Talk:De-rhotacism

Nonsense article
R is a letter, not a sound. Depending on the language, it has different sound values. It is not clear which one is meant here. It seems to only cover English, but it suddenly mentions other languages, which is very confusing. How is it that in every language, "R" is the last sound to be acquired when they are just different sounds using the same letter? --178.2.88.25 (talk) 19:54, 15 March 2017 (UTC)
 * This criticism is very true. It is not even clear from the article which sound is meant here. And then the article lists a whole bunch of people with totally different native languages who allegedly have or had this disorder, which doesn't make any sense at all.
 * Like Marlene Dietrich for instance. Was she unable to pronounce the German R? Or the American R? Or did she possibly just have a German accent and no speech impediment at all?
 * Maybe we should also add nearly all native English speakers? I have yet to hear an English speaker pronounce the R in the name of the French president correctly. And the Spanish had absolutely no idea what town my American friend was talking about when he asked for directions to "Arcos de la Frontera" with three VERY American Rs. Is that a diagnosis of rhotacism?
 * These examples should suffice to illustrate that without way more detailed explanations and some really good sources, much of this article is just blatant nonsense -- sorry to have to say so. --91.34.39.6 (talk) 22:23, 7 June 2019 (UTC)
 * I have added a citation that supports the definition of rhotacism as having problems pronouncing the letter r. Presumably this refers to problems in producing the local pronunciation of the letter r, which will differ from place to place, and language to language. I agree that the remainder of the article would benefit from more references, then unreferenced material could be removed.TSventon (talk) 10:43, 10 June 2019 (UTC)

I'll observe that the current prevalent Israeli Hebrew accent also tends to rhotacisim. Fifty years ago, this generation would have been ineligible for employment as radio or tv announcers in that country. I think that the tendency results from modern Israeli Hebrew not employing any "W" sound, so the trick of distinguishing "w" from "r" is not learned, but it also causes no ambiguity. (Most of the previous generation was bilingual or non-native speaking.) (The rolling r sound was the "official" standard pronunciation.) The classical rolling r sound is preserved especially in the Yemenite community, which also preserves the w consonant sound for "waw". Drsruli (talk) 21:44, 20 August 2020 (UTC)

Python's Pilate
Would Monty Python's Pontius Pilate, in its original English voice track, be subject to this, and possibly qualify for a section named "In popular culture"? Examples: "Bwian", "Thwow him to the fwoow", "So, youw father was a woman?" – Thanks. Andersenman (talk) 12:41, 2 February 2018 (UTC)


 * If the /r/ in "father" can be pronounced as in your example, then no it is not an example of rhotacism. That person would be developing the ability to pronounce /r/ in certain contexts. True rhotacism would affect the /r/ sound in all positions of a word and sentence. If the /l/ sound is also involved (which happens frequently in speech disorders) then the person would have rhotacism and labialization. Taram (talk) 04:18, 21 May 2020 (UTC)

Yes, that character should be in the popular culture section. The speech impediment was a running gag, and as pointed out, actually important to the film. Drsruli (talk) 21:23, 20 August 2020 (UTC)

Other examples
Danny from Withnail and I. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 82.24.65.28 (talk) 20:45, 20 May 2020 (UTC)

Barbara Walters and also Gilda Radner's impersonation of her on SNL as Baba Wawa. Drsruli (talk) 21:24, 20 August 2020 (UTC)

Not so nice
The unsourced information that the Hezbollah leader is often ridiculed for a speech impediment comes across to me more as a political expression of some anonymous users' discontent with Hezbollah than as a factual statement about a speech impediment suffered by this individual. If I interpret it badly, then because rhotacism is labelled an impediment or referred to as producing childlike sounds from sufferers, either people who really are rhotacists are ridiculed through the association with Hezbollah, or someone is trying to make Hezbollah look bad about associating them with rhotacists. Either way it's not so nice to rhotacists, I think. Teirdes 02:18, 18 July 2018 (UTC)
 * This whole article is full of unsourced information. It seems like everybody is just adding names of people whom they have heard say an imperfect R in movies or on Youtube. Isn't that what we call Original Research on Wikipedia??
 * Please, guys, provide sources for your claims when you add the name of someone who allegedly has rhotacism!
 * Talking about sources, they should support the claim of rhotacism! The source provided for Chris Packham for instance does nothing of the sort. It mentions a speech impediment, but no mention of rhotacism. It is therefore completely worthless for this article. --217.239.0.161 (talk) 18:17, 9 June 2019 (UTC)

Cause ?
So... Is it a defect in the vocal system making it harder or impossible ? Is it a defect in the brain that can't drive vocals the right way ? Is it just a failure to learn the right trick at a critical speech development stage ? A mix of the above ? And is it speech-only, or does it affect other mind or body aspects ? Musaran (talk) 09:29, 5 November 2018 (UTC)
 * It's a failure to learn the right trick as a child — learning to make new consonantal sounds as an adult can be very difficult. The word "medical" in the first sentence of the article is therefore inappropriate. Maproom (talk) 08:14, 10 June 2019 (UTC)

Citation needed tags
I disagree with the many “citation needed” tags, particularly in the popular culture section. Per WP:BURDEN, and WP:V generally, statements need references when their verifiability is challenged or likely to be challenged. It isn’t the case that every sentence needs a “source” for easily verifiable facts, such as the definition of “derhotacization.” The popular culture section needs no references; the Wikipedia articles and the works themselves suffice. For real people, especially living ones covered by WP:BLP, however, sources are absolutely needed. Roches (talk) 18:18, 30 September 2019 (UTC)

Rhotacism in Bulgaria Ukraine and Russia
I have been in a lot of countries, i can say it without hesitation i have never saw too many people with Rhotacism as in Bulgaria Ukraine or Russia.Its extremely common speech impediment among these nations. I don't know if there is some researches about this subject or the cause of it. This must be related with something enviromental or genetic. --Baris365 (talk) 06:15, 20 July 2020 (UTC)

Impediment -> Impairment
I am not a speech pathologist, but those who are tell me that "impediment" is outdated vocabulary, like calling someone "retarded," and that we should use "impairment" instead. I've swapped the word in throughout the article, but didn't touch the title. Dan (talk) 02:37, 21 January 2021 (UTC)

Requested move 12 April 2021

 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion. 

The result of the move request was: page moved. (closed by non-admin page mover) Warm Regards,  ZI Jony  (Talk) 15:07, 19 April 2021 (UTC)

Rhotacism (speech impediment) → De-rhotacism – The proposed new title was suggested along with De-rhotacization or De-rhotacisation, since that term is more accurate and NPOV, more common in speech pathology literature, and eliminates the need for a disambiguator. See also Wikipedia_talk:WikiProject_Linguistics, where you may leave comments not related to moving this page. –LaundryPizza03 ( d c̄ ) 14:47, 12 April 2021 (UTC) The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
 * Support as a result of this issue, rhotics are pronounced as non-rhotics, rather than vice versa, so the proposed name is more accurate. (t &#183; c)  buidhe  18:29, 12 April 2021 (UTC)

Requested move 23 April 2021

 * The following is a closed discussion of a requested move. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made in a new section on the talk page. Editors desiring to contest the closing decision should consider a move review after discussing it on the closer's talk page. No further edits should be made to this discussion. 

The result of the move request was: Merged to Speech sound disorder per Largoplazo. I took the liberty to do the same with related lambdacism. No such user (talk) 12:05, 1 July 2021 (UTC)

De-rhotacism → Rhotic speech errors – Last week's requested move was incorrect, "de-rhotacism" is not used in literature, only existing in one paper and a handful of forum posts. "De-rhotacization" is occasionally used to refer to the speech impediment but is not the common name, being mainly used to refer to incidental /r/ changes in studies of dialects.

There are two common names that exist for this subject:
 * "Rhotacism" (preferred by older sources, still widespread)
 * "Rhotic speech errors" (or "Rhotic errors"). This source (page 9) explicitly says that "Rhotic speech errors" is the preferred term in modern speech pathology: . More sources using this term

This page should either be moved to back to "Rhotacism" or to "Rhotic speech errors", per WP:COMMONNAME.

– Thjarkur (talk) 18:47, 23 April 2021 (UTC) —Relisting. Lennart97 (talk) 16:09, 28 May 2021 (UTC)


 * Merge to Rhotic consonant. I agree the recent move was ill-motivated, but there is little in the article that is supported by sources and pertains to the subject as established in the lead (the "Language development" section is completely unsourced and unrelated) so I find a merge a better course of action. Nardog (talk) 18:53, 23 April 2021 (UTC)
 * Would support that. – Thjarkur (talk) 15:46, 1 May 2021 (UTC)


 * Merge to Speech sound disorder, rather than Rhotic consonant, as Thjarkur proposed, as the article is about a speech disorder producing rhotic consonants, not about the consonants themselves. I wouldn't suggest a move to a new title because there's little sourced material here. It's possible (I haven't done an analysis) that there isn't much at all here that's sourced and not already at my proposed target. However, if the article remains an article, its title should definitely change, and in that case Rhotic speech errors or Rhotic speech disorder, with the one not used redirecting to the one that's used. In fact (I know I'm following several trails here, sorry), both of those titles should be, if not the article title, than a redirect to wherever this material ends up. Largoplazo (talk) 11:01, 21 May 2021 (UTC)

The discussion above is closed. Please do not modify it. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page. No further edits should be made to this discussion.
 * Support move or merge of some sort. The current title is on no way correct by policy. But it's s good topic if ill-defined from the point of view of therapy and the like, and probably deserves at least a short article of its own. Andrewa (talk) 13:42, 25 May 2021 (UTC)