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In Game of Thrones, season 4, ep.8 around 37:50, The Hound says:

[...]and his travelling companion Arya Stark.

He pronounces it like "Aryer Stark". It seems to be a similar concept as an intrusive r, but here the /r/ sound is followed by a consonant.

Could someone share any insight of whether this is a rule, or maybe a question of accent or something else?

Laurel
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Zyx
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  • Wikipedia: The phenomenon of intrusive R is an overgeneralizing reinterpretation of linking R into an r-insertion rule that affects any word that ends in the non-high vowels /ə/, /ɪə/, /ɑː/, or /ɔː/; when such a word is closely followed by another word beginning in a vowel sound,* an /r/ is inserted between them, even when no final /r/ was historically present.* "Stark" doesn't begin with a vowel sound. – FumbleFingers Mar 07 '23 at 18:06
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    One thing to consider about this particular example is that the actor who play The Hound, Rory McCann, naturally speaks with a Scottish accent, but is using some other accent in this role. – Juhasz Mar 07 '23 at 18:55
  • @Juhaxz: Exactly. This is a mistake made by a rhotic speaker trying to talk with a non-rhotic accent. A native non-rhotic speaker of English would say Arya Stark. – Peter Shor Mar 19 '23 at 10:55

1 Answers1

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This is an extreme case of intrusive r; it is not at all typical of intrusive r.

(Wikipedia) The phenomenon of intrusive R is an overgeneralizing reinterpretation of linking R into an r-insertion rule that affects any word that ends in the non-high vowels /ə/, /ɪə/, /ɑː/, or /ɔː/; when such a word is closely followed by another word beginning in a vowel sound, an /r/ is inserted between them, even when no final /r/ was historically present. For example, the phrase bacteria in it would be pronounced /bækˈtɪəriərˌɪnɪt/. The epenthetic /r/ can be inserted to prevent hiatus (two consecutive vowel sounds).

In extreme cases an intrusive R can follow a reduced schwa, such as for the example if you hafta[r], I’ll help and in the following examples taken from the native speech of English speakers from Eastern Massachusetts: I’m gonna[r]ask Adrian, t[ər]add to his troubles, a lotta[r]apples and the[r]apples. A related phenomenon involves the dropping of a consonant at the juncture of two words and the insertion of an r in its place, sometimes this occurs in conjunction with the reduction of the final vowel in the first word to a schwa: examples of this are He shoulda[r]eaten and I saw[r]’m (for I saw them)

LPH
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  • Am I missing something? Is "intrusive r" even possible at all before a consonant? (in OP's case, the consonant cluster *st*). – FumbleFingers Mar 07 '23 at 18:02
  • I agree with your statement, but I don't think this reference describes the case of "Arya[r]Stark". All the cases described there, even the extreme ones, still have the r intruding between two vowel sounds. This example seems similar to, but not quite the same as the "r-insertion" you'll rarely hear in some American English accents: https://english.stackexchange.com/questions/531737/am-i-imagining-the-warshington-washington-accent/531738#531738 – Juhasz Mar 07 '23 at 18:05
  • @FumbleFingers In my opinion this is the same context as indicated in the second part of the reference ("In extreme cases…"): the comma indicates a break in the flow, so does a following syllable that begins with a consonant. This type of intrusion is not typical because it is in no way induced by a pseudo r-liaison. Personnally, I wouldn't classify it a being r-intrusion (merely spurious pronunciation). – LPH Mar 07 '23 at 18:10
  • @Juhasz Yes, all are followed by a vowel, except the first, where a comma is equivalent to a following consonant for the flow. – LPH Mar 07 '23 at 18:15
  • Well, I've always been under the impression intrusive r is primarily a British thing. I can't begin to imagine a Brit introducing an extra r before Stark. I can almost imagine an extremely rhotic drawling American doing something like that, but it simply doesn't feel like the same linguistic phenomenon to me. – FumbleFingers Mar 07 '23 at 18:23
  • Google won't tell me the actual url, but if I search for pronounce arya stark the first snippet returned on google home page tells me that in British English it's aa·yuh staak (no r's at all), and in American English it's aa·ree·uh staark (even with those two extra r's, there isn't one immediately before *Stark*). – FumbleFingers Mar 07 '23 at 18:30
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    I could imagine an actor with a rhotic accent trying to imitate a non-rhotic one might end up with something like this. Is the actor American? – alphabet Mar 07 '23 at 19:37
  • @alphabet, the actor is Scottish but seemingly attempting some kind of English accent. – Juhasz Mar 07 '23 at 22:46
  • I think Wikipedia doesn't really know what it's talking about here. I live in Eastern Massachusetts, and I used to hear intrusive 'r's quite often (they're getting rarer); I sawr em is very common in this accent, a lotter apples is perfectly normal, but the rapples sounds really weird. – Peter Shor Mar 08 '23 at 01:54
  • @PeterShor: Imho, the rapples sounds weird because it's actually the[e] yapples** :) – FumbleFingers Mar 08 '23 at 13:49
  • @PeterShor Probly because r-insertion only happens after non-high vowels. The ends in a high vowel before another vowel. – Araucaria - Him Mar 10 '23 at 22:50