Linking and Intrusive R - Intrusive R

The phenomenon of intrusive R is an overgeneralizing reinterpretation of linking R into an r-insertion rule that affects any word that ends in the non-high vowels /ə/, /ɪə/, /ɑː/, or /ɔː/; when such a word is closely followed by another word beginning in a vowel sound, an is inserted between them, even when no final /r/ was historically present. For example, the phrase tuna oil would be pronounced . The is inserted epenthetically to prevent two consecutive vowel sounds. Other recognizable examples are the Beatles singing: "I saw-r-a film today, oh boy" in the song "A Day in the Life", from their 1967 Sgt. Pepper's Lonely Hearts Club Band album, at the Sanctus in the Catholic Mass: "Hosanna-r-in the highest" and in the phrases, "Law-r-and order" band "Victoria-r-and Albert Museum". This is now common enough in parts of England that, by 1997, the linguist John C. Wells considered it objectively part of Received Pronunciation, though he noted that it was still stigmatized as an incorrect pronunciation, as it is or was in some other standardized non-rhotic accents. Wells writes that, at least in RP, "linking /r/ and intrusive /r/ are distinct only historically and orthographically".

Just like linking R, intrusive R may also occur between a root morpheme and certain suffixes, such as draw(r)ing, withdraw(r)al or Kafka(r)esque.

Rhotic dialects do not feature intrusive R. A rhotic speaker may use alternative strategies such as a hiatus between the two consecutive vowel sounds, or the insertion of a glottal stop to clarify the boundary between the two words. Varieties that feature linking R but not intrusive R (that is, tuna oil is pronounced ), show a clear phonemic distinction between words with and without /r/ in the syllable coda.