"r (IPA)" redirects here. For the 'r' sound (as in English
red) sometimes transcribed
[r] for convenience, see
Alveolar approximant ([ɹ]).
The alveolar trill is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents dental, alveolar, and postalveolar trills is ⟨r⟩, and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is r. It is commonly called the rolled R, rolling R, or trilled R. Quite often, ⟨r⟩ is used in phonemic transcriptions (especially those found in dictionaries) of languages like English and German that have rhotic consonants that are not an alveolar trill. This is partly due to ease of typesetting and partly because ⟨r⟩ is the letter used in the orthographies of these languages.
In the majority of Indo-European languages, this sound is at least occasionally allophonic with an alveolar tap [ɾ], particularly in unstressed positions. Exceptions to this include Albanian, Spanish, and a number of Armenian and Portuguese dialects, which treat them as completely separate phonemes.
People with ankyloglossia may find it exceptionally difficult to articulate this consonant due to the limited mobility of their tongues.[1][2]
Features
Features of the alveolar trill:
Occurrence
Voiceless alveolar trill
Some languages possess a voiceless alveolar trill, which differs only in the vibrations of the vocal cord. This is rare, and usually occurs alongside the voiced version as a similar phoneme or an allophone. It is postulated to have occurred in Ancient Greek, where it was spelled ⟨ῥ⟩; this sound has since merged with /r/ in Modern Greek.
Occurrence
Raised alveolar non-sonorant trill
In Czech there are two contrasting alveolar trills. Besides the typical trill, written r, there is another, written ř, in words such as rybáři [ˈrɪbaːr̝ɪ] 'fishermen' and the common surname Dvořák. Its manner of articulation is similar to [r] but the tongue is raised; it is partially fricative, with the frication sounding rather like [ʒ], though not so retracted. Thus in the IPA it is written as ⟨r⟩ plus the raising diacritic, ⟨r̝⟩. (Before the 1989 IPA Kiel Convention, it had a dedicated symbol ⟨ɼ⟩). It is normally voiced, but there is a voiceless allophone [r̝̊] as with many other Czech consonants. The Kobon language of Papua New Guinea also has a fricative trill, although the degree of frication is variable.
Occurrence
See also
References
Bibliography
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