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'relitor' for realtor and that favorite of sports announcers,
'athalete' for athlete.

Linking R and intrusive R are sandhi or linking phenomena

involving the appearance of the rhotic consonant (which
normally corresponds to the letter r) between two consecutive

morphemes where it would not normally be pronounced. These

phenomena occur in many non-rhotic dialects of English, such
as those in most of England, Wales and the southern

hemisphere.

In many non-rhotic accents, words historically ending in /r/
(as evidenced by an r in the spelling) may be pronounced with

[r] when they are closely followed by another morpheme
beginning with a vowel sound. So tuner amp may be

pronounced [tjunər æmp]. This is the case even though tuner
would not otherwise be pronounced with an [r]. Here, "closely"

means the following word must be in the same prosodic unit

(that is, not separated by a pausa). This phenomenon is known
as linking R. Not all non-rhotic varieties feature linking R. A

notable non-rhotic accent that does not have linking R is
Southern American English.

Intrusive R

The phenomenon of intrusive R is an overgeneralizing
reinterpretation of linking R into an r-insertion rule that affects

any word that ends in the non-high vowels /ə/, /ɪə/, /ɑː/, or /ɔː/;
when such a word is closely followed by another word

beginning in a vowel sound, an [r] is inserted between them,

even when no final /r/ was historically present. For example, the

phrase tuna oil would be pronounced [tjunər ɔɪl]. The

epenthetic [r] can be inserted to prevent hiatus, two consecutive
vowel sounds. Other recognizable examples are the Beatles

singing: "I saw-r-a film today, oh boy" in the song "A Day in

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