This notice has mysteriously appeared in my apartment block. In fact there are two signs, one in the lobby and one in the lift. I don’t know why they were written in English; I’m not aware of any other native English speakers living here, although there might well be. The signs tell us where we should put our rubbish and recycling:
There’s quite a lot of dodgy English here, but the phrase that really stands out for me is the one at the end: “Good luck with that!”
I’m sure you know exactly what “Good luck” means. It’s a friendly expression that you use when you hope somebody will succeed: “Good luck for your driving test tomorrow!” So you might think that “Good luck with that” means something similar. But it doesn’t.
“Good luck with that” is a phrase we use sarcastically when we’re almost certain that somebody won’t succeed.
Tim: “One day I’m going to play football for England.”
Tom: “But you’re hopeless at football and you’re fat. And you’re already thirty-two! Good luck with that!”
Even though Tim is over thirty, overweight and not very good at football, he still thinks he can make the England team. When Tom says “Good luck with that!”, he’s telling Tim that’s he’s crazy or stupid for believing he can succeed.
When it says “Good luck with that!” at the end of the notice, it’s saying that I’m like Tim. Putting the rubbish in the black bins and the recycling in the yellow bins is such a difficult task that I’d be crazy to think I could do it. No, I should just put anything in any bin, or even just throw all my “waste from food waste” out of the window for the pigeons, and accept that I’ll get a large fine.
Today’s lesson is brought to you by the letter R. Because I’m a British English speaker, I don’t always pronounce the letter R when it appears in a word, but occasionally I pronounce an R that isn’t there. If you think that’s weird, let me explain.
To use a technical term, most Americans are rhotic. This means that if you see a R, an American will pronounce it. However most British speakers of English (like me) are non-rhotic, which means they only pronounce the letter R if it’s immediately followed by a vowel sound.
Here are some samples of me saying words that contain the letter R, but you’ll notice I don’t actually say any Rs. That’s because in each case the R is followed by a consonant or is at the end of the word:
Car
Alarm
Award
Corner
But in the following words I pronounce all the Rs because each R is immediately followed by a vowel:
Around
Restaurant
Refrigerated
Of course when we speak we don’t just say individual words; we put the words together to make sentences. Here’s an example:
“My car alarm went off.”
What do you notice about the way I said that sentence? That’s right, I pronounced the R on the end of car, which I didn’t pronounce when I just said car by itself. That’s because the next word (alarm) begins with a vowel. We call this a linking R.
How about this sentence? “I have a tea break at four o’clock.”
Again we have a linking R here. I pronounce the R on the end of four because o’clock begins with a vowel.
So that’s linking R. But something else sometimes happens. This is me saying “I had no idea about that.”
If you listen closely you’ll notice that in between idea and about, I pronounce an R that isn’t even there: “I had no idea-R-about that.” Non-rhotic speakers like me will sometimes pronounce an R that isn’t there when the following word begins with a vowel. This is known as an intrusive R.
Here’s another example of intrusive R. “I saw an amazing film last night.” Notice how I slip in an R between saw and an:
And here’s me saying Pamela Anderson:
Just for a laugh, watch this video of a Pamela Anderson lookalike from Liverpool in England. Notice how both she and her dad say Pamela-R-Anderson just like I do.
The letter R is one reason why you might find American English easier to speak than British English. Even if you are learning British English, there’s nothing wrong with pronouncing Rs wherever they occur in a word, just like most Americans do. However you’ll still need to understand speakers of British English and I hope this post has helped.
