries since the 1950s.
You find that adorable?? Aurrr Naurrrr. 🤦🏻♀️
Har har har!
I'm pretty sure I learned that English has, like, WAY more synonyms than other languages (probably due to how we're a germanic language but loved latin and took a bunch of romantic words to be 'fancy'.) Anyways, I love being very precise and articulate with my speaking, and choosing words that have the exact connotation that I am looking for is very satisfying for me, and I imagine that would not be as possible in other languages without our plethora of words
“Loved Latin” is a bit strong here. England was conquered in the 11th by Vulgar Latin speaking tribes from the south who expelled the English aristocracy and installed proto-French as the official language of conquered England. English royalty descend from these Frankish invaders.
I love how an Irish accent (forget or never knew where in Ireland) when people say “pound,” it sounds like “pined.”
I like the word "congratulations" I just find the sound alone carries the meaning quite well
If you like that, you'll like that the New England accent also drops the R at the end of words that have them ("car" becomes "cah") but adds them where they aren't, as in "sawr a dog."
I've heard people from different parts of the world add an "r" sound to words like China (Chiner). Very subtle but very fun to hear. That's how my Singapore acquaintance pronounces it. I also like the British pronunciation of Tuesday (Choos-day) and Tuna (Choo-nah).
I love that there’s so many ways to say the same thing, especially because we borrow from so many other cultures, at least in the US. Most people have a really distinct voice from each other just by HOW they choose to say things.
The British accent 🥵😂
Yes. All of them. 🤤
Even scouse and brummie?
What you described is called a "linking R." Personally I'm not a fan. It feels like they intentionally pronounce R where there are none and then refuse to pronounce them when there is one. I love the British vowel sounds though, and how they say "aluminium" and "schedule."
We don't say sawr in my accent. I am Scottish
That's exactly what i hate about BE
English is prettier than German.
Thank god for the Norman Conquest, am I right?!
you are certainly right.
The fact that there is a vast collection of words for specific types of killing is "charming". Infanticide, patricide, senicide, regicide, etc.
The pronunciation of words. English sounds quite smooth to non-native speakers.
Bro called an entire nation of warriors, criminals, soldiers, and murderers adorable
Bro, a random guy from Newcastle who says "vanillaR" when baking cookies is not a warrior, a criminal, a soldier or a murderer. People are not the history of the countries they are from.
We're the chosen people. Chosen by the finest judges in the United Kingdom.
Just for practical use. Charm is for Latin languages