The Case for "R" as a Vowel

You can often tell where someone is from by the way they pronounce the letter "r." Bostonians and the British don't pronounce it at all when it's in a word, but sometimes tack one on the end of a word when you least expect it. But some linguists say that under some circumstances, "r" can be a vowel. That theory won't change our spelling, and probably won't change any pronunciation. We won't soon be seeing bird spelled "brd," even though we do see it spelled "birb" quite a bit these days. The series Storied from PBS explains the different ways different languages and cultures use "r" and how it could be considered a vowel, under the strange standards of linguistics.

The Case for "R" as a Vowel