WEBVTT
Kind: captions
Language: en-GB

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You there! Watching this video! Say this sentence.
Round and round the rugged rock the ragged

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rascal ran. No seriously, say it. Because
how you say that sentence determines quite

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a bit about the way you talk.

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Jonathan Ross, for those who don't know him,
is a talk show host and TV presenter in the

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UK. He's known for many things, including
a speech defect. He can't make a /r/ sound

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properly. According to the general public,
he says /w/ instead. This is a running joke

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to the extent that his Twitter handle is @wossy.

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That speech defect's got a long history. Elmer
Fudd has it -- he was hunting wabbits. If

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you want to make a character seem weak or
ineffectual, it's a good defect to give them.

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Wove, twue wove, as the priest from the Pwincess
Bwide said.

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But before you laugh at that, here's a test
for you. Say that sentence again. I'm going

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to cover my mouth this time so you don't get
any clues. Pay attention to what you're doing

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with your mouth when you make the R-sounds.
Okay. With me. Round and round the rugged

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rock the ragged rascal ran. Make that /r/-sound.
Hold it.

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There are two ways of doing this. Number one:
it's like a /l/, with your tongue against

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the top of your mouth. If you can go a-la,
a-ra, a-la, a-ra, and they feel very similar,

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you say it this way.

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The other way of doing it: it's like a V,
/v/, with your top teeth near your bottom

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lip. If a-va, a-ra, a-va- a-ra, feel very
similar to you, you say it this way.

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If you say it the second way: then congratulations.
You've got the same so-called speech defect

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as Jonathan Ross. And the same speech defect
as me. And the same as a heck of a lot of

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younger people. There are areas of Britain
now where the so-called defective way is now

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the majority, particularly among folks younger
than 30. Like Invasion of the Body Snatchers,

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the change has happened subtly, quickly, and
hardly anyone has noticed.

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Because to the untrained ear, and even to
many trained ears, it sounds exactly the same.

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I wondered, as a kid, why I could roll my
Rs -- it's because the /r:/ sound is nothing

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like the sound I make. If you've always wondered
why speakers of some languages confuse /r/

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and /l/ -- like Japanese and Polynesian languages
-- well, it's because they don't distinguish

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between the two. That only makes sense if
your /r/ sound really is like your /l/.

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The only way you can tell, in my speech at
least, is that I overaspirate PR and BR sounds.

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Bright. Bring. Brother. There's a pfft of
escaping air in "brother" as my mouth switches

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from a bilabial stop, /b/ /b/ /b/, to this
sound: a labiodental approximant.

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Labiodental because it uses lips and teeth,
and approximant because they're near each

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other but not touching. It's not a W - that's
a labio-velar approximant, with the lips close

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together and the tongue raised to the back
of the throat.

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This is the labiodental approximant's phonetic
symbol: and when twanscwibing, phoneticians

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are using it more and more and more.

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If you ask me? It's stopped being a speech
defect. It's just an alternative way of making

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a sound now. Jonathan Woss was ahead of his
time. Which one do you use?

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