Pronunciation of 'Terrorism'.

[Dennis R. Preston]

Since I do only one (albeit long), I'd be interested in an indication
of where three "r"s are.

Guiliani has no difficulty with non-prevocalic /r/; hence te - re
-rism, and he surely said draw ra line (not bisyllabic dra-wer or
draw-er). What's nice about General Amnerican? What (or who) is
General American?

dInIs (who has "tearism" [if they was such a critter] and "terrorism"
as homphones)

I have been noticing wide variation in the pronunciation of
'terrorism', etc.  It seems to depend on just how rhotic the
speaker's accent is. Everyone I hear on TV seems to have problems
with it, including politicians and newspeople themselves.

Some do it with one R, others with two, and people like me do it with three.

Some people do it with two syllables, others (like me) with three.

I noticed Guiliani hit all three Rs with a nice General American
accent in his UN speech, but then spoiled the effect about how we
'drawer a line'.
--
Dennis R. Preston
Department of Linguistics and Languages
Michigan State University
East Lansing MI 48824-1027 USA
preston at pilot.msu.edu
Office: (517)353-0740
Fax: (517)432-2736