Consonants R

WM accents, like those of the South-East, are non-rhotic (Wells 1982: 360), but have both linking and intrusive /r/. While the SED material does show that locations near and within the Black Country (Himley and other areas nearby) were at least partially rhotic until comparatively recently, the current isogloss separating the rhotic South-West from the non-rhotic Midlands (and indeed most of the country) runs some way to the South of the West Midlands conurbation.

Chinn and Thorne (2001: 23) maintain that tapped realizations of /r/ are frequent in Birmingham speech, occurring especially in disyllabic words such as marry, very, sorry, perhaps, all right, but also in monosyllables such as bright, great, cream. They note that tap production varies considerably between speakers and sociolinguistic contexts.

Mathisen (1999: 110) explains that Sandwell usually has , but there are some instances of prevocalic . Linking-R is categorical and intrusive R very frequent.