Topic-075: Rhotic Vowels This term is used to describe some varieties of English (e.g., American) pronunciation in which the r phoneme is found in all its phonological contexts. Remember that in the BBC accent of English, r is only found before vowels (as in red red, around rand, but never before consonants or before a pause. In rhotic (e.g., some American) accents, on the other hand, r may occur before consonants (as in cart kart) and before a pause (as in cark r. While the BBC accent is non-rhotic, many accents of the British Isles are rhotic (including most of the south and west of England, much of Wales, and all of Scotland and Ireland. Similarly, most speakers of American English speak with a rhotic accent, but there are non-rhotic areas including the Boston area, lower-class New York and the Deep South. From English language teaching point of view, foreign learners encounter a lot of difficulty in learning not to pronounce r in the wrong places.
