Hi, Alexander!  Recently you wrote in a message to Ardith Hinton:

 AH>  I once had a neighbour who (although he was quite convinced
 AH>  he'd lost his Scottish accent) pronounced my name as if I
 AH>  spelled it "Air-r-rdith".  OTOH folks from Someplace Else
 AH>  may often appear to minimize an "r" or ignore it completely.

 AK>  What's who I was taught in school. "Car" - sounds like [ka:]
       |that's how, that's what


           Yes, awhile ago I mentioned a pun which I remembered from a British
magazine... khakis = car keys.  It works in UK & ex-Brit Canadian English.  It
doesn't work in situations where "khaki" rhymes with "tacky", however....  :-)



 AK>  In the USSR we were taught British English.


           No problem AFAIC.  Our daughter tends to soften /r/ because she has
difficulty getting her tongue around it.  Dallas & I are often asked where she
got "that lovely British accent".  As Canadians, we understand UK & US English
equally well... and we accept both.  But we also enjoy the freedom of deciding
what works for us on an individual basis.  Other Canadians may or may not make
different choices.  Either way, most of us will understand what you mean.  :-)



 AH>  What puzzles me is how some ex-Brits I know...
 AH>  especially Londoners... add /r/ to the end of
 AH>  words where I don't see one,

 AK>  For example?


           As it happens Dallas & I were chatting with an ex-Londoner just the
other day.  Recognizing that somebody here might want examples, I made a point
of noticing how she inserted an /r/ at the end of certain words.  She told us,
e.g., that she "sawr" something ending in a vowel to which she also added /r/.
I'm not sure now what she saw because I didn't want to embarrass her by openly
recording her exact words & her pronunciation, but I can offer an example from
the days when my future parents-in-law adopted a dog they called "Cleater".  I
didn't realize, until I ran across a newspaper article involving a woman named
"Cleta", how the name was spelled because it is a rather unusual name....  :-)



 AH>  Most people simply add a final /d/ in words like the
 AH>  following:

 AH>   cleaned, combed, fixed, forked, guessed, longed, managed,
 AH>   muttered, pitied, played, wandered, wondered, yearned.

 AK>  Ah, I see my word. 


           Uh-huh.  I'm not just another pretty face, y'know... [chuckle].



 AH>  All of the examples I've been able to come up with so
 AH>  far in which we routinely treat "- ed" as an added
 AH>  syllable involve words ending in "t" or "d":

 AH>   counted, courted, painted, mended, sounded, wounded.

 AK>  I vaguely recollect that I was taught such a thing in
 AK>  school, but I forgot it.


           While you learned English as a foreign language native speakers are
often expected to understand this stuff intuitively.  For various reasons many
people may not have received such input during a time in their lives when they
were ready, willing, and able to appreciate it.  I love it when folks like you
question my own assumptions & send me scurrying to my reference books....  :-)



 AH>   * blessed, leaned, learned, spelled

 AH>  When these words are used as past participles, you may
 AH>  occasionally see or hear "t" (esp. UK?) in place of the
 AH>  "- ed".  Either way is correct in Canada.... :-)

 AK>  I have never heard that "to bless" is a irregular verb:


           I don't think of it as such... but I do know of situations in which
the difference between /d/ & /t/ may not be entirely clear to the listener.  I
see what we're dealing with here as alternative spelling & pronunciation.  :-)




--- timEd/386 1.10.y2k+
 * Origin: Wits' End, Vancouver CANADA (1:153/716)