The West Country “burr”

Southwestern accents are characterized by post-vocalic rhoticity, a feature known informally as the “West Country burr”. Post-vocalic /r/ is retroflex in many South-western accents. This feature is perceived as particularly pleasing by many speakers from outside the area, but is at the same time one of the major stereotypes responsible for the impression of rusticity also often associated with Southwestern accents. McArthur (1992) describes this image:

Two particular shibboleths are associated with ‘yokels’ leaning on gates and sucking straws: a strong West Country burr, as in Arr, that it be ‘Yes, that’s so’; voiced initial fricatives, as in The varmer zeez thik dhreevurrow plough ‘The farmer sees that three-furrow plough’. (McArthur 1992: 1112)

Initial fricative voicing appears to have been stereotyped for several hundred years: it is a feature of the stage accent “Mummerset”, a form of which is used by the disguised Edgar in Shakespeare’s King Lear. It is now recessive, and virtually extinct in urban areas and in the speech of the young.