Talk:Voiced uvular trill

Untitled
Being a Swede I'm pretty used to hearing uvular trills among speakers of Southern Swedish, where the sound is very common. To me Ladefoged's recording sounded more like a gargle than a uvular trill. The sound quality is also a bit better and the file is available at Commons. Peter Isotalo 15:33, Apr 13, 2005 (UTC)
 * Ladefoged's a good phonetician, but he doesn't produce all the sounds in the IPA natively, and his pronunciation sometimes leaves something to be desired. His data make a convenient backup, but it's always better to have the pronunciation of a native speaker.
 * Perhaps he missed the important fact that uvular stops and fricatives are articulated with the uvula against the retracted back of the tongue – the part raised against the velum to articulate velar consonants –, while in the trill no retraction happens: the uvula beats against the part of the tongue that already lies under it (I don't know how it's called). If I try to articulate a uvular trill with a retracted tongue, it doesn't work, and the result is a gargle similar to and/or a pharyngeal trill or something. Sounds ugly.
 * However, I should add I haven't found out how to play .ogg files yet.
 * David Marjanović | david.marjanovic_at_gmx.at | 19:21 CEST | 2006/4/8
 * Actually in the trill the way I (as a native speaker) pronounce it, the uvula doesn't touch the tongue at all. Also in the sample file it sounds as if the one pronouncing it has a cold and his uvula is covered with mucus, which is the reason of the gargle-like sound. 80.55.34.82 22:31, 11 April 2006 (UTC) Karol Szafranski
 * What language are you a native speaker of? (Polish – just judging from your name here! – is supposed to have an alveolar trill.) How sure are you that the uvula doesn't touch the rear of your tongue? Does it touch anything? (If so, that can only be the tongue.)
 * David Marjanović | david.marjanovic_at_gmx.at | 00:41 CEST | 2006/4/14
 * Yes, I was talking about Polish, about 10% of the Polish population don't pronounce the alveolar trill and it is not a regional thing. The uvula doesn't touch anything, it just wobbles freely. I checked this by actually putting my finger in my mouth while pronouncing the trill, the uvula doesn't reach down to the back the tongue.
 * Karol Szafranski 21:42, 20 April 2006 (UTC)
 * Interesting. I can't put my finger in there without destroying the trill.
 * David Marjanović | david.marjanovic_at_gmx.at | 01:37 CEST | 2006/5/2

Usage in English
Uvular trills are indeed used in English. It is impossible for me to pronounce an alveolar trill, since I genetically cannot roll my tongue, so if I try, I always pronounce an uvular trill instead. Denelson83 22:37, 9 July 2005 (UTC)
 * Do you speak an English dialect with an alveolar trill?


 * I wonder if the same occurs in Spanish and Italian? kwami 23:49, 2005 July 9 (UTC)
 * My dialect is Canadian English. Basically, think of making a snoring sound when breathing out.  And when you snore, that's your uvula vibrating.  That's what I produce when I try to pronounce a rolled /r/.  If I try to shift the articulation forward, /ʙ/ results. Denelson83  05:41, 10 July 2005 (UTC)
 * What I was trying to get at, was whether this occurs with children who are raised with alveolar trills as part of their native language. I don't think that the difficulty of a non-native speaker to pick up an alveolar trill (it took me years!) is itself evidence that uvular trills occur in English. Rather, I'd want to hear from, say, a Scots speaker that they or people they know use a uvular trill in their daily English. (That said, I can easily produce a uvular fricative, but not a trill; my phonetics teacher could easily make the trill, but not a fricative. There may be some genetics involved there. However, if they occurred in our native language, I think it's a good bet we'd both be able to produce both.) kwami 06:19, 2005 July 10 (UTC)
 * I didn't say it was difficult for me to produce an /r/. I said it was impossible, because I only have recessive genes for tongue rolling. Denelson83  07:50, 10 July 2005 (UTC)
 * And without knowing your situation, going only on what you type on this page, I have no idea how you came to that judgement. I admit I know nothing about the matter. If what you're saying is correct, then there should be native Spanish speakers, for example, that use a uvular trill in place of [r]. I have never heard of that, but would be interested if it were true. You yourself are not an example of a uvular trill in English, because you do not speak a dialect with a trill (assuming you speak standard Canadian). You made the claim "Uvular trills are indeed used in English", but gave as evidence only the fact that a uvular trill is the closest you can come to an alveolar trill. However, that is not evidence that uvular trills are actually used in English, only suggestive that they might be. It would be interesting to document, say, Scots, Spanish, or Italian speakers who use [R] for [r] because of that recessive gene, and to note how common this is (in the population, or among those with that gene). When it comes down to it, perhaps they don't have [R], but rather have some other solution to the problem. kwami 08:06, 2005 July 10 (UTC)
 * Well, basically, when I told a family member that I can't roll my "r"s, she asked me if I could curl my tongue. Since I cannot do that, she then implied to me that it would be impossible for me to pronounce an /r/.  The closest sound I can make to a rolled "r" is a vibration of my uvula, or an /ʀ/. ([[Media:Denelson83's uvular trill.ogg|audio evidence]]) Denelson83  21:28, 10 July 2005 (UTC)


 * You don't have to be able to curl your tongue to pronounce [r]. Or, at least I don't think you do. You can probably make a laminal (denti-)alveolar trill, where the top surface of the tongue lies against the underside of the alveolar ridge and back of the upper teeth. I find that slightly more difficult to articulate that an apical alveolar trill, but perhaps that's only because I'm used to the apical version. And even the apical trill doesn't require you to curl your tongue any more than you would for an English [n] or any other apical alveolar sound. People only curl their tongue for [r] when they don't know what they're doing, such as when first learning the sound.


 * It took me years to learn to roll my ars. If I'd been told I were genetically incapable of it, I probably never would have learned. kwami 22:56, 2005 July 10 (UTC)


 * When I attempt to produce a laminal alveolar trill, a fricative comes out instead. And my attempts to produce an apical alveolar trill only result in a series of /ɾ/'s, like [[Media:Denelson83's attempt at an apical -r-.ogg|this]]. Denelson83  23:10, 10 July 2005 (UTC)


 * Damn, you do that a lot better than I can! I can maybe manage half that speed.


 * Are you trying to get a trill by saying a sequence of [ɾ]s quickly? Because a trill is not a sequence of individual sounds like that: There's only a single tongue gesture, one movement up to the point of articulation, where the tongue is simply held in place. The vibration of the tongue tip is not under conscious control. What's under conscious control is where you hold your tongue, the tension within it, and the airstream. I'm not saying you're wrong in believing you can't make the sound, but I think it's at least plausible you've been misled in how to articulate it, and have been barking up the wrong tree. I went through a phase when I tried rolling my ars by stringing a series of flaps together, and it never went anywhere.


 * I wrote a rather wordy blurb on how to make the sound in the Talk:Alveolar trill page. I don't know how useful it actually is, or if I'm just full of myself, but one reader at least reported some success. kwami 23:48, 2005 July 10 (UTC)


 * I'm a native speaker of Russian and even though the alveolar trill is described as being phonemic in my language, I cannot pronounce it for the life of me. It might be genetic, because my father can't pronounce it either, but my mother and one of my siblings can. Everytime I attempt to, the closest I can come up with is the dental trill (the machine-gun sound kids make). The uvular trill is really easy for me to pronounce, but I've only recently discovered that it can actually be used in language. I've used it for a long time as part of whistling (to make a pigeon-sounding whistle). I've noticed that Americans that have trouble understanding the velar fricative in languages like Hebrew, Russian, and German almost asways exaggerate it as a uvular fricative, making it sound much more harsh than it really is.--Potupchik 02:20, 16 August 2005 (UTC)


 * Are you sure about Hebrew? In all Hebrew I've heard – only politicians on TV! – there is a uvular but no velar fricative. They sound like Swiss, not like me.
 * David Marjanović | david.marjanovic_at_gmx.at | 1:40 CEST | 2006/5/2


 * Hey! Don't try a series of flaps! Try a series of taps! Eternal shame on the IPA for using the same symbol for both just because they happen not to exist as different phonemes in the same language.
 * To use the apical-alveolar example, I hear Spanish  as a long trill (5 contacts or so) and  as a short trill (one contact).
 * David Marjanović | david.marjanovic_at_gmx.at | 12:37 CET-summertime | 2006/3/31

Elaboration on the recent correction.
I just wanted to specify in which dialect of Russian the uvular trill occurs. The Jewish uvular trill is the second-most ridiculed speech variant among Russians. The most ridiculed group is probably the Georgians due to their inability to pronounce palatalised consonants. It was still the Soviet Union when I lived there so there might be some new accents gaining ridicule.

Audio reference used in article
The rolled 'r' in the audio reference of the article is rather "breathy", if you understand what I mean. Is there a native Russian or Spanish speaker who can provide a really good sample? I would do it myself, but I must admit that as a native English speaker, my rolled 'r' is rather breathy too.
 * Sorry, I got this mixed up with Alveolar trill. Sounds perfect! --TheNationalist 13:21, 8 September 2005 (UTC)

Usage in French
Regarding this quote from the article: "[Uvular trills] do not appear in any standard language even within Europe".

Is it true that [ʀ] does not appear in standard French? I ask this because that is the IPA symbol my dictionary uses (Consise Oxford Hachette French, 2004).

--Dangph 11:55, 9 December 2005 (UTC)


 * It's an old-fashioned pronunciation, but a small cap R is easier to typeset.


 * I've only heard Parisians use a fricative, for what that's worth.


 * Ladefoged has this to say:
 * Uvular trills occur in some conservative varieties of Standard French and Standard German, although most speakers of these languages use uvular fricatives or approximants rather than trills.
 * kwami 12:43, 9 December 2005 (UTC)

You can hear this trill in old french songs by Édith Piaf or Boris Vian, who were Parisians indeed, but also in songs by Yves Montand and Claude Nougaro, who were southern men. They speak it fluently, whereas it's a torture for me. Bratta75 16:54, 29 December 2005 (UTC), a french man.


 * For a non-native speaker, trying to get both can also be torture. I find the fricative easy, but have never been able to articulate a trill; I know others who find the trill easy, but can't manage the fricative. Maybe the anatomy of the speaker is important if you don't have a lot of exposure. kwami 21:00, 29 December 2005 (UTC)


 * People, it's not old-fashioned. I just changed the article accordingly. Ladefoged must have done surprisingly sloppy research. All we are dealing with is a little allophony: if not followed by a vowel, French becomes  or (rather)  (in Paris – not in Québec). As a hypercorrectivism this can occasionally be found in German. (Standard German, like most German dialects, is non-rhotic, so  becomes  where it isn't followed by a vowel.)


 * The trill is short, however. In German it has never more than three contacts and often just one – so technically it can be called a tap instead of a trill.


 * Édith Piaf? I only know "je ne rrrregrrrrette rrrrien" where she lengthens every trill beyond belief; each trill is maybe three times as long as each vowel. :o) I can imitate this without problems, but nobody ever talked like this!


 * I agree, to people as young as me (38y old). I'm French, born from French parents, grown up in the North of France, and living in Paris for 13 years. I confirm that I never hear uvular trills. I discover them only in the old french songs I talked about, and recently in a TV fiction about General De Gaulle (again an ancient period for me). Bratta75 08:50, 31 March 2006 (UTC)


 * I think we don't mean the same thing by "uvular trill". A trill doesn't need to have 10 contacts (as Piaf's did) to be a trill. Nobody talks like this, and I'm sure nobody has ever talked like this, except in deliberately theatralic circumstances like professional singing or bombastic speeches. However, a trill with 3, 2 or (at least from a phonemic point of view) 1 contact(s) is still a trill, and I hear such sounds in French all the time. How do you pronounce "Paris"? I'm sure you put a trill with 1 or 2 contacts in there, and not a fricative.
 * David Marjanović | david.marjanovic_at_gmx.at | 13:13 CET-summertime | 2006/3/31


 * Listen to this! Rouge is transcribed with and pronounced borderline. Rose is likewise transcribed with, but I hear an unambiguous trill here. Lettre is transcribed with a voiceless trill at the end; to me it sounds sort of like a voiceless trill followed by , but that's probably just because I'm not used to voiceless trills.
 * David Marjanović | david.marjanovic_at_gmx.at | 13:40 CET-summertime | 2006/3/31
 * I agree : I hear trills too. But I keep saying that these sounds are not those who I use nor those who I hear around me in Paris. Bratta75 17:06, 3 April 2006 (UTC)
 * And what about this movie? (Most of the speakers come the university of Poitiers – granted, far from Paris. One seems to use fricatives only, but doesn't get to say much; the others use one-contact trills in front of vowels and some kind of short [χ] elsewhere.)
 * David Marjanović | david.marjanovic_at_gmx.at | 22:06 CEST | 2006/4/4
 * Trills and fricatives are allophones. I don't know their statistical nor geographical distribution, but they must be close. So you cannot decide which one is standard French. Actually standard French is hard to specify now, because of the mixing of people's origins. Here's my humble example : I come from North of France, I live in Paris, my wife comes from near Poitiers. In Paris, people I know come from everywhere in France. In Poitiers, some people come from farther South-West France (Dordogne, Bordeaux, etc ...) Bratta75 08:12, 5 April 2006 (UTC)


 * Sorry, we have a misunderstanding here! I agree that most French use the trill and one or both fricatives as allophones. I interpreted you, and the article page, as saying that the trill does not occur at all.
 * David Marjanović | david.marjanovic_at_gmx.at | 23:21 CEST | 2006/4/6


 * If you really want to sound old-fashioned in French, as in Louis XIV, use the apical alveolar trill (the one of Spanish and Russian and Swiss German).


 * Some conservative non-Alemannic German dialects (in Bavaria and Vienna) retain the laminal alveolar trill (like standard Italian). This was also prescribed in the first prescriptive theater-stage pronunciation of German (mid-late 19th century) but was quickly abandoned there.


 * I'm a native speaker of German and have been to France (largely Paris) several times, often for months in a row.


 * David Marjanović | david.marjanovic_at_gmx.at | 19:29 CET-summertime | 2006/3/30


 * All right, but the fricative allophone is more common. Perhaps Ladefoged meant that consistant production of R as a trill is old fashioned. BTW, a single-contact trill is not the same as a tap - the articulation is different (vibration caused by the airstream vs. a contraction of the tongue). Trills have single-contact allophones in many, perhaps most, languages. (Not that that's relevant for this article!) kwami 18:25, 30 March 2006 (UTC)


 * Where, please, is the fricative allophone more common? ~:-|


 * Paris. Berlin. Dresden. I haven't been there nearly as much as you, so I could easily be wrong, but I've heard plenty of fricative Rs and never noticed a trill. Also, all the pronunciation guides and phonetic studies I've seen describe a fricative, even if they use the symbol . And it's not like Ladefoged and Maddieson to be so sloppy, especially with something so easily caught by so many people. kwami 21:07, 30 March 2006 (UTC)


 * I've never been to Berlin or Dresden. But the Germans (from all over the country) that I've heard speak (in natura or on TV) certainly don't use the fricative more often than the (short) trill – even if only because in the circumstances where a Parisian would use the fricative, most Germans would use a vowel instead. In French, both fricatives do occur, but I'm sure occurs more often in front of a vowel than in front of a consonant or at the end of a word sentence!
 * In Austria or Bavaria people never use a uvular fricative and find them, especially the voiced one, quite difficult to pronounce. That includes myself – and in Austria this is considered Standard German, as used by radio and TV newsreaders.
 * There are, however, languages where the trill has been replaced by a fricative on a wide scale. In Dutch the fricative is standard and the trill is dialectal. Danish – geographically between German and southern Swedish, so expected to have or once have had a uvular trill – has some peculiarity of its own; Danish language says it's the uvo-pharyngeal approximant, Danish phonology says that word-initially it's the voiced uvular fricative, and something else I've once read even said it's a pharyngeal trill!
 * David Marjanović | david.marjanovic_at_gmx.at | 13:30 CET-summertime | 2006/3/31


 * Quite a bit of variation. I'm certainly not competant to cover it. kwami 18:44, 31 March 2006 (UTC)


 * I went ahead and changed the section. I hope to have improved the style at the same time.
 * David Marjanović | david.marjanovic_at_gmx.at | 00:12 CET-summertime | 2006/4/1


 * Ladefoged may have meant that, but he clearly didn't say it :o)


 * I don't understand what a uvular tap would then be. I'm not talking about a flap... ~:-|


 * David Marjanović | david.marjanovic_at_gmx.at | 22:27 CET-summertime | 2006/3/30


 * Tap and flap are the same thing, or at least there is no commonly accepted difference. A uvular tap/flap would be similar to a very brief . kwami 21:07, 30 March 2006 (UTC)


 * Ah, I see. Apparently "tap" is just used differently by different people. I had been told that a tap is a one-contact trill, so you get an alveolar tap in Spanish (non-initial r) and an alveolar flap – which IMHO sounds totally different – in American English (intervocalic tt and the like).
 * David Marjanović | david.marjanovic_at_gmx.at | 12:44 CET-summertime | 2006/3/31
 * Yes, I think it was Ladefoged who started the flap vs. tap terminology for Spanish vs. English, and you're right, they do sound very different. But he used them words differently at different times, and other people used them differently than him, and eventually he gave up the effort. The articulatory difference though is that in one you lift the tongue for a very brief contact (a "tap"), whereas in the other you flick it against the alveolar ridge (a "flap"). In neither case is the tongue forced to move by the passing airstream, as in a one-contact trill. I suppose in this usage you could only have a uvular tap, though for labials I imagine you could get either. kwami 18:44, 31 March 2006 (UTC)


 * It does exist in Belgian French (c.f. Maurice Grevisse et André Goosse, Le Bon Usage, 14e édition, éditions De Boeck et Larcier, 2008, § 22-36.)Szfski (talk) 14:43, 18 February 2009 (UTC)

Uvular R in Russian and Polish
It's not just in Russian and Polish. I have exactly the same speech defect in my native Bulgarian language (which normally has the alvolar trill), and many Bulgarians have it (including two of the country's recent Prime Ministers!). In Norwegian, in each community where the native dialect generally has alveolar /r/, there are a couple of individuals who develop the uvular /R/. I learnt that from a Norwegian linguist who gave a talk at our university. (I should be able to find the handout if necessary). A Turk told me that occurred among Turkish speakers, too. So this seems to be a phenomenon that occurs generally in languages with alveolar r.--85.187.44.131 17:40, 18 April 2006 (UTC)

It sounds like that, but it's actually a different phoneme. A real uvular trill only involves the uvula, and it sounds gargly, but the "mispronounced" alveolar trill still has the tongue flapping, but with the uvula involved. In other words, I fucking hate the alveolar trill, and I respect languages that give you a choice when it comes to that sound: English, Swedish, German, Hebrew, etc. Guess why children learn it last.. because it's too damned hard to produce in clusters and between vowels. Did I mention the millions of adults who are sick of it too? I guess I didn't. -- nlitement [talk]  14:51, 21 October 2007 (UTC)


 * It's not hard at all. One must simply learn IPA and understand some basic phonetics. --2.245.238.184 (talk) 14:08, 9 June 2015 (UTC)
 * So that "mispronounced" alveolar trill is a coarticulated sound? Like /ɹ͡ʀ/? I am a Green Bee (talk) 19:47, 1 July 2023 (UTC)

"Where found"
The Arabic "gh" is supposed to be a velar or (depending on the dialect) uvular fricative, right? Is it ever trilled? (The voiced uvular fricative of Lakhota does become a trill in front of /i/.)


 * I have never heard the Arabic غ [ʁ~ɣ] trilled, nor seen it described as such anywhere. I'm absolutely certain it's just a plain fricative.


 * Incidentally, some diachronic reconstructions of early (pre-umayyad) Classical Arabic do describe the ghayn as a trill.Szfski (talk) 16:23, 18 February 2009 (UTC)


 * The situation is a little more ambiguous, though, with خ [χ~x]. It very well could have allophonic uvular trilling going on, as Hebrew does with its uvular fricative.24.235.155.156 17:03, 3 September 2007 (UTC)

Does the same hold for the Gaelic dh/gh?

Are you sure about the tongue shapes?!? To me this sounds like unsubstantiated ad-hoc speculation. Please cite something for this.

David Marjanović | david.marjanovic_at_gmx.at | 23:23 CEST | 2006/04/19
 * The exact thing is that the mentioned minor surgery involves cutting into the Frenulum linguae a bit, so the tongue has more freedom of movement. Also see Ankyloglossia. However, it isn't always the reason behind the lack of the alveolar trill. For example, I don't have ankyloglossia, and both my parents pronounce the alveolar trill (If one or both of the parents pronounce the uvular trill or something else in place of the alveolar, children usually duplicate it regardless of anatomical variables.), yet I don't, for reasons not yet discovered ;).
 * Karol Szafranski 21:42, 20 April 2006 (UTC)

Usage in Swedish
Being a native of Sölvesborg, Sweden, I can with quite some certainty say that we, or at least as far as I perceive it, pronouce our R:s as uvular trills. It's a regional thing and I think it's a part of the West Blekingian dialect. The Swedish down here is rather varied, first most of the people here speak West Blekingian (I think), then we live just a short bit for Scania, were people use uvular fricatives instead, and just above the so-called Listerlandet, were many dialect varieties use alveolar trills. All of these are regoional variations of the standard language, for Standard Swedish and/or Stockholm Swedish use alveolar taps, or at least that's what I hear. I'm just curious as to why there aren't any Swedish examples in neither this article, nor the one about uvular fricatives, 'cause they are very much present.

I don't have any sources to quote, sadly, but I'm quite sure there are some out there. If television can be of any help, SVT (Sverige Television) ran a series called Svenska Dialektmysterier or "Swedish Dialect Mysteries", there I'm sure they point out the differences. Nederbörd (talk) 20:30, 10 June 2009 (UTC)
 * Most of the examples are uncited anyway. At some point we'll get stricter with the examples, but until then I don't see too much of a problem with another uncited example.  — Æµ§œš¹  [aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi]  23:51, 10 June 2009 (UTC)

In German
I realise that this has been discussed at some length, but I think it would be appropriate to include German in the list of languages, even if we must add the proviso that the uvular trill is a feature of conservative speech. Even on Wikipedia this sound is often used in transcriptions of German. It was recently added to Angela Merkel, for example, and was used in the main German language page until I changed it to the fricative. Lfh (talk) 18:16, 27 October 2009 (UTC)

Ideas about "originating in French and spreading" that are unsourced and incorrect original research
The article contained completely unsupported claims about 1) the uvular trill originating in French, 2) spreading to most other northern European languages, and 3) continued existence in a large list of languages and dialects. The paragraph then goes on to undermine this by pointing out that in many of these languages the uvular fricative is the more common realization. Phonemic inventories for these northern European languages do not support the claims 2) and 3) above. If someone has citations in reliable, peer-reviewed publications that support these claims, then please give them and undo my edits. Inter lingua 15:05, 13 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Done. Probably would've saved you some work if you just fact tagged it.  — Æµ§œš¹  [aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi]  01:37, 14 December 2010 (UTC)
 * Thanks. Inter lingua 12:17, 14 December 2010 (UTC)

Small capital ʀ
Does anybody know why the small capital ʀ, when copypasted on some other page into the search box, is seen by the software to be identical with Ʀ and thus redirects users to Algiz? I suppose more people are likely to want to find out what the pronunciation symbol is, but fixing this is far beyond my computing literacy I'm afraid. --Thrissel (talk) 22:57, 28 September 2012 (UTC)
 * ‹ʀ› is used to transcribe the Old Norse rhotacized reflex of *z, but beyond that this does not seem to be necessary, indeed. The Algiz article mentions Latin transcription only rather fleetingly, and with no mention of the capital letter. I'll go ahed and adjust the redirect. We might consider noting this transcription practice on this page as well. -- Trɔpʏliʊm • blah 13:52, 29 September 2012 (UTC)
 * (PS. Of course, you can still "Search" rather than "Go" and get a list of pages using ʀ for whatever purpose…)
 * That was an elegant solution, thanks! --Thrissel (talk) 22:28, 29 September 2012 (UTC)

Rio de Janeiro "velar trill"
Granted I am not a Portuguese speaker, but I do not seem to even find an assertion for a velar trill in the references cited. The first reference, page 11 mentions a phonological (not phonetical) velar value ("[-anterior, -coronal]") as well as a phonetical uvular value ("vibrante uvular"). Page 53, similarly the glossary (?) on page 125, lists pronunciations limited to [r ʀ], [x χ h] ("vibrante alveolar / uvular; fricativa velar / uvular / glotal") with no mention of a velar trill.

The second reference appears to simply quotes a 1938 (!) reference on theater/opera pronunciations, not necessarily a reliable source on phonetical details. It seems a similar 1941 reference already switches to "dorso-uvular" — and also uses the transcription [x], casting further suspicion if an actual trill is being meant here.

Also, a velar trill is not simply "difficult", it is physically impossible. The uvular trill is pronounced by vibration of the uvula, which contrasts with all other uvular consonants, pronounced with the back of the tongue retracted to the uvula but no actual movement of it. There is no compareable structure at the velar place of articulation. Claims of extraordinary pronunciations require extraordinary evidence.

The uvular trill can with some effort be pronounced with the tongue in a more velar or even palatal position though; these could be transcribed or perhaps. My working assumption, until proven otherwise, is that all "velar trills" or "palatal trills" seen in literature and not backed up by phonetical data actually refer to either of these sounds. -- Trɔpʏliʊm • blah 01:37, 12 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Then take it out. The user who added the info has a tendency to add spurious citations to OR. — Æµ§œš¹  [ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ]  02:45, 12 March 2013 (UTC)


 * It is likely to be those Tropylium mentioned. It is rather fricative-like, never a pure pure trill. But sources don't help clearing up this.
 * I'm not college-educated. And the sources saying there is no such thing as velar trill are from more than 10 years ago AFAIK, what I know is that many things change in science in such time.
 * And Aeusoes1, tell me what kind of spurious citations I added here in the last 3 months... Lots of things you doubted, I showed to exist someway. From velarized ell to approximant ar to mid vowels to alveolo-palatal sibilants to voiced stop lenition. Of course a person whose native language is not English, that entered here as a high school teen not much more than 2 years ago without any real knowledge of the language whatsoever and that has no place to find literature on the topic other than the internet can do a lot of wrong BUT I always try to do the best I can. Lguipontes (talk) 14:28, 15 March 2013 (UTC)
 * Case in point, You've added do Nascimento (2009) as backing up the claims that the Uvular rhotic is "often velarized" in Lisbon and Rio de Janeiro. Looking at the link you've provided, however, it says something different.  She quotes Cunha and Cintra (2001:41) who say that the strong-R is commonly "velar ou [-anterior,-coronal]" in Lisbon and Rio de Janeiro.  As Tropylium rightly points out, not only does the source not say that this is a trill, but a velar trill would be impossible.  The other source cited for Rio de Janeiro, Herr, not only doesn't mention Rio de Janeiro, but is actually summarizing prescriptive pronunciation guides from the early 20th century so is not even in a position to make such a claim.  In other words, verification failed.
 * I haven't been scrutinizing most of your additions because it takes a bit of work to translate the Portuguese and I have other things to attend to. — Æµ§œš¹  [ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ]  16:37, 15 March 2013 (UTC)
 * And another failed verification at sibilant. — Æµ§œš¹ <span title="Representation in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA)" class="IPA"> [ãːɱ ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɪ̃ə̃nlɪ] 01:22, 17 March 2013 (UTC) Nevermind 15:03, 17 March 2013 (UTC)


 * Well, I just confused 'not found in any language as a phoneme' with 'anatomically impossible'. Velar x uvular distinction is really cross-linguistically rare AFAIK and most uvular trills by what this page seems to indicate are found in European languages. Average Standard European does not differ velar and uvular, and also most of its languages don't have all those unusual guttural ar phonemes Portuguese, especially its Brazilian variant, seems to present. I am sorry for insisting on things when I am scientifically ignorant (though not fully illiterate) on the subject and derive part of my knowledge from native speaker impressionistic points of view. About the sibilant page, I already contacted both Aeusoes1 and Luizdl for giving explanations. In this case I am more certain of Brazilian Portuguese having alveolo-palatals than being human. That is all. Lguipontes (talk) 14:04, 17 March 2013 (UTC)

The map
Unfortunately I lack the dialectology data to improve it. Be aware that, except for Italy, it doesn't show the state of the end of the 20th century at all; it shows the state of the middle of the 20th century. Outside of Switzerland and upland Bavaria, there's hardly any German variety with [r] left; and finding a French variety with [r] anywhere in Europe must be really hard. You can actually see a hint of this in the map: following a source from 1999, the French-speaking and the German-speaking parts of Italy are both marked as having [ʀ] general. I don't know where the isogloss between [ʀ ~ ʁ] and [ɹ] is in the Netherlands, but I doubt there's a lot of [r] left; the Flemings, though, keep [r].

Myself, I'm a second-generation obligatory user of [ʀ], born and bred in Linz in Upper Austria and a native speaker of the regional dialect. I find any kind of [r] pretty hard to pronounce, even though I'm not physically incapable of it as some people are.

David Ma[ʀ]janović (talk) 21:50, 17 June 2016 (UTC)

Perry the Platypus
Is this the Perry the Platypus sound from Phineas and Ferb? (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=imSiXiqtMS0) 𝕎𝕚𝕜𝕚𝕎𝕒𝕣𝕣𝕚𝕠𝕣𝟡𝟡𝟙𝟡 (talk) 12:11, 17 October 2019 (UTC)