Pronunciation of English /r/
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The pronunciation of the phoneme /r/ in the English language has many variations in different dialects.
Variations
Depending on dialect, /r/ has at least the following allophones in varieties of English around the world:[1]
- "Standard" R: General Americanincluded)
- "Bunched" or "Molar" R: labialized and Southern American English and some Midwestern and Western American English most strongly); in fact, there is often a continuum of possible realizations for the postalveolar approximant within any single dialect from a more apical articulation [ ɹ̺ ] to this more bunched articulation, which can be specified in IPA as [ ɹ̈ ].[citation needed]
- "Bunched" or "Molar" R: labialized and
- "Velarized" R: Irish English)[2]
- "Retroflex" R: labialized retroflex approximant [ɻʷ] ⓘ (occurs in West Country English, some American and Canadian English and Irish English, including Northern Irish English)
- "Flapped" or "Tapped" R: Northern England English, most Scottish English, some South African, Welsh, Indian[3] and Irish English (probably influenced by the native languages of those regions) and early twentieth-century Received Pronunciation; not to be confused with flappingof /t/ and /d/)
- "Trilled" or "Rolled" R: r] ⓘ (occurs in some very conservative Scottish English, South African English, some Welsh English,[4] Indian English[3] and Jersey English)
- "Uvular" R or "Northumbrian burr": voiced uvular fricative [ʁ] ⓘ (occurs in very conservative varieties of Geordie and Northumbrian English, though largely now disappeared, as well as possibly some conservative South-West and East Irish English and some Aberdeen English)
- "Labial" or "Rounded" R: rhotacism; see § R-labializationbelow)
In most British dialects /r/ is
In many dialects, /r/ in the cluster /dr/, as in dream, is realized as a
There are two primary articulations of the approximant /r/: apical (with the tip of the tongue approaching the alveolar ridge or even curled back slightly) and domal (with a centralized bunching of the tongue known as molar r or sometimes bunched r or braced r). Peter Ladefoged wrote: "Many BBC English speakers have the tip of the tongue raised towards the roof of the mouth in the general location of the alveolar ridge, but many American English speakers simply bunch the body of the tongue up so that it is hard to say where the articulation is".[9] The extension to the IPA recommends the use of the IPA diacritics for "apical" and "centralized", as in ⟨ɹ̺, ɹ̈⟩, to distinguish apical and domal articulations in transcription. However, this distinction has little or no perceptual consequence, and may vary idiosyncratically between individuals.[10]
Rhoticity and non-rhoticity
English accents around the world are frequently characterized as either rhotic or non-rhotic. Most accents in England, Wales, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa are non-rhotic accents, and in those English dialects, the historical English phoneme /r/ is pronounced except after a vowel.
On the other hand, the historical /r/ is pronounced in all contexts in rhotic accents, which are spoken in most of Scotland, Ireland, the United States, Canada, and in some English accents (like in the West Country and some parts of Lancashire and the far north). Thus, a rhotic accent pronounces marker as [ˈmɑrkər], and a non-rhotic accent pronounces the same word as [ˈmɑːkə]. In rhotic accents, when /r/ is not followed by a vowel phoneme, it generally surfaces as r-coloring of the preceding vowel or its coda: nurse [nɝs], butter [ˈbʌtɚ].
R-labialization
R-labialization, which should not be confused with the rounding of initial /r/ described above, is a process occurring in certain dialects of English, particularly some varieties of
The use of labiodental /r/ is commonly stigmatized by
That has also been reported to be an extremely rare realization of /r/ in New Zealand English.[12]
The /r/ realization may not always be labiodental since
R-labialization leads to pronunciations such as these:
- red – [ʋɛd]
- ring – [ʋɪŋ]
- rabbit – [ˈʋæbɪt]
- Merry Christmas – [mɛʋi ˈkʋɪsməs]
However, the replacement of /r/ by some kind of labial approximant may also occur caused by a type of speech impediment called
See also
References
- ^ Wells, John C. (1982). Accents of English. Volume 1: An Introduction, Volume 2: The British Isles, Volume 3: Beyond the British Isles. Cambridge University Press.
- ^ Hickey, Raymond (2007). Irish English: History and present-day forms. Cambridge University Press. pp. 14-15, 320.
- ^ a b Spitzbardt, Harry (1976). English in India. p. 31. Retrieved 26 August 2020.
- ISBN 9781783162086.
- ^ Ladefoged, Peter (2001). A Course in Phonetics (4th ed.). Harcourt College Publishers. p. 55.
- ISBN 9781444183092.
- ISBN 9780748625413.
- hdl:10724/38831.
- ^ Ladefoged, Peter (2001). Vowels and Consonants. Blackwell. p. 103.
- ^ Laver, John (1994). Principles of Phonetics. Cambridge. p. 300.
- ^ Foulkes, Paul, and Gerard J. Docherty. (eds.) (1999). Urban Voices. Arnold