The voiced alveolar trill is a type of
consonant
In articulatory phonetics, a consonant is a speech sound that is articulated with complete or partial closure of the vocal tract. Examples are and pronounced with the lips; and pronounced with the front of the tongue; and pronounced wi ...
al sound used in some spoken
language
Language is a structured system of communication. The structure of a language is its grammar and the free components are its vocabulary. Languages are the primary means by which humans communicate, and may be conveyed through a variety of ...
s. The symbol in the
International Phonetic Alphabet
The International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) is an alphabetic system of phonetic notation based primarily on the Latin script. It was devised by the International Phonetic Association in the late 19th century as a standardized representation ...
that represents
dental,
alveolar, and
postalveolar trills is , and the equivalent
X-SAMPA
The Extended Speech Assessment Methods Phonetic Alphabet (X-SAMPA) is a variant of SAMPA developed in 1995 by John C. Wells, professor of phonetics at University College London. It is designed to unify the individual language SAMPA alphabets, a ...
symbol is
r
. It is commonly called the rolled R, rolling R, or trilled R. Quite often, is used in phonemic transcriptions (especially those found in dictionaries) of languages like
English
English usually refers to:
* English language
* English people
English may also refer to:
Peoples, culture, and language
* ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England
** English national ide ...
and
German
German(s) may refer to:
* Germany (of or related to)
** Germania (historical use)
* Germans, citizens of Germany, people of German ancestry, or native speakers of the German language
** For citizens of Germany, see also German nationality law
**Ge ...
that have
rhotic consonants that are not an alveolar trill. That is partly for ease of typesetting and partly because is the letter used in the orthographies of such languages.
In many
Indo-European languages
The Indo-European languages are a language family native to the overwhelming majority of Europe, the Iranian plateau, and the northern Indian subcontinent. Some European languages of this family, English, French, Portuguese, Russian, Dutc ...
, a trill may often be reduced to a single vibration in unstressed positions. In Italian, a simple trill typically displays only one or two vibrations, while a geminate trill will have three or more. Languages where trills always have multiple vibrations include
Albanian,
Spanish
Spanish might refer to:
* Items from or related to Spain:
**Spaniards are a nation and ethnic group indigenous to Spain
**Spanish language, spoken in Spain and many Latin American countries
**Spanish cuisine
Other places
* Spanish, Ontario, Can ...
,
Cypriot Greek
Cypriot Greek ( el, κυπριακή ελληνική or ) is the variety of Modern Greek that is spoken by the majority of the Cypriot populace and Greek Cypriot diaspora. It is considered a divergent dialect as it differs from Standard Mode ...
, and a number of
Armenian
Armenian may refer to:
* Something of, from, or related to Armenia, a country in the South Caucasus region of Eurasia
* Armenians, the national people of Armenia, or people of Armenian descent
** Armenian Diaspora, Armenian communities across the ...
and
Portuguese
Portuguese may refer to:
* anything of, from, or related to the country and nation of Portugal
** Portuguese cuisine, traditional foods
** Portuguese language, a Romance language
*** Portuguese dialects, variants of the Portuguese language
** Portu ...
dialects.
People with
ankyloglossia
Ankyloglossia, also known as tongue-tie, is a congenital oral anomaly that may decrease the mobility of the tongue tip and is caused by an unusually short, thick lingual frenulum, a membrane connecting the underside of the tongue to the floor of ...
may find it exceptionally difficult to articulate the sound because of the limited mobility of their tongues.
Voiced alveolar trill
Features
Features of the voiced alveolar trill:
* Its
place of articulation
In articulatory phonetics, the place of articulation (also point of articulation) of a consonant is a location along the vocal tract where its production occurs. It is a point where a constriction is made between an active and a passive articula ...
may be
:
dental (behind the upper front teeth),
:
alveolar (at the
alveolar ridge
The alveolar process () or alveolar bone is the thickened ridge of bone that contains the tooth sockets on the jaw bones (in humans, the maxilla and the mandible). The structures are covered by gums as part of the oral cavity.
The synonymous t ...
), or
:
post-alveolar
Postalveolar or post-alveolar consonants are consonants articulated with the tongue near or touching the ''back'' of the alveolar ridge. Articulation is farther back in the mouth than the alveolar consonants, which are at the ridge itself, but no ...
(behind the alveolar ridge).
* It is most often
apical
Apical means "pertaining to an apex". It may refer to:
*Apical ancestor, refers to the last common ancestor of an entire group, such as a species (biology) or a clan (anthropology)
*Apical (anatomy), an anatomical term of location for features loc ...
, which means it is pronounced with the tip of the tongue.
Occurrence
Dental
Alveolar
Post-alveolar
Variable
Voiced alveolar fricative trill
In
Czech
Czech may refer to:
* Anything from or related to the Czech Republic, a country in Europe
** Czech language
** Czechs, the people of the area
** Czech culture
** Czech cuisine
* One of three mythical brothers, Lech, Czech, and Rus'
Places
* Czech, ...
, there are two contrasting alveolar trills. Besides the typical apical trill, written ''r'', there is another laminal trill, written ''
ř'', in words such as ''rybáři'' 'fishermen' and the common surname ''Dvořák''. Its manner of articulation is similar to but is
laminal
A laminal consonant is a phone (speech sound) produced by obstructing the air passage with the blade of the tongue, the flat top front surface just behind the tip of the tongue in contact
with upper lip, teeth, alveolar ridge, to possibly, as ...
and the body of the tongue is
raised. It is thus partially
fricative
A fricative is a consonant produced by forcing air through a narrow channel made by placing two articulators close together. These may be the lower lip against the upper teeth, in the case of ; the back of the tongue against the soft palate in t ...
, with the frication sounding rather like but less retracted. It sounds like a simultaneous and , and some speakers tend to pronounce it as , , or . In the IPA, it is typically written as plus the raising diacritic, , but it has also been written as laminal .
[For example, Ladefoged (1971).] (Before the 1989
IPA Kiel Convention
The International Phonetic Alphabet was created soon after the International Phonetic Association was established in the late 19th century. It was intended as an international system of phonetic transcription for oral languages, originally for p ...
, it had a dedicated symbol .) The
Kobon language
Kobon (pronounced , or ) is a language of Papua New Guinea. It has somewhere around 90–120 verbs.
Kobon has a pandanus language, spoken when harvesting karuka.
Geographic distribution
Kobon is spoken in Madang Province and Western Highlands ...
of
Papua New Guinea
Papua New Guinea (abbreviated PNG; , ; tpi, Papua Niugini; ho, Papua Niu Gini), officially the Independent State of Papua New Guinea ( tpi, Independen Stet bilong Papua Niugini; ho, Independen Stet bilong Papua Niu Gini), is a country i ...
also has a fricative trill, but the degree of frication is variable.
Features
Features of the voiced alveolar fricative trill:
*Its
manner of articulation is fricative trill, which means it is a non-sibilant fricative and a trill pronounced simultaneously.
* Its
place of articulation
In articulatory phonetics, the place of articulation (also point of articulation) of a consonant is a location along the vocal tract where its production occurs. It is a point where a constriction is made between an active and a passive articula ...
is
laminal
A laminal consonant is a phone (speech sound) produced by obstructing the air passage with the blade of the tongue, the flat top front surface just behind the tip of the tongue in contact
with upper lip, teeth, alveolar ridge, to possibly, as ...
alveolar, which means it is articulated with the blade of the tongue at the
alveolar ridge
The alveolar process () or alveolar bone is the thickened ridge of bone that contains the tooth sockets on the jaw bones (in humans, the maxilla and the mandible). The structures are covered by gums as part of the oral cavity.
The synonymous t ...
.
Examples
See also
*
Index of phonetics articles
Notes
References
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External links
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{{LetterR
Alveolar consonants
Trill consonants
Pulmonic consonants
Oral consonants
Central consonants