The English Oracle

Apparent trill in the "br" of "bridge"

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Track title: Puzzle Game 5 Looping

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Chapters
00:00 Apparent Trill In The &Quot;Br&Quot; Of &Quot;Bridge&Quot;
00:29 Accepted Answer Score 3
01:17 Thank you

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Tags
#pronunciation #dialects

#avk47



ACCEPTED ANSWER

Score 3


Araucaria's comment pointed me in the right direction, specifically this line:

for those people who have a labiodental flap or labiodental approximate for an /r/, which is quite common now in so-called RP, there is often a small bilabial trill, I think, in words that begin with a bilabial plosive

In some dialects (particularly of British English), R can be pronounced as a labiodential approximant [ʋ] (see Wiki), a process known as R-labialization. As Scobbie (2006) notes:

With heavily labialized /r/, bilabial trills corresponding to the clusters /br/ and /pr/ can even be found.

Unfortunately, Scobbie does not cite any sources for this claim, so all I can say is that you and Araucaria are not the first to notice this phenomenon.