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R, or r, is the eighteenth letter of the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is ''ar'' (pronounced ), plural ''ars'', or in Ireland ''or'' . The letter is the eighth most common letter in English and the fourth-most common consonant (after , , and ). The letter is used to form the ending "-re", which is used in certain words such as ''centre'' in some varieties of English spelling, such as British English.
Canadian English Canadian English (CanE, CE, en-CA) encompasses the varieties of English native to Canada. According to the 2016 census, English was the first language of 19.4 million Canadians or 58.1% of the total population; the remainder spoke French ( ...
also uses the "-re" ending, unlike
American English American English, sometimes called United States English or U.S. English, is the set of variety (linguistics), varieties of the English language native to the United States. English is the Languages of the United States, most widely spoken lan ...
, where the ending is usually replaced by "-er" (''center''). This does not affect pronunciation.


Name

The name of the letter in Latin was (), following the pattern of other letters representing
continuant In phonetics, a continuant is a speech sound produced without a complete closure in the oral cavity, namely fricatives, approximants, vowels, and trills. While vowels are included in continuants, the term is often reserved for consonant sounds. ...
s, such as F, L, M, N and S. This name is preserved in
French French (french: français(e), link=no) may refer to: * Something of, from, or related to France ** French language, which originated in France, and its various dialects and accents ** French people, a nation and ethnic group identified with Franc ...
and many other languages. In Middle English, the name of the letter changed from to , following a pattern exhibited in many other words such as ''farm'' (compare French ''ferme'') and ''star'' (compare German ''Stern''). In
Hiberno-English Hiberno-English (from Latin ''Hibernia'': "Ireland"), and in ga, Béarla na hÉireann. or Irish English, also formerly Anglo-Irish, is the set of English dialects native to the island of Ireland (including both the Republic of Ireland a ...
the letter is called or , somewhat similar to ''oar'', ''ore'', ''orr''. The letter R is sometimes referred to as the (literally 'canine letter', often rendered in English as the dog's letter). This Latin term referred to the Latin R that was trilled to sound like a growling dog, a spoken style referred to as ('dog voice'). A good example of a trilled R is in the Spanish word for dog, ''perro''. In William Shakespeare's ''
Romeo and Juliet ''Romeo and Juliet'' is a Shakespearean tragedy, tragedy written by William Shakespeare early in his career about the romance between two Italian youths from feuding families. It was among Shakespeare's most popular plays during his lifetim ...
'', such a reference is made by Juliet's nurse in Act 2, scene 4, when she calls the letter R "the dog's name". The reference is also found in Ben Jonson's ''English Grammar''.


History


Antiquity

The original
Semitic Semitic most commonly refers to the Semitic languages, a name used since the 1770s to refer to the language family currently present in West Asia, North and East Africa, and Malta. Semitic may also refer to: Religions * Abrahamic religions ** ...
letter may have been inspired by an
Egyptian hieroglyph Egyptian hieroglyphs (, ) were the formal writing system used in Ancient Egypt, used for writing the Egyptian language. Hieroglyphs combined logographic, syllabic and alphabetic elements, with some 1,000 distinct characters.There were about 1,00 ...
for ''tp'', "head". It was used for by Semites because in their language, the word for "head" was ''
rêš Resh is the twentieth letter of the Semitic abjads, including Phoenician Rēsh , Hebrew Rēsh , Aramaic Rēsh , Syriac Rēsh ܪ, and Arabic . Its sound value is one of a number of rhotic consonants: usually or , but also or in Hebrew and Nor ...
'' (also the name of the letter). It developed into Greek ' Ρ' (''rhô'') and Latin R. The descending diagonal stroke develops as a graphic variant in some Western Greek alphabets (writing ''rho'' as ), but it was not adopted in most
Old Italic alphabet The Old Italic scripts are a family of similar ancient writing systems used in the Italian Peninsula between about 700 and 100 BC, for various languages spoken in that time and place. The most notable member is the Etruscan alphabet, which ...
s; most Old Italic alphabets show variants of their ''rho'' between a "P" and a "D" shape, but without the Western Greek descending stroke. Indeed, the oldest known forms of the Latin alphabet itself of the 7th to 6th centuries BC, in the Duenos and the Forum inscription, still write ''r'' using the "P" shape of the letter. The Lapis Satricanus inscription shows the form of the Latin alphabet around 500 BC. Here, the rounded, closing Π shape of the ''p'' and the Ρ shape of the ''r'' have become difficult to distinguish. The descending stroke of the Latin letter R has fully developed by the 3rd century BC, as seen in the Tomb of the Scipios sarcophagus inscriptions of that era. From around 50 AD, the letter ''P'' would be written with its loop fully closed, assuming the shape formerly taken by ''R''.


Cursive

The minuscule (lowercase) form (''r'') developed through several variations on the capital form. Along with Latin minuscule writing in general, it developed ultimately from Roman cursive via the uncial script of Late Antiquity into the Carolingian minuscule of the 9th century. In handwriting, it was common not to close the bottom of the loop but continue into the leg, saving an extra pen stroke. The loop-leg stroke shortened into the simple arc used in the Carolingian minuscule and until today. A calligraphic minuscule ''r'', known as r rotunda (ꝛ), was used in the sequence ''or'', bending the shape of the ''r'' to accommodate the bulge of the ''o'' (as in ''oꝛ'' as opposed to ''or''). Later, the same variant was also used where ''r'' followed other lower case letters with a rounded loop towards the right (such as ''b, h, p'') and to write the geminate ''rr'' (as ''ꝛꝛ''). Use of ''r rotunda'' was mostly tied to
blackletter Blackletter (sometimes black letter), also known as Gothic script, Gothic minuscule, or Textura, was a script used throughout Western Europe from approximately 1150 until the 17th century. It continued to be commonly used for the Danish, Norweg ...
typefaces, and the glyph fell out of use along with blackletter fonts in English language contexts mostly by the 18th century. Insular script used a minuscule which retained two downward strokes, but which did not close the loop ("Insular ''r''", ꞃ); this variant survives in the Gaelic type popular in Ireland until the mid-20th century (but now mostly limited to decorative purposes).


Pronunciation and use


Non-English languages

represents a
rhotic consonant In phonetics, rhotic consonants, or "R-like" sounds, are liquid consonants that are traditionally represented orthography, orthographically by symbols derived from the Greek alphabet, Greek letter Rho (letter), rho, including R, , in the Latin ...
in many languages, as shown in the table below. Other languages may use the letter in their alphabets (or Latin transliterations schemes) to represent rhotic consonants different from the alveolar trill. In
Haitian Creole Haitian Creole (; ht, kreyòl ayisyen, links=no, ; french: créole haïtien, links=no, ), commonly referred to as simply ''Creole'', or ''Kreyòl'' in the Creole language, is a French-based creole language spoken by 10–12million people wor ...
, it represents a sound so weak that it is often written interchangeably with , e.g. 'Kweyol' for 'Kreyol'. Brazilian Portuguese has a great number of allophones of such as , , , , , and , the latter three ones can be used only in certain contexts ( and as ; in the syllable coda, as an allophone of according to the European Portuguese norm and according to the Brazilian Portuguese norm). Usually at least two of them are present in a single dialect, such as Rio de Janeiro's , , and, for a few speakers, .


Other systems

The
International Phonetic Alphabet The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is an alphabetic system of phonetic transcription, phonetic notation based primarily on the Latin script. It was devised by the International Phonetic Association in the late 19th century as a standa ...
uses several variations of the letter to represent the different rhotic consonants; represents the alveolar trill.


Related characters


Descendants and related characters in the Latin alphabet

*R with
diacritic A diacritic (also diacritical mark, diacritical point, diacritical sign, or accent) is a glyph added to a letter or to a basic glyph. The term derives from the Ancient Greek (, "distinguishing"), from (, "to distinguish"). The word ''diacriti ...
s: Ŕ ŕ Ɍ ɍ Ř ř Ŗ ŗ Ṙ ṙ Ȑ ȑ Ȓ ȓ Ṛ ṛ Ṝ ṝ Ṟ ṟ Ꞧ ꞧ Ɽ ɽ R̃ r̃
The voiced alveolar tap or flap is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents a dental, alveolar, or postalveolar tap or flap is . The terms ''tap'' and ''flap'' ...
The palatal hook () is a type of hook diacritic formerly used in the International Phonetic Alphabet to represent palatalized consonants. It is a small, leftwards-facing hook joined to the bottom-right side of a letter, and is distinguished from ...
*
International Phonetic Alphabet The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is an alphabetic system of phonetic transcription, phonetic notation based primarily on the Latin script. It was devised by the International Phonetic Association in the late 19th century as a standa ...
-specific symbols related to R: ʶ ˞ ʴ * IPA superscript letters: 𐞦 𐞧 𐞨 𐞩 𐞪 * Obsolete and nonstandard symbols in the International Phonetic Alphabet: ɼ ɿ * Uralic Phonetic Alphabet-specific symbols related to R: ** ** ** ** *
Teuthonista Teuthonista is a phonetic transcription system used predominantly for the transcription of (High) German dialects. It is very similar to other Central European transcription systems from the early 20th century. The base characters are mostly bas ...
phonetic transcription-specific symbols related to R: ** ** *''Anthropos'' phonetic transcription: ** ** ** *Otto Bremer's phonetic transcription: ** ** ** *𝼨 : R with mid-height left hook was used by the
British and Foreign Bible Society The British and Foreign Bible Society, often known in England and Wales as simply the Bible Society, is a non-denominational Christian Bible society with charity status whose purpose is to make the Bible available throughout the world. The Soc ...
in the early 20th century for romanization of the Malayalam language. *ⱹ : Turned r with tail is used in the
Swedish Dialect Alphabet The Swedish Dialect Alphabet ( sv, Landsmålsalfabetet) is a phonetic alphabet created in 1878 by Johan August Lundell and used for the narrow transcription of Swedish dialects. The initial version of the alphabet consisted of 89 letters, 42 o ...
*Other variations of R used for phonetic transcription: 𝼕 𝼖


Calligraphic variants in the Latin alphabet

*Ꝛ ꝛ : R rotunda *Ꞃ ꞃ : "Insular" R ( Gaelic type) *ᫍ : Combining insular r was used in the Ormulum


Ancestors and siblings in other alphabets

*𐤓 :
Semitic Semitic most commonly refers to the Semitic languages, a name used since the 1770s to refer to the language family currently present in West Asia, North and East Africa, and Malta. Semitic may also refer to: Religions * Abrahamic religions ** ...
letter Resh, from which the following letters derive **Ρ ρ : Greek letter
Rho Rho (uppercase Ρ, lowercase ρ or ; el, ρο or el, ρω, label=none) is the 17th letter of the Greek alphabet. In the system of Greek numerals it has a value of 100. It is derived from Phoenician letter res . Its uppercase form uses the sa ...
, from which the following letters derive ***𐌓 : Old Italic letter R, the ancestor of modern Latin R ****ᚱ : Runic letter Raido ***Р р :
Cyrillic , bg, кирилица , mk, кирилица , russian: кириллица , sr, ћирилица, uk, кирилиця , fam1 = Egyptian hieroglyphs , fam2 = Proto-Sinaitic , fam3 = Phoenician , fam4 = G ...
letter Er ***𐍂 :
Gothic Gothic or Gothics may refer to: People and languages *Goths or Gothic people, the ethnonym of a group of East Germanic tribes **Gothic language, an extinct East Germanic language spoken by the Goths **Crimean Gothic, the Gothic language spoken b ...
letter Reda


Abbreviations, signs and symbols

*℟ : symbol for "
response Response may refer to: *Call and response (music), musical structure *Reaction (disambiguation) *Request–response **Output (computing), Output or response, the result of telecommunications input *Response (liturgy), a line answering a versicle ...
" in liturgy *℞ : Medical prescription Rx *® :
Registered trademark symbol The registered trademark symbol, , is a typographic symbol that provides notice that the preceding word or symbol is a trademark or service mark that has been registered with a national trademark office. A trademark is a symbol, word, or word ...
*₹ : Indian rupee sign


Encoding

: 1


See also

* Guttural R


References


External links

* * * {{Latin alphabet, R} ISO basic Latin letters