61
Do British people say "brr" when they're cold? If so, how do they pronounce the R?
(discuss.tchncs.de)
We kind of go "brur".
this post was submitted on 25 Apr 2025
61 points (91.8% liked)
No Stupid Questions
40302 readers
1101 users here now
No such thing. Ask away!
!nostupidquestions is a community dedicated to being helpful and answering each others' questions on various topics.
The rules for posting and commenting, besides the rules defined here for lemmy.world, are as follows:
Rules (interactive)
Rule 1- All posts must be legitimate questions. All post titles must include a question.
All posts must be legitimate questions, and all post titles must include a question. Questions that are joke or trolling questions, memes, song lyrics as title, etc. are not allowed here. See Rule 6 for all exceptions.
Rule 2- Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material.
Your question subject cannot be illegal or NSFW material. You will be warned first, banned second.
Rule 3- Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here.
Do not seek mental, medical and professional help here. Breaking this rule will not get you or your post removed, but it will put you at risk, and possibly in danger.
Rule 4- No self promotion or upvote-farming of any kind.
That's it.
Rule 5- No baiting or sealioning or promoting an agenda.
Questions which, instead of being of an innocuous nature, are specifically intended (based on reports and in the opinion of our crack moderation team) to bait users into ideological wars on charged political topics will be removed and the authors warned - or banned - depending on severity.
Rule 6- Regarding META posts and joke questions.
Provided it is about the community itself, you may post non-question posts using the [META] tag on your post title.
On fridays, you are allowed to post meme and troll questions, on the condition that it's in text format only, and conforms with our other rules. These posts MUST include the [NSQ Friday] tag in their title.
If you post a serious question on friday and are looking only for legitimate answers, then please include the [Serious] tag on your post. Irrelevant replies will then be removed by moderators.
Rule 7- You can't intentionally annoy, mock, or harass other members.
If you intentionally annoy, mock, harass, or discriminate against any individual member, you will be removed.
Likewise, if you are a member, sympathiser or a resemblant of a movement that is known to largely hate, mock, discriminate against, and/or want to take lives of a group of people, and you were provably vocal about your hate, then you will be banned on sight.
Rule 8- All comments should try to stay relevant to their parent content.
Rule 9- Reposts from other platforms are not allowed.
Let everyone have their own content.
Rule 10- Majority of bots aren't allowed to participate here. This includes using AI responses and summaries.
Credits
Our breathtaking icon was bestowed upon us by @Cevilia!
The greatest banner of all time: by @TheOneWithTheHair!
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
If it is particularly taters out it can be done by clenching your teeth, lips together but not firmly closed, saying 'buh' and blowing. The 'rrrr' is produced by your lips flapping together. It is quite fun to do
Fookin wank shrinka innit
Does anyone actually say brr?? 🤔
Like, all the time.
Every time i get out of shower (barring summer), for one.
I do!
If they can brrap, they can brr
Tbh, I don't think you really understand how the non-rhotic accent works. In this case, the /r/ would be fully pronounced, as it would be at the start of a word. Say bread, elongate the r and skip the ed part and you have what it sounds like.
If you're very used to hearing the bunched r, the British version still might sound softer, but even in the USA (where most people use bunched r) it's still common to hear an r made with the tip of the tongue behind the teeth (upper or lower).
I'm ignoring the other r sounds, but you do find a lot of them across the various regional English accents.
I don’t have the answer but I’ve always thought it was interesting that British-English spells the filler words that Americans normally write as “uhh” or “um” as “er” or “erm”
Not all British accents are non-rhotic to begin with. Exposure to the sound and ability to reproduce it, even if not a lot in speech, means that the onomatopoeia, if used, should be the same.
In languages where a sound doesn't exist, it gets more interesting. In Japanese, bzzz is not pronounceable and for a buzzer (or something like a phone in vibrate mode) they will say ブー (buu) which is just the syllable bu with a long u sound (think of a crowd booing, but the o vowel there is different to the Japanese u vowel).
that's really neat. though I was hoping they would r-r-r-r-oll the R. now I'm curious about different onomatopoeia in other languages
The Spanish roll their tongues, the British swallow theirs
You are so close. bzzz is not any closer to the buzzing sound than the japanese buu
I would argue it depends upon the buzzing device, but bzzz for all of them is indeed arbitrary. Even IPA doesn't represent sounds that humans can't produce, so it wouldn't suffice, but them's the breaks.
At least it has the vibration.
sound is vibration
But not the vibration. Of buzzing. Like the "gravel"-y type testosterone vibration.
I dont even say "brr" i jist go "fuck its colllld" and shake on the l.
What a wonderful mental scene you have crafted for us. Thank you.
No, we say "FUCK! It's cold".
Or "fucking freezing init"
ih ah bit coal oot?
at least that waht it sounded like up north yorks when I first moved there from New Zealand
In French it sounds like Chewbacca
I literally laughed out loud at this 😆
I'm Australian. I say something closer to "buh", but I introduce vibrato to the sound down near my vocal cords, rather than by trilling the R in my mouth
Interesting, I can see that.
Brrrritish
Bwiddith
For me it's a vowel sound, sure, but the mouth is definitely in, or moves to, the position it would be if a pronounced R, and presumably a vowel, was about to follow.
Probably more so than in the pronunciation of name of the letter R itself, in fact, which is indistinguishable from "ah".
But perhaps more importantly, no, we generally don't say "brr" anyway, except in exaggeration or for effect. You're more likely to hear something like "it's bl--dy freezing" or "my hands/feet are like ice".
Now I'm just imagining a Scotsman pronouncing it and really rolling that R 😂
Poorly
Poh-lee*
I'd have thought different regions have their own way of saying they're cold - for example up north, I'm "nithered" is a reasonably common way to say you're cold...
Not usually, I wouldn't, but if I would I would pronounce the r like short oo with vocal fry