Bo’ohw’o’wo’er

Is this meme correct? The short answer is yes. Any native Brit should recognise the pronunciation represented by this transcription. And it sounds like this:


The transcription in this meme uses the normal English alphabet, which is not very good at capturing the nuances of pronunciation, so you could argue that the transcription is flawed. Nevertheless, the sound it attempts to represent is authentic.

I will now teach you how to pronounce this phrase in this way. I will slightly change the transcription that was used in the original meme, to make it clearer.


Bottle of Water

Let’s start with the most basic, normal pronunciation:


In this phrase the word ‘of’ is not stressed so we can change the vowel sound to a schwa.


Bottle o' Water

Next, we’re simply going to remove the consonant sound /v/ from ‘of’. This makes the phrase slightly easier to pronounce at high speed, and sound a little bit more casual.


Bo'le o' Water

Next we’ll change the pronunciation of ‘bottle’. Instead of using a /t/ sound we’ll use a glottal stop. This is certainly not Received Pronunciation but it still sounds perfectly normal. Even I might use this pronunciation.


Bo'le o' Wo'er

Next we’ll do the same thing with ‘water’: we’ll replace the /t/ with a glottal stop. At this point the phrase is sounding distinctly Estuary. I personally would not use this pronunciation but many Brits would.


Bo'ow o' Wo'er

Finally we’re going to change the end of ‘bottle’. Instead of using my tongue to make a normal /l/ sound I’m going create the effect of an /l/ by rounding my lips. Listen as I compare the two ways.


Notice that because we are doing the end of ‘bottle’ with this ‘ow’ sound, when we connect to the word ‘of’ it makes a /w/ sound, not an /l/ sound. Listen again.


ˈbɒʔ.ɔ.wə.ˈwɔːʔ.ə

This is how I would transcribe the pronunciation using the IPA. The apostrophes indicate stressed syllables. The ʔ symbols represent glottal stops. Full stops (periods) indicate syllable breaks. Note that I've placed the /w/ at the beginning of the third syllable – not the end of the second syllable – to indicate that it's the effect of gliding from the /ɔw/ at the end of 'bottle' (ˈbɒʔ.ɔw) into 'of' (ə).