Hildegard L. C. Tristram

• realisation in form of a retroflex is not only found in the English south West ('West Country burr'), but also across the English Channel in a well circumscribed area of Trégor in Brittany. Both areas also share other phonetic features such as sonorisation of word initial fricatives, epenthesis, surnames etc. How is this to be explained? Intensive mobility and trade across the sea suggest themselves as a possible answer. Travelling by sea, aided by expert knowledge of the seasonal currents and winds, was much quicker and efficient in former times than travelling across land. In this connection, the phenomenon of the "Johnnys de Roccoff" who traded Breton onions along the English coasts until very recently is pointed ou as a type of contact which may have transported phoneme realisations and lexis across the sea, forming a linguistic area with not much contact with their respective hinterlands in England and Brittany.