New Delhi: Scientists have used ultrasound imaging to observe how the pronunciation of the English letter “r” is changing across generations in a small town in Lancashire. The study offers a rare glimpse into an ongoing language shift, revealing physical differences in tongue movements between younger and older speakers.
Published in Language and Speech, the study, titled “Rhoticity in Decline? An Ultrasound Study of Lancashire /r/”, examined speakers from Blackburn, one of the few remaining communities in England where people still pronounce the “r” sound after a vowel in words such as “star”, “heart” and “war”.
Most English accents in England have lost this pronunciation, a feature linguists call rhoticity, the pronunciation of the “r” sound in all written positions within a word. In non-rhotic accents, the ‘r’ in words such as “car” is generally not pronounced unless it is followed by a vowel.
“English has changed beyond recognition over the past 1,000 years. We can see the evidence of this in Shakespeare, Chaucer and particularly older texts such as Beowulf,” lead author Danielle Turton of Lancaster University told Newswise.
“However, language isn’t just something that changed in the past. It is changing all around us, all the time, in such small increments that we rarely notice it happening,” she added.
Watching the tongue move
The researchers recruited 28 Blackburn residents, comprising 14 men and 14 women aged between 18 and 72. They used ultrasound tongue imaging, a non-invasive technique similar to the technology used to scan babies during pregnancy, to record tongue movements as participants spoke.
The team analysed how speakers produced the ‘r’ sound in different words, including “pier”, “stir” and “war”. Their findings showed that younger speakers generally made weaker tongue gestures than older participants, indicating a gradual weakening of the traditional pronunciation.
“We can never observe language directly inside the brain, but we can get physically one step closer by observing the movements that create speech. Ultrasound allows us to see tongue movements that would otherwise be completely hidden,” Turton said.
The study also found that 14 of the 28 participants used retroflex pronunciations in word-initial positions. These involve curling the tongue tip backwards, demonstrating the variety of ways speakers produce the same sound.
A change led by younger speakers?
The findings support earlier acoustic research suggesting that rhoticity is declining in Blackburn. The researchers found differences between younger and older speakers across all three vowel contexts they examined. The decline appeared particularly pronounced among younger women, although the small sample meant the researchers could not establish a reliable gender-based pattern.
Turton said the research allows linguists to monitor the physical movements involved in a sound change happening today. She added that traditional analyses based largely on what speech sounds like can miss patterns that become visible when researchers examine how sounds are produced.
The researchers say documenting these differences is important because once a regional pronunciation disappears, its distinctive features may be lost without ever having been fully recorded.
(Edited by Insha Jalil Waziri)