A short while ago, a question came up about whether English has a plural equivalent of 'There's'. If we can contract 'There is' to 'There's', what about 'There are'? Can we shorten this, too?
My answer was that whilst we don't have a standard written equivalent (writing 'There're' will get you a squiggly red line on any spellcheck) we do have a spoken one. In most standard British English accents, the two words 'There are' are usually contracted in speech to something resembling 'There-a' with a schwa on the end.
So, if I were to say the following two sentences in a relaxed, conversational way, they would sound exactly the same:
I think there are people from Scandinavia.
I think they're a people from Scandinavia.
So, this is my question:
1. Would I be right in thinking that these two sentences would not sound the same in accents where the 'r' in 'are' is pronounced? This would apply to most speakers from North America, Scotland and Ireland.
2. If not, how would you pronounce 'there are' in fast connected speech? Would you say 'there're' with the 'r' of 'are' following on from the 'r' of 'there'? Or combine the two into one long sound? Or not contract them at all?
I became curious about this when an American member said that he found the contraction 'There're' harder to pronounce than the full form. This made me wonder whether the spoken contraction was a feature of just non-rhotic accents, such as those of SE England and Australia. If this is the case, it would explain why there is no equivalent written form. After all, the non-rhotic variant is a comparatively late addition to the language, an affectation of the London elite that appeared only a few centuries ago.
Any thoughts?
As for the written form:
Yes, there're certainly exists as a convention for written forms of dialogue. Thank you to Dan for finding some examples. But note that the examples are all direct speech, between inverted commas.
Unlike the singular form There's and pronoun + are contractions ( we're, you're, they're), the form there're is not used in standard prose, however informal.
Picking up where we left off before the holidays... Thank you for all your comments, especially to Susan and Richard for the recordings. It's always nice to hear people's voices.
And thanks to Phil for bringing up the subject of 'clearer' versus 'more clear'. I can imagine that pronouncing a tiny unaccented syllable beginning and ending with an 'r' may be difficult. This is, I guess, is why 'mirror' and 'squirrel' often end up as a monosyllabic 'mirrr' or 'squirrrl' in some N. American accents. I can also see why people would avoid the r+schwa+r combinations if there happens to be a handy alternative, such as the wholly acceptable 'more' version of a comparative adjective.
This isn't an issue in non-rhotic accents, needless to say: for most English and Australian people, for example, 'clear' is pronounced 'cleah', while 'clearer' is pronounced 'clearuh' - so no problem there. This probably means that we wouldn't resort to 'more clear' to make life easier for ourselves in conversation.
I wonder if 'more clear' is actually more common ( or commoner?) in the US than in Britain, for example, for the simple reason that it's easier to say. So, if rhotic accent users choose one grammatical form over another purely on the grounds of ease of articulation, while non-rhotic accents have no need to.....here's a question:
Is this an example of phonology impacting on grammar?
Any thoughts?
Here are my four simple comments:
1 in written form... I have never used the contraction, nor have I seen it used very often
2 informally and quickly spoken... sounds like "their", e.g. 'There're' six in our group
3 more formally... the two words would be written/enunciated independently, e.g., There are six in our group
4 for emphatic purposes... the two words would be written/enunciated independently with emphasis on 'are', especially in the case of answering a question, e.g., Are there six in your group? Yes, there are.
I thought you might be interested in hearing my pronunciation/enunciation of comments 2, 3, and 4... http://vocaroo.com/i/s15CMqKDOE9s
In my case, I would hardly ever, if ever, use the contraction. I agree with Bennett's comment regarding the awkwardness of enunciating the contraction, so I tend to use the two words independently. Frankly, the contraction, which is meant to make it easier to pronounce, seems to me to require more effort than saying the two words independently.
Bear in mind that I'm a Canadian, caught between my British/French English and the influence of the American English which we are constantly exposed to. So my comments aboot about :) this topic may not be the norm (if in fact there is such a thing as a norm).
Great topic Su.Ki.
...there are people... [ðɛɹəɹ pipl̩], or in faster speech (...there're people...): [ðɛɹɹ̩ pipl̩] ([ɹ̩] being a syllabic [ɹ])
...they're a people... [ðəɹə pipl̩]
(You'll notice that there and they're by themselves are not necessarily homophones either in all accents of English)
The contraction there're is quite usual in Ireland.
