Name: Why Americans Say the R and the British Don't
Uploaded: 2026-01-26T04:24:01.000Z
Duration: 5 min 36 s
Description: Thousands of YouTube videos with English-Chinese subtitles! Now you can learn to understand native speakers, expand your vocabulary, and improve your pronunciation...

Did you know that when the people from England first invaded and started living in the land that is now the United States, they pronounced the R like we do, or most of us do today in the United States.

Adverbs of degree

So we said mother hard, just like we pronounce the R today in standard American English, just like how I pronounce the R, like in the word car.

That is how they talked in the 1600s when they first came over to the United States.

It wasn't until the 1700s and 1800s that it became fashionable in London and Southern England, especially among the upper classes, to drop the R.

And forgive my British impersonation, I'm not really good at it.

But they started to say, instead of hard, they say hard.

Basically, they dropped the R and they started to do the ah or the R or the something like that.

You know, I'm not good at it, but you know what I mean?

They did have an influence on the United States.

That's why the regional accents of the east coast, from New England up in Boston and all the way through New York and all the way through the south, even like in Charleston, South Carolina, they tried to drop their R to sound more like the sophisticated people in London.

That's why my grandmother, who has a strong Maine accent, doesn't say, park the car.

So that's why the regional accents of the east part of the United States, especially the east coast, they do drop the R.

But all of the people who moved out to the Midwest, the Midwest is like over by Chicago and even further west all the way to California.

These people maintained the original R. So eventually these people established geographical dominance over the country.

And the original R pronunciation was more neutral.

And it was good for all classes, not just people trying to imitate the upper class.

So the standard American English R pronunciation became the default English, the, the media friendly English.

That's why nowadays most of the younger generations, like my generation, like Gen Z millennials and even younger, most of us don't have or use the regional accents.

Most of us just speak homogenized standard American English and we pronounce our R's like R.

But you can still hear the regional accents in older generations and in very places, specific communities.

A lot of young people can imitate them because, you know, they're our grandparents.

Some of our parents kind of talk like that, but

we don't talk like that most of the time.

That's why I tell students to not really worry about regional accents and just kind of focus on standard American English, because that's what you're going to hear most of the time, especially on the Internet.

So next time somebody says that British English is the original English, well, that's wrong for many reasons.

The most important reason is just the simple fact that even in England, they don't talk like how their ancestors talked.

Even in England, there isn't one way of talking.

Like, nobody today speaks the original version of their language.

But another interesting reason that you might not have thought of and that I didn't even know until recently is, is the fact that the standard American English dialect actually pronounces the R more like original English, while the British just randomly decided that they don't think it's cool to pronounce the R like that anymore.

They don't think it sounds sophisticated.

And that, of course, also affected Australian English.

So if you ever hear a British or Australian person saying that Americans pronounce the R strange, you can tell them that we actually use the original R pronunciation.

Different dialects are what makes life and languages interesting.

As a person who is learning English, do you prefer the original R pronunciation, the R, or do you prefer the British and Australian R pronunciation?

If you prefer dropping the R, then you probably will like the Boston and New York accents.

I'm thinking about making a video comparing those two accents because they're pretty funny and a lot of people can't really identify what makes them different, but

So let me know if you're interested in a video about that.

And also just all of the accents in the United States I'd like to make a video about.

Just focus on standard American English because that's what you're going to encounter the most.

Subtitles ListPlay Video

Why Americans Say the R and the British Don't

eventually

pronunciation

obvious

sophisticated