Bre'r

[Matthew Gordon]

FWIW, deletion of the interdental fricative in items such as 'mother'
and 'brother' is reported as a feature of Belfast vernacular speech as
described by Lesley and James Milroy.

Dale Coye wrote:

> Does anyone know if in Southern or African-American speech there are
> forms
> parallel to 'brother' rendered as 'bre'r'  (which apparently is meant
> to
> represent a schwa, /br@/) in words like 'mother' or 'other' and if not
> why?
> Is the voiced dental fricative usually /d/ between vowels (or would
> this be
> word final in a non-rhotic variety?) or lost?  e.g., Either,
> neither.   I was
> thinking about this because there are indications in Elizabethan verse
> that
> the fricative was either weakened or lost in this position.
> Metrically
> these words are sometimes treated as a single syllable (c.f. ne'er,
> o'er for
> never, over) but in the case of either, etc. the words are never
> written with
> apostrophes (ei'er).
>
> Dale Coye
> The College of NJ
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