By Maddy Higgins
The English “r” is extremely weird.
For starters, although it is commonplace for vowels to have wildly different pronunciations in different varieties of English, there is very little of that variation for consonant pronunciations. But “r” isn’t like those other consonants, with many different allophones in English alone.
Here is a list of the more common “r” pronunciations:
- The \”standard\” r (/ɹ/), represented, is the most common pronunciation, appearing in British, American, Irish, and Australian varieties of English
- The “retroflex” r (/ɻ/), also called the American\”r, which is very similar to the standard r, except the tongue is flatter, appearing in West Country English, some American English, and some Northern Irish English
- The “trilled” r (/r/), or the Scottish r, is similar to the Spanish or Italian r, appearing in Scottish, South African, and Welsh English
- The “Tapped” r (/ɾ/), is like the r in the Spanish word cara, and is pronounced in varieties of Northern England, Scotland, and South Africa
- The “velar” r (/ɾˠ/), appears in conservative Irish English
- The “rounded” r (/ʋ/), or the Cockney r, which to many sounds like a “w”, is associated with the Cockney accent, spoken in some varieties of South-East England and London English
Granted, some of these r pronunciations are very similar, like the Northern English and the Irish Gaelic, but there is still something to be said for the sheer variety.
There is even variety in pronouncing the r at all. The rhoticity of a language, or the presence of the r sound, varies in different versions of the English language. The presence or absence of rhoticity distinguishes English varieties and dialects from each other. Think how in American English, the “r” in “card” is pronounced but not in British English.
Any given version of English is categorized as either “rhotic” or “non-rhotic”. Rhotic English pronounces all “r”s, in every situation (of course, there are always exceptions.) Non-rhotic English only pronounces “r” if it is not postvocalic, meaning not after a vowel. Rhotic varieties of English are spoken in South West England, Scotland, Ireland, most of the US, and Canada, although there are many exceptions, especially in the US. Non-rhotic varieties are mostly spoken in England, Wales, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa.
For now, I want to focus on the standard “r” (/ɹ/), which is the one pronounced by most American and English speakers of English. It is notated in the International Phonetic Alphabet, or the IPA, like an upside-down r. Even though it is the most common “r” sound in English, the phoneme /ɹ/ is actually exceedingly rare outside of the English language, completely absent even in languages that share the letter “r”, like most European languages, or anywhere else in the world. Other places /ɹ/ is found are often in languages very influenced by English, like Manx Gaelic. It is often one of the hardest letters to pronounce for those learning it as a second language.
/ɹ/ is an alveolar consonant, meaning that it is articulated by the tongue being very near to the superior alveolar ridge, which is the part of the mouth that contains the sockets of the upper row of teeth.
/ɹ/ is also a liquid consonant, meaning it is a voiced approximant. But what exactly does that mean, you ask? I will break it down:
When a voiced consonant is pronounced, vocal folds are vibrating. One way to tell if a sound is voiced or not is to make the sound, put your fingers on your upper throat, and feel for the vibrations of the voice box. For instance, you may find that “z” is voiced but not “s.”
To understand an approximant, first, understand what it is not. When making other speech sounds called fricatives, the air is forced through very narrow channels created by articulators (e.g. the tongue or the teeth) positioned very close together. (Think sounds like the “th” in “thin”.) That positioning creates turbulent airflow. Approximants are not fricatives and do not create turbulent airflow, but the articulators are still moving very close to each other, just not as narrowly or precisely. Approximants are somewhere in between fricatives and vowels, which have no turbulent airflow or resistance.
There is only one other English letter which is a liquid consonant. Bonus points if you can guess which, or use the chart linked below to figure it out.
International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA) Chart Unicode “Keyboard”
Sources:
https://www.seeingspeech.ac.uk/r-and-l-in-english/
https://teflpedia.com/Rhoticity
https://www.phon.ucl.ac.uk/courses/plin0065/
The Wild World of the English “R”
https://www.thoughtco.com/rhoticity-speech-4065992
https://www.britannica.com/topic/approximant