BURR

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BURR. An informal term for a pronunciation of r that is perceived as ‘rough’, like a burr (a flower head that sticks to one's clothes), especially the uvular trill once widespread in northeast England (the Durham/Northumbrian/Northumberland burr) and southeast Scotland (the Berwick/Berwickshire burr). This ‘Parisian’ r is prestigious in French (r grasseyé: GUTTURAL r) but often stigmatized in English, speech therapists traditionally treating it as a defect. Commentators on strong r-pronunciation do not, however, always distinguish uvular from alveolar; defining burr in the OED (1880s), James A. H. Murray noted: ‘Writers ignorant of phonology often confuse the Northumberland burr with the entirely different Scotch r, which is a lingual trill.’ The term is also used for an accent in which a burr is prominent: ‘ Miss Keith spoke with a Scotch burr’ ( Somerset Maugham, The Razor's Edge, 1967). See ACCENT, GEORDIE, NEW ZEALAND ENGLISH, RHOTACISM, R-SOUNDS, WEST COUNTRY.

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