I ’ve been reading the Harry Potter books with my girl late , and while most of the British terminal figure in the series ( git , nutter , prat , puckish , peaky , mental , chuffed , ingest a go , and so on ) scroll by without build me skip a musical rhythm , I keep getting hang up on those small intermission words , eranderm . It feels wrong to say them that way , even in mydodgyapproximation of a British spokesperson .
The ground it feel wrong to say them that agency , is because itiswrong to say them that means . British people do not readerandermin the mode that Americans would read those words , with a fully articulatedr . Most British dialects are non - rhotic ; theris not pronounced in words likeherorterm . So how would a British soul pronounceeranderm ? Basically , as " uh " and " um , " with perhaps a snatch more tenseness in the vowel sound .
The identity oferandermdepends on pronouncing them like a aborigine in your head , something we do n’t have to do with other word ( chuffedreads as British even if our inner pronunciation is American , and we can accept thatHarry Potterwill be pronounced differently by an English person even if we do n’t actually sound out it that way internally when we read ) . This fact , which on the surface seems so obvious , can escape even the most astute reader . Lynne Murphy of the blogSeparated by a Common Languageis a linguistic scientist who had been endure in the UK for years when she finallyrealized the true statement abouteranderm . She was follow TV and noticed that the caption for American show with American actors speak with American accent usederandermforuhandum . They were different elbow room of writing the same sounds . I entirely discover with her reaction to this find : “ Before any of you complain that I should not have been allowed to have a doctor’s degree in Linguistics if it contain me this longsighted to cipher out something this introductory , let me tell you : I ’ve thought the same matter myself . I think the technical term for this is : Duh ! ”
Or should that beder ? In fact , according to the OEDderhas been a British variant forduhsince 1979 . Not trusted if it show up in the Harry Potter books this way , but I ’ll be trusted to notice it now if it does .
