To be clear, 'non-rhotic' is a pronounciation where the phonetic pronounciation of 'r' does not appear in the 'coda' position. This is essentially jargon for 'card' being pronounced 'cahd' (dropped r is non-rhotic I guess) which when spoken with the 'Broad A' sounds like 'caad' where the a is elongated with a slightly 'nasal' intonation and pronounced hard as if it were in words like 'at' - 'Soft A', the opposite in this sense, sounding like 'o' in hot.
I would like to introduce a theory as to its origination (or at least its reinforcement).
In the city of Boston some time around 1940, a police officer stopped traffic on a main thru street to let a family of ducks cross the road. This was popular in the press and inspired the 1941 publication of Robert McCloskey's 'Make Way For Ducklings'. It is a story about a family of ducks and their search for a home (including the afforementioned march across main street). The names of the ducks were Mrs. Mallard, Jack, Kack, Lack, Mack, Nack, Ouack, Pack and Quack. This book was enormously popular and has since sold over 2 million copies and won a Caldecott Medal*.
Now put yourself in the position of a child in the 1940s where you've heard many ducks and say the names above out loud. Seriously, regardless of where you are and how embarrassed you might be, actually say these words right now -
Jack
Kack
Lack
Mack
Nack
Ouack
Pack
Quack
Do you notice an inescapable tendency to imitate a duck's quack? The 'Quack' sound synonymous with duck imitation is exactly the 'Broad A' above and as soon as you ignore a few 'r's you're in non-rhotic territory. Is it possible that this book was so widely popular and universally repeated (before bed, at school, during leisure hours) that a playful pronounciation of the characters' names made its way into general usage?
The popularity of the book is evident:
This is a christmas ornament at the white house celebrating the book. Listen to any of JFK's** speeches and you can hear the above-mentioned accent.
A commemmorative statue which I think is in Boston Common.
This popular adoption mechanism was highlighted in my favorite (and soon to be yours) 'Spectacular Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds' by Dr., Charles Mackay (written in the late 19th century). In the chapter 'Popular Follies of Great Cities', he traces the chronology of the mass adoption of popular phrases like 'Quoz', 'What a shocking bad hat!', 'Has your mother sold her mangle' and others. Malcolm Gladwell's 'Tipping Point' is also a fascinating account of similar mass-adoption anecdotes.
What do you think? Certainly there is a causality/chicken-and-the-egg issue with this theory that could only be resolved by a solid pre-1941 recording of this accent or at least a strong phonemological*** description of it. So I leave it to you dear readers, to go out on your tele-puter machines to find this evidence. Until then, I say Boston people talk like the ducks in the Charles River; and it's kind of endearing.
*This medal seemed to adorn all the best-selling books when I was a kid. The Chris Van Allsberg books, etc. that the librarians used to take time to read during library hour.
**Incidentally, regarding JFK's widely popular 'ask not what your country can do for you but what you can do for your country' - I stumbled across in Henry David Thoreau's Walden which was published almost a century prior.
***That is PHONEME - ological, not phenomological.
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