Irregular Webcomic!

Archive     Blog     Cast     Forum     RSS     Books!     Poll Results     About     Search     Fan Art     Podcast     More Stuff     Random     Support on Patreon
New comics Mon-Fri; reruns Sat-Sun
<   No. 2641   2010-04-20   >

Comic #2641

1 {scene: the Infinite Featureless Plane of Death}
1 Death of Being Wrestled To Death By Steve: G'DAY. SORRY ABOUT THE DELAY. THERE WAS SOME CONFUSION.
1 Scientist Adam: Who are you?
2 Death of Being Wrestled To Death By Steve: DEATH OF BEING WRESTLED TO DEATH BY STEVE, FORMERLY DEATH OF BEING EATEN BY AN ALLOSAURUS.
3 Scientist Jamie: That's a strange formal title.
3 Death of Being Wrestled To Death By Steve: FORMERLY, NOT FORMALLY.
4 Scientist Jamie: Oh, I see.
4 Scientist Adam: I didn't know Death had an Australian accent.

First (1) | Previous (2640) | Next (2642) || Latest Rerun (2652) | Latest New (5301)
First 5 | Previous 5 | Next 5 | Latest 5
Mythbusters theme: First | Previous | Next | Latest || First 5 | Previous 5 | Next 5 | Latest 5
Death theme: First | Previous | Next | Latest || First 5 | Previous 5 | Next 5 | Latest 5
This strip's permanent URL: https://www.irregularwebcomic.net/2641.html
Annotations off: turn on
Annotations on: turn off

One of the major, if not the major, distinctions between different English accents is rhoticity. This is whether or not you pronounce the letter "r" when it is not followed by a vowel sound.

In rhotic accents, the letter "r" is always pronounced with the distinctive "r" sound. In non-rhotic accents, while the letter "r" in a word may modify the preceding vowel sound, it is not actually pronounced as the "r" sound unless followed by a vowel. So while speakers of both accents may say barren the same way, they will say bard differently.

American English is mostly rhotic, while British and Australian English is mostly not. So while (most) Americans will pronounce formerly and formally differently, (most) Australians will pronounce them exactly the same.

The word rhotic, by the way, comes from the Greek letter rho, which is the analogue of "r" in English.


2024-10-13 Rerun commentary: I recently saw a video about how to tell the difference between a noisy miner (an Australian native bird) and a common myna (an introduced pest species here in Australia, with some similarities in appearance and habits and an often overlapping range within large cities).[1] The most interesting thing to me about the video was all the comments from American viewers who thought it was weird that the Australian video presenter pronounced "myna" and "miner" identically, which kept confusing them.

[1] I didn't need to watch the video to learn the differences, as I'm well aware of them and can tell the species apart easily.

LEGO® is a registered trademark of the LEGO Group of companies, which does not sponsor, authorise, or endorse this site.
This material is presented in accordance with the LEGO® Fair Play Guidelines.

My comics: Irregular Webcomic! | Darths & Droids | Eavesdropper | Planet of Hats | The Dinosaur Whiteboard | mezzacotta
My blogs: dangermouse.net (daily updates) | 100 Proofs that the Earth is a Globe (science!) | Carpe DMM (long form posts) | Snot Block & Roll (food reviews)
More comics I host: The Prisoner of Monty Hall | Lightning Made of Owls | Square Root of Minus Garfield | iToons | Comments on a Postcard | Awkward Fumbles
© 2002-2024 Creative Commons License
This work is copyright and is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-Noncommercial-Share Alike 4.0 International Licence by David Morgan-Mar. dmm@irregularwebcomic.net