Talk:Rhotic consonant

Rhotics in IPA
The article says the IPA supplies a complete set of rhotic symbols but http://classweb.gmu.edu/accent/nl-ipa/czechipa.html says that the IPA provides no symbol for the Czech alveolar trill fricative "&#345;" - which is correct? &mdash; Hippietrail 12:48, 29 Mar 2004 (UTC)


 * It's true that, due to an incredible oversight, IPA has no convenient symbol for "&#345;" or, for that matter, for the similar but not identical voiced alveolar rhotic fricatives in some Latin American accents of Spanish (the Czech sound is really postalveolar). Makeshift combinations of r with IPA diacritics are used by some authors, but perhaps the simplest solution would be to accept the Czech letter as a legal IPA symbol. Piotr Gasiorowski 09:27, 6 Apr 2004 (UTC)


 * No, it's not an incredible oversight, but an incredible decision the IPA took several years ago. There does actually exist an individual IPA symbol for Czech &#345;, but they decided to drop it from their chart in the 1989 revision for who knows what lame reason. This now obsolete IPA symbol is included in the Unicode (U+027C, or 636 in decimal) and looks like a long-legged r (&#636;). On a different matter, the Czech "postalveolars" (&#353;, &#382;, &#345;) are not like English postalveolars, but hissing-hushing sounds like some sibilants in Ubykh . Uaxuctum 17:33, 6 Nov 2004 (UTC)

I think they dropped the symbol because it was so rarely used (even in phonetic descriptions of Czech it was rarely used). The best symbol for the fricative trill of Czech is. --Angr/undefined 22:16, 8 Jun 2005 (UTC)

Ever since IPA dropped that "long-legged r" in 1989, I, for one, have found the current substitute, r with an up-T subscript, particularly unsatisfactory because the fricative effect isn't really due to a raised tongue (the meaning of that diacritic). This subscript diacritic has the added disadvantage of blocking a subscript ring for voicelessness, a common variant of this fricative trill in Spanish. Actually, the more widespread Czech hacek-r was the IPA's original symbol (1912 and 1926 versions), replaced by long-legged r because of the aversion to diacritics back then. It should be pointed out that another common rhotic symbol is macron-r for the apicoalveolar trill (Spanish carro when not fricativized), extremely useful for specifying this sound when "r" is being used as broad transcription for any rhotic or for rhotics in general (likewise permitted in the IPA). This makes sense, since the trill is longer in duration than a flap/tap and the macron is still permitted for length. By adding the same macron to the IPA's retroflex r symbol (with a right-swinging tail), a retroflex tap/flap and retroflex trill can be distinguished the same way, and the hachek can be added for a fricative version of that too. So, cycling back to the first comment above, no, without such modifications and diacritics (often ad hoc), the current IPA does not provide well for rhotics, especially for linguists of languages like Spanish that show quite a few distinct variants of them. A comment on English /r/: yes, there was there a rounded (wr-) type in older English, but it's seldom pointed out that many (if not most) English speakers today round a prevocalic /r/ in general, perhaps to reinforce the weak approximant. SteveRoper (talk) 03:40, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

I miss long-leg R. I have that sound in one of my conlangs... 187.131.32.251 (talk) 05:05, 18 May 2010 (UTC)

IPA stuff cited
"an r rotated 180° [ɹ] for the alveolar approximant, a small capital R [ʀ] for the uvular trill, and a flipped small capital R [ʁ] for the voiced uvular fricative."

I believe that kind of things should be left to the main IPA page. Anybody disagree? --logixoul 01:35, 12 September 2005 (UTC)


 * The main IPA page is already overloaded, and someone interested in this information will be hard-pressed to find it there, unless they read the entire page and look carefully. Here, however, it is presented all together. Why remove the information? It's not like there is some rule that there can be no overlap of information from article to article... Nohat 02:00, 12 September 2005 (UTC)
 * Yes, indeed there is not such rule, we have to rely on common sense. I do not agree with you, but since I've been a Wikipedian for a shorter time than you have, I suppose I ought to trust your judgement. On the other hand, the current condition of the page reflects nicely the "self-containing pages" guideline, so probably it should really be left as is. --logixoul 10:47, 12 September 2005 (UTC)

Defining rhotic
If rhotic consonants, or "R"-like sounds, are non-lateral liquid consonants, then why are uvular fricatives included? --Ptcamn 20:07, 18 December 2005 (UTC)


 * And taps or flaps, uvular trill, alveolar trill. Seriously, I second your view. I'd think in most cases those are thought of as rhotics, so it's the definitions that should definitely get some modification. 石川 (talk) 12:52, 28 January 2008 (UTC)

Rhotism
Isn't rhotism supposed to be the subject on the different articulation of the letter "r", or what was the same phoneme "r", among various languages, especially languages of the same origin? Bestlyriccollection

"Rhotic" and "nonrhotic" are common terms in English linguistics for dialects that (respectively) preserved vs. deleted /r/ in a syllable coda: car rhotic [kɑɹ], nonrhotic [kɑ]. Is that what you were referring to? Rhotacism is also used in historical linguistics when another sound becomes /r/, e.g. Latin honos → honor. SteveRoper (talk) 03:51, 14 December 2007 (UTC)

Why is the uvular trill grouped with the alveolar trill?
Yeah, I know, they're both trills, but acoustically the uvular trill seems more similar to the uvular fricative. FilipeS 18:16, 15 October 2006 (UTC)
 * I think because the two trills represent the same phoneme (as opposed to related sounds). This is clearly seen when two speakers of the same language (sometimes in the same community) differ, one using the alveolar R and the other the uvular R in the same words. It is useful to collect in one place the different ways of “realizing” the phoneme /r/ in different languages.
 * (Personally, I have trouble with the various guttural R’s. I am glad to see that alveolar R’s are still prestigious enough to be used in television and radio in many countries. Maybe I am old enough to get away with saying them that way, too.) — Solo Owl (talk) 18:47, 12 December 2010 (UTC)
 * A pure uvular trill sounds very close to the alveolar trill and these are the two easiest/most common trills you can make. I think you'd be hard-pressed to find a language in which they contrast; in European Portuguese, (often a fricative ) contrasts with a tap, maintaining the historical length difference between the trill  and the tap . Sol505000 (talk) 12:14, 7 April 2023 (UTC)

Pharyngeal approximant in Danish a rhotic?
See Talk:Voiced pharyngeal fricative. Does this mean that a pharyngeal consonant can also be a rhotic? Then the pharyngeal place of articulation should be mentioned in the article, too. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 18:11, 27 June 2011 (UTC)

yes. and there are rhotic vowels too that are not mentioned. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.86.104.165 (talk) 23:01, 12 June 2013 (UTC)

Liquid consonants
Why are they defined as liquid consonants? Most given examples are not liquids. Derivation from Greek is vague too. It sounds like languages not connected to Greek can't have rhotics. If someone can't pronounce the R and someone stupid child laugh at them for it, what does that actual mean? R is just a letter, not a sound. A language could totally use the letter R in its writing and not have the sound you expected. It could as well have this sound, but have it represented by another letter. --2.245.96.60 (talk) 00:37, 26 September 2016 (UTC)

Characterization of Rhotic
Is rhotic consonant an etymological concept or phonetic concept? There seems to be an inconsistency because this page classifies Indo-European rhotics by origin and non-Indo-European rhotics by modern sound value. (Were it not for the historical reason, the French r wouldn't be classified as a rhotic.) This page classifies Chinese Mandarin  (日母) and Vietnamese [z] (spelled d, gi) and [ʐ] or [ɹ] as rhotics, as well as  in Japanese and Korean. However, if we has to pick a rhotic for Sinic culture sphere, the best choice will be 来母: /l/ in Chinese and Vietnamese and Middle Chinese,  in Japanese and Korean, all of which eventually come from alveolar trill [r] in Ancient Chinese. On the other hand, 日母 is nasal in Ancient and Middle Chinese and many language today (inclucing Wu dialect and Japanese), while Vietnamese [z] comes from two sources: spelled as gi, it comes from Middle Chinese 见母 [k]; spelled as d, it comes from 喻母四等 ([ð] in Ancient Vietnamese, [d] in Chinese, see the Chinese page 喻四归定 https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%96%BB%E5%9B%9B%E6%AD%B8%E5%AE%9A). 67.194.233.86 (talk) 18:32, 4 June 2017 (UTC)

Wrong theory
(in French) "Final R is generally not pronounced in words ending in -er"

It's totally wrong, the "r" is pronounced with the "e", the "er" makes a "é" sound. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 87.91.51.235 (talk • contribs) 15:42, 16 December 2019 (UTC)


 * Giving a cue as to the pronunciation of a preceding vowel is not the same thing as being pronounced. There is no "r" sound in those suffixes, only the vowel sound. Largoplazo (talk) 01:49, 6 May 2020 (UTC)

Variable rhoticity
I just placed an expand section tag at the top of the "Variable rhoticity" section, indicating that the section needs 'an introduction explaining what "variable rhoticity" means in terms that summarize the rationale for binding all of its subsections under it, clarifying what they have in common'.

I could have taken my own stab at it but the question of what to write seemed murky. As of the beginning of the section, "rhoticity" hasn't even been defined, let alone "variable rhoticity". There seemed to be several possibilities: The section, as currently constructed, is missing some necessary foundation and possibly some pertinent details in the subsections, more than I'm able to fill in on my own. The treatment of this content begs for discussion. Largoplazo (talk) 01:45, 6 May 2020 (UTC)
 * The usual application of the concept of rhoticity to English is in distinguishing between the speech of speakers who speak what are classified as "rhotic" and "non-rhotic" varieties of English: varieties that do and don't pronounce word-final or syllable-final /r/, along with the detail that some of the non-rhotic varieties keep the pronunciation when another vowel follows at the start of the next word.
 * But "variable rhoticity" could also refer to the variation in the realization of /r/ within a given speaker's speech, such as the fact that in "non-rhotic" varieties of English, /r/ is realized as, say, [r] when not syllable-final and not pronounced when syllable-final.
 * The treatment in each of the language subsections of the section is restricted to the question of syllable-final or word-final pronunciation, mostly concerned with distinctions between speakers. However, why stop at finals? In Spanish and Portuguese (at least, in the prescribed pronunciations I've learned), initial /r/ is pronounced differently for example, as a trill in Mexico City and as, I think, [x] in Rio de Janeiro) from both medial /r/ (a flap in both cities) and (at least in Brazilian Portuguese) syllable-final /r/. So if "variable rhoticity" is understood expansively to mean "all variation both within a speaker's speech and across speakers within a language of the realization of its basic rhotic phoneme", then all these variations should be covered.

French
Of course, French is generally rhotic and I don't mean to deny that. But I've heard speakers who had a vowelised /r/ in word-final position, e.g. première, sûre. I can't say whether it's regional or idiolectal, whether it's a new thing or not, but I've certainly heard it in several different speakers. 178.4.151.68 (talk) 20:32, 20 March 2021 (UTC)

Was the term invented by Dixon?
I was reading "I Am a Linguist" by Robert M. W. Dixon earlier today and I came across this passage: "Without thought, I wrote on the board that there is a series of rhotics (on a par with stops, nasals and laterals). People had previously talked of rhoticisation (based on the Greek letter ρ, called rho), but this may have been the first use of 'rhotic' to describe a family of sounds. Some of my colleagues who were present - and some of the students - began using 'rhotic'. I at first tried to dissuade them, saying that it wasn't an established term, just something I'd made up on the spur of the moment. But they persisted and, lo and behold, it did become an established term." (p. 164) Should we add this bit of information to the article? Maybe a different reference is needed. Gnothidichselbst (talk) 15:32, 17 January 2022 (UTC)


 * That would be a primary source, we'd prefer a secondary source if one exists.--Megaman en m (talk) 19:53, 17 January 2022 (UTC)


 * It seems from this blogpost (also a primary source though) that the term was actually coined by John C. Wells. --GinormousBuildings (talk) 06:59, 25 March 2023 (UTC)
 * What Wells termed "rhotic" was what was theretofore known as "r-ful", i.e. an English accent's characteristic of allowing /r/ in syllable coda. Wells says Dixon's A Grammar of Yidiɲ (1977) was the earliest use of "rhotic" he could find for the class of sounds, in his expansion of that blog post in the book Sounds Interesting (2014: 78). Nardog (talk) 00:47, 26 March 2023 (UTC)
 * Right, so Wells coined the term but Dixon was the first to use it in this particular sense. I see now. --GinormousBuildings (talk) 01:14, 27 March 2023 (UTC)

The term "non-rhotic"
In both German and Danish, -diphthongs form a separate class of sounds, all of which can be traced to the historical and the consonant resurfaces in inflected forms in German (not in Danish, or at least not always). The syllable-initial is very weak in both languages, being a uvular approximant, which is very similar to. The is vocalized (turned into a vowel) but does not disappear - thus, I maintain that those are not examples of non-rhoticity, which is the disappearance of the historical  (look at the noun non-rhoticity), meaning that it does not appear in any way, shape or form (except perhaps vowel length). German and  and Danish  are examples of that, but such examples are the minority. There's an additional complication that only certain idiolects or regiolects feature proper non-rhoticity in German, as varies with  and  (however you realize the consonant) in Standard German and other idiolects/regiolects. This means that German is not non-rhotic because this, again, implies no trace of the historical in pronunciation. The underlying form of Dorn is. Sol505000 (talk) 15:00, 7 April 2023 (UTC)
 * It seems this article discusses three rather separate things: rhotics (the class of sounds), (non-)rhoticity (phonotactic constraints), and r-vocalization. I think it would benefit from being split into at least two. Nardog (talk) 15:16, 7 April 2023 (UTC)