Ultrasound catches a disappearing English ‘r’ in the act
Linguists have used ultrasound, the same technology used to scan babies in the womb, to watch a centuries-old change in English pronunciation happening inside people’s mouths.
Researchers at Lancaster University in England studied speakers from Blackburn, Lancashire, one of the last places in England where many people still pronounce the “r” after a vowel in words like “star” and “heart.” Linguists call that a rhotic accent. Most North American English, including Canadian English, is rhotic. In most of England, that “r” disappeared long ago.
Weaker tongue movements in younger speakers
By imaging speakers’ tongues as they talked, the researchers found that older Blackburn speakers, on average, made strong tongue movements for the “r.” Younger speakers made systematically weaker ones. The authors say this is direct physical evidence that the traditional Lancashire “r” is still fading.
“Language isn’t just something that changed in the past. It is changing all around us, all the time, in such small increments that we rarely notice it happening,” said lead author Danielle Turton.
Studies of accent change usually rely on how speech sounds. Ultrasound lets researchers see how sounds are physically made, which can reveal gradual changes before they become clearly audible. “Ultrasound allows us to see tongue movements that would otherwise be completely hidden,” Turton said.
The study, co-authored by Robert Lennon, was funded by the Leverhulme Trust. It is part of a growing body of research that uses imaging of the tongue and mouth to track how accents change.
Source: Turton, D., & Lennon, R., “Rhoticity in Decline? An Ultrasound Study of Lancashire /r/,” Language and Speech, 2026. doi:10.1177/00238309261478619; Lancaster University news release, Nov. 4, 2026.
