Why American English is Highly Misunderstood 

To quote my grandmother "The British pronounce words 'properly'. The Americans pronounce words 'correctly'."

I was once ridiculed in a bar for saying “Peter” in all its rotic glory. One of the the British lads said, “I can’t believe you pronounce it “Peterrrrrrr.” He then added “What gives you the idear it sounds acceptable?” I answered, “I reckon I prefer to keep my ‘R’s where they are instead of donating them to words that don’t have any, like “idearrrrrr”.

My dad talks about meeting a man in the Virginia mountains when he immigrated to the USA from England in the 60’s. He assumed the man was also from England. The whole mountain town had a British accent.

The retort given for Thomas Jefferson's word "belittle" actually serves as the very definition

In line with the whole "America changing things based on the word's origin" I had a British friend who would try to call me out on the American spellings of things like color, armor, and other words that the Brits add a U into. I knew it was a word originating from Latin and that Latin didn't use the U. So I got to researching why the Brits add it, I found it was part of the French rule of England in the 1300s where they mixed a lot of French into English as it was used in royal court and other official settings. When America went independent Noah Webster took on a life long mission of making the American Dictionary to standardize language within the new nation and part of that was reverting some words back to their origins. The next time after I learned this that my friend tried to mess with me telling me I was spelling words wrong I informed him that in fact he was the one spelling things "wrong" and when I told him he was using French spellings he had a mini meltdown (he hated the French.)

To know that 'belittle' is an American word makes me appreciate 'embiggen' all that much more

Born and raised Bostonian here. We don't pronounce our Rs. When my nephew was little in speech therapy after suffering hearing loss he got very frustrated with the speech therapist who kept trying to get him to pronounce a hard R. I had to tell her, he's got my Boston accent and he's pronouncing Rs correctly.

When I lived in England, I got so good picking out accents that I told one guy that he clearly hadn't grown up in the area. He proudly pointed out a community he was from -- it was maybe six miles away on the other side of Dewsbury which we could see from the hilltop we were standing on.

I don’t know if it holds true today but I was taught that English was a living, breathing language that adapts easily. We were taught to be proud of our common language.

The best way ive ever heard the construction of English as a language was simply this. "English doesn't borrow from other languages. English follows other languages down dark alleys, knocks them over and goes through their pockets for loose grammar."

I made this argument against a highschool english teacher who would pronounce the H in herbalism, he cited the oxford dictionary and i countered with its french origin and the merriam websters dictionary. Each of the seperate dictionaries have different pronunciations of the word and its one of the many interesting points on how communication has canged.

My husband and I enjoyed the PBS series, "The Story Of English", and bought the companion book by Robert McCrum. Truly fascinating. We enjoy your take on living in the U.S.

I've sat through international business meetings with Brits, Americans, Germans, Japanese, Thais, etc. We all spoke English, because it was the only language we all shared. And we all understood each other, except the Brits and Yanks, who sometimes descended into idiomatic language that confused the rest. The odd thing was that the Brits and Yanks generally understood each other's idioms, even when they were different. E.g., Americans could figure out "Bob's your uncle" and Brits "screwed the pooch", but hardly anyone else could.

Bless James D Nicoll for his oft mangled quote. “The problem with defending the purity of the English language is that English is about as pure as a cribhouse whore. We don't just borrow words; on occasion, English has pursued other languages down alleyways to beat them unconscious and rifle their pockets for new vocabulary.”

Since English doesn’t use accent marks to the extent that some European languages do; as a result certain English words are spelled the same, but are pronounced differently depending on their usage. EXAMPLES: LIVE- I live in this house. NBC is doing a live broadcasting of the show. CONTENT- Have you seen the contents of this box? Are you content with your new puppy? WOUND- I wound up the old clock yesterday. I have a wound on my leg. WIND- The wind is blowing hard. I’ll wind up that toy for you. PRESENT- Thank you for the present. I will present the gift to him. MINUTE- Now wait just a minute. That matter is a minute issue. POLISH- Did you polish his knob? That guy is Polish. PROJECT- My science project won first place. I can’t find the film screen so we’ll have to project the movie on the wall.

growing up in New Orleans and environs, one expects the Creole and Cajun accents ... but running into the Third Ward or Irish Channel was just ... boil is berl, oil is erl, etc. Next door neighbor grew up in the portion of the city and listening to her talk when I was a kid was just ... fascinating. Of course, everyone asked where I was from as my Mom was from Indiana and my Dad from Virginia and we moved so much in my first ten years ... I not sure I have a regional accent ...

As the old joke... English isn't a language. It's three other languages disguised in a trenchcoat.

A writer in the Daily Telegraph wrote about "insupportable Americanisms like 'gotten'" and I almost wrote to him (this was before X) "America has undoubtedly inflicted many barbarisms upon the English language, but GOTTEN ISN'T ONE OF THEM! Or have you... forgotten?"

6:20 love the British bicycle helmet labeled "nutcase!"

People always hear old English writings and say “wow, everyone back then spoke so eloquently.” But 1) it was quite a privilege to know how to read and write, and 2) in my opinion, how we write today being less formal is more indicative of the language developing and becoming more accessible, not that we are somehow stupider these days. The gap between the highly learned and the common person is much slimmer now, which is clearly not a bad thing.

I remember my English and Linguistics professor telling us "If you ever want to piss off a British person talking shit about your dialect then just tell them American English is older than British English" and dear god has that created some meltdowns talking to people

Sometimes British people in RU-vid comments (usually not these comments) will act as though current Americans are the ones that changed the language. And I’m always like, I learned to talk like this as a baby, just like you did

I have an E-mail friend in East Anglia that I've corresponded with for years. Once, we recorded our voices and sent them in emails, and we were both impressed with the similarities of accents. This is before I read Bill Bryon's statements that East Anglia was very robustly represented among early Settlers to the North American East Coast where I live and still have a strong influence on our accents.

I loved your video on Mourning Doves. Thanks, it was fun. 😊

My favorite explanation of dialects and regional accents: Rose Tyler: “If you are an alien how come you sound like you're from the North?” The Doctor: “Lots of planets have a North!” Still, so many Brits just won’t come off it.

Love the saying attributed to Sir Winston Churchill " Britain and the US, two countries separated by a common language"

Remember, the chemist who first named the element Aluminum originally called it Alumium, but then later settled on Aluminum. It was a completely different person who decided to call it Aluminium. The Americanism of calling the 13th element 'aluminum' that many Brits lambast, was started by a British man. The first to name the element even.

So glad you got to highlight the Okracoke Brogue! Fun fact, areas of the NC coastal plains had publications and church services in Scottish Gaelic well into the late 19th century! There are all sorts of fun linguistic pockets in the US.

American English is closer to Elizabethan English because the English settlers who came to North America were isolated. They were in small communities, where language changes slowly. Back in England, there were large cities where new trends and fashions -- and language -- spread rapidly. The same thing can be seen in Japanese dialects in emigrant Japanese communities in Los Angeles and in South America. The Japanese Rafu Shimpo newspaper has been published in Los Angeles since 1903. Until a few decades ago it still used the old pre-WWII orthography and characters, and it read like something from the early 20th century. In short, emigrants who go in small numbers to isolated communities tend to preserve older dialects.

I once heard someone claim that there was and could never be a true "king's english" because of the profusion of established dialects, the continuous trait of english to adopt or incorporate words from languages it comes into contact with (such as the french and latin you mentioned), however, in American english parlance, spanish is typically the source language for many of our newest and most enjoyed words (especially relating to ranching and livestock work), and a general disinterest in nailing down a specific dialect to construct a specific set of grammar and syntax rules. This person also argued that the failure to create strictures and a strictly refined "proper" english is one of the reasons that aided in its spread and adoption as a trade language, something to which i somewhat agree, although discounting the role of military force behind britain's empire and americas expanding influence in the creation of the modern global trade system would be disingenuous.

All of your videos are fascinating. This one in particular. Would love to see more on your observations and research on the South vs. England. And I can hear many varieties of British accents as well.

I lived in Britain for a couple of years and tried to take all of the grief I got for my accent in stride, but didn't take it terribly well when a woman berated me over using the past participle "gotten" as if it were some ugly thing we invented rather than the British dropped it.

If you can get past value judgments, linguistics is fascinating. I love that all those dialects exist.

A wonderful movie about the retention of old English pronunciation is The Song Catcher. It is a movie about the capture of old 17th century folk songs from England . The Appalachian mountain people retained antique pronunciation and words. I also am a linguist from many years ago.

I enjoyed this video and the comments. So fascinating!!

I love how painful the "marry-mary-merry" bit was for you. I, a Californian, recall being in a college class. My professor was from New York City. He wrote those three words on the board, and of course we all said them as homophones. He then proudly pronounced them completely distinctly in that unmistakable Bronx accent.

When I read British books from a century or so ago, they mocked the “American” words “fun”, “note-paper”, “mirror” and “weekend”, among many others, or considered them low-class. I don’t think anyone in UK now would think twice of saying any of these. The recommended, more British and upper class recommendations were: pleasant/delightful, looking glass, writing-paper, and Saturday to Mondays, they even tried Sats-to-Mons, good luck with that one, respectively, which all sound stilted or cumbersome nowadays.

I think it's endlessly interesting how language is a constantly changing and evolving construct. In my opinion, if language has been used to convey meaning it has been used correctly, regardless of any so called "rules."

I love your enunciation, a pleasure to listen to all those interesting facts. Great video, thank you!

We even get blamed for natural linguistic changes, somehow not surprised we get hate for something we have no control over

When I was stationed in Greece I had a British girlfriend. I visited her twice for a couple weeks. All of her friends were giving me a hard time about American English, and as an American, it couldn't be US that was wrong! (I gave them the American they expected and enjoyed.) I told them that we took English to America hundreds of years ago and kept it pristine while England had screwed it up in the meantime. We all had a good laugh. Fast forward over a decade later and I was watching Melvyn Bragg's excellent "The Adventure of English" and... you guessed it... I WAS RIGHT!!! 🤣Not in all cases of course but it certainly is the majority of the difference. Americans were obsessed with maintaining proper English.

A very lively and interesting presentation. I have a US southern accent. I think in the UK my accent is heard as an America accent but with a difference. A woman in Liverpool asked me, 'There is something unusual about your accent. Are you Canadian?'

I think a lot of people miss the fact that a “season” of television is often literal. It’s typically up to 13 episodes. If those are released weekly then it takes a full season to release.

I had a communications professor who suggested that American pronunciations in major immigration areas (NYC, Boston, Philadelphia, Etc) kept changing with each wave of new citizens. But those who moved inland to more isolated areas, took their accents with them and those accents did not change much. She also said that the advent of Radio and TV changed the way accents were perceived and modified.

In college, we planned a camping trip in Canada, Algonquin provincial park. I was on the phone making the reservation, and the woman on the other end sounded Irish to me. I don't recall having any experience with any Irish English dialect, but it was very curious to my ears.

Even within a state in the US, there are regional dialects. Of course we have several states that are the size of entire countries (e.g. Ireland)

I've never seen an American say they speak English 'better' than the English do. We just demand to be taken seriously is all lol. I think we have a rather dignified manner of speaking. It's just that when we broke away from England, we stopped evolving alongside them and we have different peculiarities. Once you acknowledge that, you can start celebrating both :)

Language elitism is weird. The existence of (almost) every modern language is a testament against it - imagine speaking Middle to Modern English to a pre-Norman Englishman, or Brazilian Portuguese to a man from old Rome.

I took an ESL class from a German teacher when my parents first migrated to the US. Her way of teaching me basically included a mix of British vocabulary along with the American English I was learning. I knew of Aluminio in Spanish, so when she taught me to say Aluminium sort of made sense to me. Certain English pronunciations of various words make more sense to me because of the similarities to Spanish. Either way, I think both English and American pronunciations sort of mesh in a fluid manner which made my path to fluency easier.

Well done!

On the subject of dialects, it never fails to amaze me that the British think there's only one southern accent. And they think that that southern accent sounds exactly like Vivien Leigh in "Gone with the Wind". But she was British and had never even been to the south at that point in time in her life. There's not a single southerner that sounds a damn thing like her. Nor do we sound like Daniel Craig's character in Knives Out, since he was imitating an accent which actually belongs to the early 20th century and is very very rarely heard now. Unless you're in a nursing home in Mississippi.

Fun thing about season and series is how they are used differently in the US. "Season" refers to a single run, often a quarter or half year. While "series" refers to discrete groups of seasons in an IP: Star Trek, for instance, has multiple series, like the original series, the next generation, deep space nine, voyager, enterprise, etc., each containing multiple seasons.

This was fascinating. Thank you!

I studied linguistics in college so this was very interesting to me. I am from Philadelphia but went to college in the Midwest and in one of my first linguistics classes, we had to write down where we were from on a card. After looking at the cards, the teacher called upon me to pronounce Mary, marry, and merry since I was apparently the only person who spoke a dialect where they were all pronounced differently.

As an American living in Europe, there are far more British expats than American ones, and the British are often insufferable in their open disdain for American English. That’s if they even acknowledge it as being English at all, since many refuse to call it “American English” and instead insist on referring to it as “American”. (That’s just before they then berate us for the arrogance of using the demonym “American”, since we aren’t the only country in the Americas, despite all the remaining countries having more specific demonyms.) We are accused of “butchering” “their” language through “laziness”. (Quotes not misused for emphasis, but used as actual quotes of things I’ve heard.) The fact that both dialects have evolved away from their common ancestor, and that British English has evolved away from said common ancestor more aggressively, is lost on them. As is the fact that they routinely compare slang from the most nonstandard American dialects to RP, while ignoring the myriad non-RP dialects of England _that use the very same non-RP forms they’re complaining about in “American”._ For example “ain’t”, which is not an American innovation, but a longstanding contraction in many dialects of British English. Want to see the Brits lose their shit? Go to the comments section of any video about soldering made by an American. The Brits cannot restrain themselves from whining about how we don’t pronounce the L in “solder”, even though the American pronunciation is actually closer to the source French word, and that the L is the result of the phony-baloney relatinization in the early industrial age. It all gets quite tiring, and even though I shouldn’t let it get to me, it does. I have studied linguistics, so I know what I’m talking about, but to the British, it’s just American hubris, even though British linguists will tell you the same thing I did.

As an American w/ a linguistics degree living in the UK, THANK YOU 🙏. Wish I could teleport all this info into every the head of every Brit who is critical of American English, but alas, I usually just roll my eyes & move along as further explanation about why they’re wrong seems to embolden them 😅

These observations are a treasure!

I have a combination Boston-Australian accent (or Bostralian, as some friends refer to it). It has been called many things, including "the most beautiful sound since the invention of music", "glorious", and "an utter linguistic atrocity". In the fifteen years since this accent began forming, hundreds of people have attempted to pick it; only two have ever guessed successfully. They should really hire me to do voiceovers and advertisements though.

Something many Brits forget (or don’t realize?) too is that, for many Americans, we share the same English ancestors, so the legacy of the English language comes from the same place.

The most interesting thing here is how they tried to mock the word "belittle" by actually giving the word meaning in action and context. In other words, they defined it excellently. And from the perspective of someone who is neither British nor American who also has experienced the American accent via native speakers outside of the US and living in the Midwest for almost a decade, it is interesting to see how English has changed over the years. There are also plenty of Americanisms that Brits used recently without question, like the word "truck" has now overtaken "lorry" (and official British word for that is "HGV") and everybody now "gives it gas" to make the car goes faster. Perhaps another thing to touch on is "football" vs "soccer." Brits argue that "football" is the only correct way to say it but British immigrants to American who came over decades ago said that "football" and "soccer" were used interchangeably. And of course, America uses it to easier differentiate it from American football. Canadians, too, who have their own version of gridiron football.

Been a fan for years but will have to take a closer look at your shorts. Since you referenced them there must be something worth seeing there.

In fairly recent years, I have become interested in dialects of English to an extent. Sometimes, I'll go down a rabbit hole of accent tags for accents around the U.S. Sometimes I'll even ask customers where they're from if they have an accent I've never heard of or if the accent sounds familiar but not local. I'm a U.S. Southerner, and every once in a while, I'll detect different kinds of Southern accents or accents from other regions of the U.S. Sometimes, I guess them right, like when I recognized a Louisiana accent because the customer pronounced words like "then" with a D sound like in "den." I'd also guessed a Mississippi accent right once because they sounded almost like they were saying "Ahss" when saying "ice." I did once mistaken a different Louisiana accent for a New England accent, though, because apparently the Yat accent in New Orleans sounds like a Boston accent.

I had a British boss that used to give me a hard time for pronouncing ‘schedule’ the American way (skedule vs shedule) while simultaneously pronouncing the day after Monday as Chewsday 😂

My pet peeve is in movies set in medieval times that the actors talk with modern "British" accents. Back then the accent spoke with would sound more like a combination of American and Irish accents. Hiring American and Irish actors and having them use their natural accents would be more historically accurate.

I once heard a young English university student refer to the way American English sounds as “luxuriating”. Accurate.

Some of our American spelling differences were very deliberate. Noah Webster was kind of a radical in the sense that he believed Americans should have their own language. It was because of his influence, his spelling textbook, and his dictionary, that many of our spellings are different. It should also be noted that many of his ideas never caught on and when his dictionary was taken over by the Merriams, they undid about 80 percent of his spelling changes. Otherwise, we'd be using "wimmen" instead of "women".

A most amazing thing about American English is that a cafeteria in the US and one in Denmark sound _precisely_ the same en masse even tho there are no shared words at all.

When I was learning Arabic, the most trouble I had was the different dialects. It’s a long story. Standard Arabic is what you’re taught if you’re learning it in America. This dialect is most common in, as an example, Al Jazeera news reports. But I was told by native Arabic speaking friends that the Egyptian dialect is the most widely understood. This is due to most of the Arabic language media like movies and TV being created in Egypt. And the Egyptian Arabic dialect is quite different from standard traditional Arabic.

Mr.Pond. I love your videos and have watched them for years. I would love for you to do perhaps one long form video, out of character and on a more serious note, about English-English and its dialects, and US English and all the differences and basically elaborate on much of what you fly over in these videos. I know a thesis or book could be written about it, but I often find that I want to know more about the things you say. Just my thoughts. Thanks! PS- I smashed that like but now, three years ago... now. so that must be good for something.

This is one of the most interesting videos I've seen in a quite a while! 😮

Modern Day Brits claiming that "we're right because we invented the language" is particularly amusing when you stop to wonder which evolution of the language they even mean. A modern day Brit and a modern day American have equal roots in a common ancestoral version of the language from hundreds of years ago, but out countries have experienced divergent evolution from that moment of splitting cultures. As you have shown us many times before, there are many instances where American English is more true to the Historical British English that both Modern Brits and Modern Americans have deviated from over the centuries

I think we need to talk about how Larry is Losing his Accent. You're one of us now Bud nothing you can do about it 😂😂😂

4:32 I felt jumpscared with how American you sounded saying pour and paw here 😂

@lostinthepond you really need to do a video about Hawaiian pidgin English. It's probably the most unique version of the language that exists in the states.

I'm a French-Canadian, and our particular French dialect is actually closer to 17th century France than modern France's French. So there's an obvious parallel here - distance made the languages grow in different directions than in Europe. There is a cover of House of the Rising Sun, translated in Old French, on RU-vid. The song's lyrics and translation both scroll on the screen as it plays. Reading the comments, so many people from France couldn't understand a thing, except in the written parts, while I was able to understand maybe 15% of the sung words because they sound more like my accent than France's.

I was pleasantly surprised to hear you mention the High Tider accent. I was born and raised in the area and have friends and family with such thick accents I can barely understand them. I've lost a lot of mine from being around other people. There's also an island off the coast of Virginia, Tangier, that has a similar accent.

I'm American, but my oldest known ancestor was born on Silsden Moor, Kildwick, Yorkshire in 1499. I'd love to know how he talked. BTW, his grandson Christopher died in Maryland a year after the Ark and the Dove landed on what is now St. Clements Island. The burial records in England show he died in England. Also, there's no record of him signing the registry of either ship. I'm thinking stowaway. Maybe there's a juicy backstory to all this!

Omg the nutcase helmet! 😂 I love these videos. 🥰 I grew up in Georgia in the 80’s & 90’s and was reared on British entertainment: Paddington, Monty Python, the Britcoms, etc. And I always thought so much of the way British people pronounce certain words, outside of RP, sounds like Southern pronunciations. You have confirmed this for me! I think especially the Scottish and the Irish must have settled much of the south.

So refreshing when a British guy isn't just insulting me for being born in the country my parents chose to migrate to 😊

In Maine, if they didn't adopt an often difficult to pronounce Native American or English place name, we just named towns after entire countries. If you ever want to visit Norway, Peru, China, Mexico, Denmark, Sweden or Poland just cruise around Maine for a couple days (I've been to all of them and can say I spent two years working in Poland and confuse the hell out of people, lol).

First time here! Thoroughly enjoyed! New sub.

Regarding the R and Rhoticity. Although some English folk have dropped it or softened it at the end of words like Far, some others have inserted the sound in places where it doesn't exist. Forgive me - I am a father of a little one who is fond of Peppa Pig. This cartoon was the first time I took note of the R insertion. Instead of hearing the narrator say "Peppa and George" I heard him say "Pepperan George" - I've noticed this happens frequently when a word that ends in a vowel is followed directly by a word that begins with a vowel. Would love to hear your (former language student) take on the origin of this R

Lawrence - Thanks. An acquaintance once state the ultimate definition of the language: "The English Language is what happens when Germans try to speak Friench and fail successfully."

After having served with the Royal Military as being in the US Army for many years, the conclusion that I came to was, "It wasn't America that messed up English." haha

I'm from the Northeast United States and have lived in most of the major sections of the US. But first time I heard somebody from North Carolina I couldn't believe how unique their accent was. It's also claimed that French Canadians speak a version of French that is closer to the original colonial French and differs quite a bit from the modern Continental French.

Fascinating discussion, especially on the subject of rhoticity.

I appreciate your respect for both American and British English - and your open-mindedness contrary to the “groupthink”…on both sides. :-)

I was raised in Zimbabwe (English) and Canada and now live in the USA. I started out a bit on the arrogant side, but quickly realized (like you) that most of my old mis-conceptions about Americans and what they had done to the English language were just sour grapes and group think by my previous countrymen. When I talk with my old friends and family, it is very difficult for them to understand my change in perspective and very few are willing to open up their minds to possibility that their way is no better (and often worse) than the American one. Anyway, point is, I appreciate what you are doing here.

I love your channel! Informative and fun!😁

Laurence there's a very often overlooked difference between British and American spoken English. In the late 17th and 18th Centuries, Philadelphia was by far the leading metropolis in the American colonies and there was a huge influx of settlers to that region from what was then the German-speaking Holy Roman Empire. Their numbers were so significant that there were serious discussions about changing Pennsylvania's official language to German! As a result the pronunciations of many English words took on a German tint, most notably in the way the vowels are said. This lead to the sharp distinction between how English is spoken in the United States and how it's spoken in the world's other leading Anglophonic countries.

The various US dialects also has to do with different immigration waves. Alot of Irish and Scots settled in the south, lending to what we like to think is a funny accent/broken English. Early Black Americans learned their form of Ebonics English from them. Then mix in the Creoles and Cajuns.

"One of the things you get used to hearing when you are an American living in Britain is that America will be the death of English. It is a sentiment expressed to me surprisingly often, usually at dinner parties, usually by someone who has had a little too much to drink, but sometimes by a semi-demented, overpowdered old crone like this one. There comes a time when you lose patience with this sort of thing. So I told her - I told them both, for her husband looked as if he was about to utter another fraction of thought - that whether they appreciated it or not British speech has been enlivened beyond measure by words created in America, words that they could not do without, and that one of these words was _moron."_ - Bill Bryson, _Notes From A Small Island_

Funny thing about American dialects - as you said, because the full country is so large, you might drive hundreds of miles before encountering a dialect that's *significantly* different than one before. But, as we can pretty easily intuit, this also means that "hard lines" between regions and their dialects are much less common (though not always). The farther you travel south, the more southern the drawls become until you reach full-blown Ram-Ranch Texas, and when you start to move towards the coasts from there, you start to notice interesting fusions between the commonly-noted dialects. And then, of course, even in more rural states, once you hit a "big city" there's still one helluva shift (these tend to be the exceptions to the "no hard line" rule of thumb).

7:08 as a North Carolinian, I can confirm that there area crazy amounts of dialects. Ive gone to somewhere 20 minutes away and all of a sudden everyone is speaking like they are from the bayous of lousiness, then i go 20 minutes another direction and all of a sudden everyone sounds like they need to blow their nose and remember what a vowel is.

Very entertaining !!! 👍

I had always thought it was just Daniel Webster flipping off the stuck-up sticky beaks in the Motherland. This is a far richer topic than I had anticipated!

And a lot of the differences boil down to “Britain used to do it but then changed their minds”.

@ 3:00 That's not what he's describing. What he means in effect, is that there are two allophones of r. If you read the rest of his description (which he apparently plagiarized from the French), he makes it clear the form at the start of the word is an alveolar trill. So alveolar trill + one or two weaker sounds. Since he got this from the French, it suggests the intervocalic and postvocalic r's were taps and approximates (French back then didn't have the uvular sound it does today).

Yay, an Arthur appearance! More please! :D

So, I grew up in the Piedmont region of North Carolina, close to the border with Virginia. My hometown had three different common dialects, and which one you used largely depended on who you grew up around. You could sit at the lunch table in high school and hear three completely different accents out of people who grew up a few miles away from each other, and it was just normal to us. Most of us worked to get rid of our accents when we realized that outsiders automatically subtract ten points off your IQ when they hear a southern drawl, but even decades later, my Canadian wife can’t understand a word I say when I’m around folks from my hometown.