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Rhotic

Prosody
Pronunciation

Understanding ARPABET Pronunciation

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The pronunciation guide uses the ARPABET phonetic system—the same system used in speech recognition and text-to-speech applications.

Vowel Examples:
AE1 = cat, bat
EH1 = bed, head
IY1 = see, me
OW1 = go, boat
UW1 = boot, do
Stress Numbers:
0 = no stress (unstressed)
1 = primary stress (loud)
2 = secondary stress (medium)
Example:
AH0 TH IY1 N AH0
= a-THEE-na (Athena)

The stressed syllable (marked with 1) is pronounced louder and clearer than others.

Quick Definition

Relating to or characteristic of the "r" sound and its phonetic features

Detailed Definition
Rhotic speech patterns preserve the "r" sound in all positions (including before consonants and at word endings), as in most American English, contrasting with non-rhotic accents that drop "r" sounds in these positions. In poetry, rhotic vs. non-rhotic distinctions affect pronunciation, scansion, and regional resonance; poets working in rhotic dialects gain additional rhyming possibilities and rhythmic flexibility, while understanding rhoticity helps readers appreciate how regional accents influence a poem's sonic landscape and historical context.
Example
Example in poetry:
In Irish poetry, non-rhotic pronunciation affects rhyme, as in Yeats’s “When you are old and grey and full of sleep” (where “old” and “gold” rhyme despite rhoticity differences); In American poetry, rhotic accents preserve /r/ in words like “car,” affecting meter in Frost’s “The Road Not Taken”; In Scottish poetry, rhotic trills shape sound, as in MacDiarmid’s “A Drunk Man Looks at the Thistle”; In Shakespeare’s time, English was likely rhotic, so “heart” and “art” rhymed fully; In Caribbean poetry, rhoticity varies by dialect, influencing performance of lines like in Walcott’s “Sea Grapes”; In Australian poetry, non-rhotic speech may elide /r/, affecting syllable count in metric analysis.
Additional Notes
Rhotic refers to the pronunciation of the /r/ sound in all positions (e.g., in "car" or "hard"), as in American or Irish English, as opposed to non-rhotic accents (e.g., RP British English) where post-vocalic /r/ is dropped. In prosody, rhoticity affects syllable count and rhyme—e.g., "car" is one syllable in rhotic speech but may sound like a schwa-ending syllable in non-rhotic. Poets writing for specific audiences may adjust meter based on expected pronunciation. Prosodists must consider dialect when scanning verse.
Also Known As
rhoticity (as adjective) r-colored
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