Pronunciation of English /r/

Pronunciation of the phoneme /r/ in the English language has many variations in different dialects.

This article is about the quality of realization of English phoneme /r/ among dialects. For the distribution of the historical rhotic consonant after vowels in varieties of English, see Rhoticity in English.

Variations

Depending on dialect, /r/ has at least the following allophones in varieties of English around the world:[1]

• "Standard" R: postalveolar approximant [ɹ̠] (listen) (a common realization of the /r/ phoneme worldwide, Received Pronunciation and General American included)
• "Bunched" or "Molar" R: "bunched-tongue" alveolar approximant [ɹ̈] (occurs in 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
• "Velar" R: velarized alveolar approximant [ɹˠ] (occurs in conservative Irish English)[2]
• "Retroflex" R: retroflex approximant [ɻ] (listen) (occurs in some American and most Irish English, including Northern Irish English)
• "Flapped" or "Tapped" R: alveolar flap [ɾ] (listen) (occurs in Scouse, most Scottish English, some South African, Welsh, conservative Irish and Northern England English, and early twentieth-century Received Pronunciation; not to be confused with flapping of /t/ and /d/)
• "Trilled" or "Rolled" R: alveolar trill [r] (listen) (occurs in Afrikaans English, some Welsh English,[3] some very conservative Scottish English, and Jersey English)
• "Uvular" R or "Northumbrian burr": voiced uvular fricative [ʁ] (listen) (occurs in very conservative varieties of Geordie and Northumbrian dialect, though largely now disappeared, as well as possibly some conservative South-West and East Irish English and some Aberdeen English)
• "Labial" or "Rounded" R: labiodental approximant [ʋ] (listen) (occurs in some south-east England and London English as a presumed idiosyncrasy, though this is disputed, as is its overlap with rhotacism; see § R-labialization below)

In most dialects /r/ is labialized [ɹ̠ʷ] in many positions, as in reed [ɹʷiːd] and tree [tɹ̥ʷiː]; in the latter case, the /t/ may be slightly labialized as well.[4] In General American, it is labialized at the beginning of a word but not at the end.

In many dialects, /r/ in the cluster /dr/, as in dream, is realized as a postalveolar fricative [ɹ̠˔] or less commonly alveolar [ɹ̝]. In /tr/, as in tree, it is a voiceless postalveolar fricative [ɹ̠̊˔] or less commonly alveolar [ɹ̝̊].[5] In England, while the approximant has become the most common realization, /r/ may still be pronounced as a voiceless tap [ɾ̥] after /θ/ (as in thread).[6] Tap realization of /r/ after /θ/ is also reported in some parts of the United States, particularly Utah.[7]

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".[8] 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.[9]

Rhoticity and non-rhoticity

Main article: Rhoticity in English

All English accents around the world are frequently characterized as either rhotic or non-rhotic. The majority of accents in England, Wales, Australia, New Zealand, and South Africa speak non-rhotic accents, and in these dialects the historical English phoneme /r/ is not pronounced except when followed by a vowel. However, the historical /r/ is pronounced in all contexts in rhotic accents, which are spoken across the majority in Scotland, Ireland, the United States, Canada, and also in some English accents (for example West Country and some parts of Lancashire and the far north). Thus, a rhotic accent pronounces marker as [ˈmɑrkər], while a non-rhotic accent pronounces the same word as [ˈmɑːkə]. Generally speaking in rhotic accents, when /r/ is not followed by a vowel phoneme, it surfaces as r-coloring of the preceding vowel or its coda: nurse [nɝs], butter [ˈbʌtɚ].

R-labialization

R-labialization, not to be confused with the rounding of initial /r/ described above, is a process occurring in certain dialects of English, particularly some varieties of Cockney, in which the /r/ phoneme is realized as a labiodental approximant [ʋ] in contrast to an alveolar approximant [ɹ]. To English-speakers not used to [ʋ], it is nearly indistinguishable from /w/.

Use of labiodental /r/ is commonly stigmatized by prescriptivists. Regardless, it is used in many other languages and its use is growing in many accents of British English.[10] Most speakers who do so are from the southeast of England, particularly London. It is also occasionally heard in some speakers of the Boston accent but more often in an exaggerated parody of those dialects.

It has also been reported to be an extremely rare realization of /r/ in New Zealand English.[11]

The /r/ realization may not always be labiodental: bilabial and velarized labiodental realizations have been reported.

R-labialization leads to pronunciations such as the following:

• red – [ʋɛd]
• ring – [ʋɪŋ]
• rabbit – [ˈʋæbɪt]
• Merry Christmas – [mɛʋi ˈkʋɪsməs]

However, replacement of /r/ by some kind of labial approximant may also occur due to a type of speech impediment called rhotacism or derhotacization.

See also

• English-language vowel changes before historic /r/
• Rhoticity in English

References

1. 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.
2. Hickey, Raymond (2007). Irish English: History and present-day forms. Cambridge University Press. pp. 14-15, 320.
3. "Investigating Language Attitudes: Social Meanings of Dialect, Ethnicity and Performance". Google Books. Peter Garrett, Nikolas Coupland, Angie Williams. Retrieved 10 November 2019.
4. Ladefoged, Peter (2001). Vowels and Consonants (4th ed.). Blackwell. p. 103.
5. Gimson, Alfred Charles (2014). Cruttenden, Alan (ed.). Gimson's Pronunciation of English (8th ed.). Routledge. pp. 177, 186–8. ISBN 9781444183092.
6. Ogden, Richard (2009). An Introduction to English Phonetics. Edinburgh University Press. pp. 90–2. ISBN 9780748625413.
7. Stanley, Joseph A. (2019). "(thr)-Flapping in American English: Social factors and articulatory motivations" (PDF). Proceedings of the 5th Annual Linguistics Conference at UGA. Athens, Georgia: The Linguistics Society at the University of Georgia. pp. 49–63. hdl:10724/38831.
8. Ladefoged, Peter (2001). A Course in Phonetics. Harcourt College Publishers. p. 55.
9. Laver, John (1994). Principles of Phonetics. Cambridge. p. 300.
10. Foulkes, Paul, and Gerard J. Docherty. (eds.) (1999). Urban Voices. Arnold
11. Bauer, Laurie; Warren, Paul; Bardsley, Dianne; Kennedy, Marianna; Major, George (2007), "New Zealand English", Journal of the International Phonetic Association, 37 (1): 100, doi:10.1017/S0025100306002830