Alveolar trill

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Alveolar trill
r
IPA number 122
Encoding
Entity (decimal) r
Unicode (hex) U+0072
X-SAMPA r
Kirshenbaum r<trl>
Sound
Alveolar trill.ogg

 

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 Catalan, Spanish, Albanian and some Portuguese dialects, which treat them as separate phonemes.

Contents

Features

Features of the alveolar trill:

Occurrence

Language Word IPA Meaning Notes
Abkhaz ашəара [aʃʷara] 'measure' See Abkhaz phonology
Adyghe рекӀы [retʃə] 'crushing'
Afrikaans rooi [rɔɪ] 'red'
Albanian rrush [ruʃ] 'grape'
Arabic رأس [rɑʔs] 'head' Represented by a <ر>. See Arabic phonology
Armenian ռումբ About this sound [rumb] 'cannon-ball'
Asturian xenru [ʃɵ̃nˈru] 'son-in-law'
Basque errota [erot̪a] 'mill'
Catalan[1] roba [ˈrɔβə] 'clothes' Weakly trilled, see Catalan phonology
Czech chlor [xlɔ̝ːr] 'chlorine' May be syllabic. See Czech phonology
Dutch rood About this sound [roːt] 'red' Standard pronunciation. Pronunciation of 'r' varies regionally, see Dutch phonology
English Scottish curd [kʌrd] 'curd' See English phonology
Esperanto tri About this sound [tri] 'three'
Estonian narr [nɑrː] 'fool'
Finnish purra [purːɑ] 'to bite' See Finnish phonology
French southern France and Corsica rouge [ruʒ] 'red' See Standard and Quebec French phonologies.
rural Quebec
African French
German some dialects Schmarrn About this sound [ʃmaːrn] 'nonsense' See German phonology
Greek χορός [xoˈros] 'dance' See Modern Greek phonology
Hebrew Some dialects[clarification needed] ראש [roʃ] 'head' See Modern Hebrew phonology
Hindi घर [ɡʱər] 'house' See Hindi-Urdu phonology
Hungarian arra [ɒrːɒ] 'that way' See Hungarian phonology
Icelandic rós [ˈroːus] 'rose' See Icelandic phonology
Ilokano gurruod [ɡʊˈruʔod] 'thunder'
Italian[2] terra [ˈtɛrra] 'earth' See Italian phonology
Japanese Some dialects 羅針/rashin [raɕiɴ] 'compass' Use of [r] is known in Japanese as makijita' (巻き舌; 'rolling tongue').
Kele[3] [ⁿrikei] 'leg'
Macedonian игра [igra] 'play' See Macedonian phonology
Malay Standard arah [arah] 'direction'
Ngwe Njoagwi dialect [lɛ̀rɛ́] 'eye'
Persian رستم/Rostam [ˈrostʌm] 'Rostam' Allophone of [ɾ] in word-initial positions. See Persian phonology.
Polish[4] krok About this sound [ˈkrɔk] 'step' See Polish phonology
Portuguese Some dialects carro [ˈkaru] 'car' Northern European Portuguese and some Brazilian speakers. Guttural in most dialects. See Portuguese phonology
Russian[5] играть [ɪˈɡr̠atʲ] 'to play' Retracted. See Russian phonology
Scots wir [wir] 'our'
Serbo-Croatian рт/rt [r̩t] 'cape' May be syllabic. See Serbo-Croatian phonology
Slovak[6] krk [kr̩k] 'neck' May be a tap, particularly when not syllabic
Spanish[7] perro [ˈpe̞ro̞] 'dog' See Spanish phonology
Swedish Central Standard rov About this sound [ruːv] 'prey' See Swedish phonology
Tajik арра [ʌrrʌ] 'saw'
Titan[3] [ⁿrakeiʔin] 'girls'
Ubykh [bəqˤʼərda] 'to roll around' See Ubykh phonology
Ukrainian рух [rux] 'motion' See Ukrainian phonology
Welsh Rhagfyr [ˈr̥aɡvɨr] 'December' Contrasts voiced and voiceless alveolar trills. See Welsh phonology.
West Frisian rûp [rup] 'carterpillar'
Zapotec Tilquiapan[8] r-ree [rəˀə] 'habitual-go out' Underlyingly two sequences of /ɾ/

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 ⟨⟩; this sound has since merged with [r] in Modern Greek.

Occurrence

Language Word IPA Meaning Notes
Icelandic dagur [ˈtaːɣʏr̥] 'day' Postvocalic allophone of /r/. See Icelandic phonology
Lezgian[9] крчар/krčar [ˈkʰr̥t͡ʃar] 'horns' Allophone of /r/ between voiceless obstruents
Welsh Rhagfyr [ˈr̥aɡvɨr] 'December' Contrasts voiced and voiceless alveolar trills. See Welsh phonology.

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, ⟨⟩. (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.

(Listen: About this sound [r̝] )

Occurrence

Language Word IPA Meaning Notes
Czech čtyři About this sound [t͡ʃtɪr̝ɪ] 'four' See Czech phonology

See also

References

Bibliography


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