Rhotic consonant
In phonetics, rhotic consonants, or "R-like" sounds, are liquid consonants that are traditionally represented orthographically by symbols derived from the Greek letter rho, including, in the Latin script and, in the Cyrillic script. They are transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet by upper- or lower-case variants of Roman, :, ,,,,,, and.
This class of sounds is difficult to characterise phonetically; from a phonetic standpoint, there is no single articulatory correlate common to rhotic consonants. Rhotics have instead been found to carry out similar phonological functions or to have certain similar phonological features across different languages. Although some have been found to share certain acoustic peculiarities, such as a lowered third formant, further study has revealed that this does not hold true across different languages. For example, the acoustic quality of lowered third formants pertains almost exclusively to American varieties of English. Being "R-like" is an elusive and ambiguous concept phonetically and the same sounds that function as rhotics in some systems may pattern with fricatives, semivowels or even stops in others—for example, the alveolar tap is a rhotic consonant in many languages; but in American English it is an allophone of the stop phoneme /t/, as in water. It is likely that rhotics, then, are not a phonetically natural class, but a phonological one instead.
Some languages have rhotic and non-rhotic varieties, which differ in the incidence of rhotic consonants. In non-rhotic accents of English, /r/ is not pronounced unless it is followed directly by a vowel.
Types
The most typical rhotic sounds found in the world's languages are the following:- Trill : The airstream is interrupted several times as one of the organs of speech vibrates, closing and opening the air passage. If a trill is made with the tip of the tongue against the upper gum, it is called an apical alveolar trill; the IPA symbol for this sound is. Most non-alveolar trills, such as the bilabial one, however, are not considered rhotic.
- *Many languages, such as Bulgarian, Swedish, Norwegian, Frisian, Italian, Spanish, Russian, Polish, Ukrainian, Dutch and most Occitan variants, use trilled rhotics. In the English-speaking world, the stereotyped Scottish rolled is well known. The "stage pronunciation" of German specifies the alveolar trill for clarity. Rare kinds of trills include Czech and Welsh .
- *The uvular trill is another kind of rhotic trill; see below for more.
- Tap or flap : Similar to a trill, but involving just one brief interruption of airflow. In many languages taps are used as reduced variants of trills, especially in fast speech. However, in Spanish, for example, taps and trills contrast, as in pero versus perro . Also flaps are used as basic rhotics in Japanese and Korean languages. In Australian English and some American dialects of English, flaps do not function as rhotics but are realizations of intervocalic apical stops. The IPA symbol for this sound is.
- Alveolar or retroflex approximant : The front part of the tongue approaches the upper gum, or the tongue-tip is curled back towards the roof of the mouth. No or little friction can be heard, and there is no momentary closure of the vocal tract. The IPA symbol for the alveolar approximant is and the symbol for the retroflex approximant is. There is a distinction between an unrounded retroflex approximant and a rounded variety that probably could have been found in Anglo-Saxon and even to this day in some dialects of English, where the orthographic key is r for the unrounded version and usually wr for the rounded version. Also used as a rhotic in some dialects of Armenian, Dutch, German, Brazilian Portuguese.
- Uvular : The back of the tongue approaches the soft palate or the uvula. The standard Rs in European Portuguese, French, German, Danish, and Modern Hebrew are variants of this rhotic. If fricative, the sound is often impressionistically described as harsh or grating. This includes the voiced uvular fricative, voiceless uvular fricative, and uvular trill. In northern England, there were accents that once employed a uvular R, which was called a "burr".
- developmental non-rhotic Rs: Many non-rhotic British speakers have a labialization to of their Rs, which is between idiosyncratic and dialectal, and since it includes some RP speakers, somewhat prestigious. Apart from English, in all Brazilian Portuguese dialects the phoneme, or, may be actually realized as other, traditionally non-rhotic, fricatives, unless it occurs single between vowels, being so realized as a dental, alveolar, postalveolar or retroflex flap. In the syllable coda, it varies individually as a fricative, a flap or an approximant, though fricatives are ubiquitous in the Northern and Northeastern regions and all states of Southeastern Brazil but São Paulo and surrounding areas. The total inventory of allophones is rather long, or up to, the latter eight being particularly common, while none of them except archaic, that contrasts with the flap in all positions, may occur alone in a given dialect. Few dialects, such as sulista and fluminense, give preference to voiced allophones; elsewhere, they are common only as coda, before voiced consonants. Additionally, some other languages and variants, such as Haitian Creole and Timorese Portuguese, use velar and glottal fricatives instead of traditional rhotics, too. In Vietnamese, depending on dialect, the rhotic can occur as, or. In modern Mandarin Chinese, the phoneme, which is represented as in Hanyu Pinyin, resembles the rhotics in other languages in realization, thus it can be considered a rhotic consonant.
Characteristics
The fact that the sounds conventionally classified as "rhotics" vary greatly in both place and manner in terms of articulation, and also in their acoustic characteristics, has led several linguists to investigate what, if anything, they have in common that justifies grouping them together. One suggestion that has been made is that each member of the class of rhotics shares certain properties with other members of the class, but not necessarily the same properties with all; in this case, rhotics have a "family resemblance" with each other rather than a strict set of shared properties. Another suggestion is that rhotics are defined by their behaviour on the sonority hierarchy, namely, that a rhotic is any sound that patterns as being more sonorous than a lateral consonant but less sonorous than a vowel. The potential for variation within the class of rhotics makes them a popular area for research in sociolinguistics.
Variable rhoticity
English
English has rhotic and non-rhotic accents. Rhotic speakers pronounce a historical in all instances, while non-rhotic speakers only pronounce at the beginning of a syllable.Other Germanic languages
The rhotic consonant is dropped or vocalized under similar conditions in other Germanic languages, notably German, Danish and Dutch from the eastern Netherlands and southern Sweden. In most varieties of German, in the syllable coda is frequently realized as a vowel or a semivowel, or. In the traditional standard pronunciation, this happens only in the unstressed ending -er and after long vowels: for example besser, sehr. In common speech, the vocalization is usual after short vowels as well, and additional contractions may occur: for example Dorn ~, hart ~. Similarly, Danish after a vowel is, unless followed by a stressed vowel, either pronounced or merged with the preceding vowel while usually influencing its vowel quality .Astur-Leonese
In Asturian, word final is always lost in infinitives if they are followed by an enclitic pronoun, and this is reflected in the writing; e.g. The infinitive form dar plus the 3rd plural dative pronoun "-yos" da-yos or the accusative form "los" dalos . This will happen even in southern dialects where the infinitive form will be "dare", and both the and the vowel will drop. However, most of the speakers also drop the rhotics in the infinitive before a lateral consonant of a different word, and this doesn't show in the writing. e.g. dar los dos . This doesn't occur in the middle of words. e.g. the name Carlos.Catalan
In some Catalan dialects, word final is lost in coda position not only in suffixes on nouns and adjectives denoting the masculine singular and plural but also in the "-ar, -er, -ir" suffixes of infinitives; e.g. forner " baker", forners, fer "to do", lluir "to shine, to look good". However, rhotics are "recovered" when followed by the feminine suffix -a, and when infinitives have single or multiple enclitic pronouns ; e.g. fornera " baker", fer-lo "to do it ", fer-ho "to do it/that/so", lluir-se "to excel, to show off".French
Final R is generally not pronounced in words ending in -er. The R in parce que is not pronounced in informal speech in French.Indonesian and Malaysian Malay
In Indonesian, which is a form of Malay, the final is pronounced, it has varying forms of Malay spoken on the Malay Peninsula. In Indonesia, it is usually a tap version, but for some Malaysian, it is a retroflex r.Khmer
Historical final has been lost from all Khmer dialects but Northern.Portuguese
In some dialects of Brazilian Portuguese, is unpronounced or aspirated. This occurs most frequently with verbs in the infinitive, which is always indicated by a word-final. In some states, however, it happens mostly with any when preceding a consonant. The "Carioca" accent is notable for this.Spanish
Among the Spanish dialects, Andalusian Spanish, Caribbean Spanish, Castúo, Northern Colombian Spanish and the Argentine dialect spoken in the Tucumán province may have an unpronounced word-final, especially in infinitives, which mirrors the situation in some dialects of Brazilian Portuguese. However, in Antillean Caribbean forms, word-final in infinitives and non-infinitives is often in free variation with word-final and may relax to the point of being articulated as.Thai
The native Thai rhotic is the alveolar trill. The English approximants /ɹ/ and /l/ are used interchangeably in Thai. That is, Thai speakers generally replace an English-derived R with an L and when they hear L they may write R.Turkish
Among the Turkic languages, Turkish displays more or less the same feature, as syllable-final is dropped. For example, it is very common to hear phrases like "gidiyo" instead of "gidiyor", in spoken Turkish. In some parts of Turkey, e.g. Kastamonu, the syllable-final is almost never pronounced, e.g. "gidiya" instead of "gidiyor", "gide" instead of "gider". In "gide", the preceding vowel e is lengthened and pronounced somewhat between an e and a.Uyghur
Among the Turkic languages, Uyghur displays more or less the same feature, as syllable-final is dropped, while the preceding vowel is lengthened: for example Uyghurlar ‘Uyghurs’. The may, however, sometimes be pronounced in unusually "careful" or "pedantic" speech; in such cases, it is often mistakenly inserted after long vowels even when there is no phonemic there.Yaqui
Similarly in Yaqui, an indigenous language of northern Mexico, intervocalic or syllable-final is often dropped with lengthening of the previous vowel: pariseo becomes, sewaro becomes.Lacid
Lacid, whose exonyms in various literature include Lashi, Lachik, Lechi, and Leqi, is a Tibeto-Burman language spoken by the Lacid people. There are various reports of their population size ranging from 30,000 to 60,000 people. The majority are in Myanmar but there are also small groups located in China and Thailand. Noftz reports finding an example of a rhotic alveolar fricative in Lacid while doing phonological research at Payap University in Thailand in 2015. He was not able to continue his research and expressed the need for further examination of the segment to verify his results. It is postulated that the segment is a remnant of the rhotic fricative in Proto-Tibeto-Burman.Kurdish
The Shekaki accent of the Kurmanji dialect of Kurdish is non-rhotic, that is the postvocalic flap "r" is not pronounced but the trill "R" is. When r is omitted, a "compensatory lengthening" of the preceding vowel takes place. For example:- sar is pronounced /saː/
- torr is pronounced /tor/