Alveolar trill
The
alveolar trill is a type of
consonantal sound, used in some
spoken languages (such as
Russian,
Spanish,
Armenian, and
Polish). The symbol in the
International Phonetic Alphabet that represents
dental,
alveolar, and
postalveolar trills is , and the equivalent
X-SAMPA symbol is
r. It is informally called the
rolling R or
rolled R.
Features of the alveolar trill:
* Its
manner of articulation is
trill, which means it is produced by vibrations of the tongue against the place of articulation.
* Its
place of articulation is
alveolar which means it is articulated with the tip of the tongue against the
alveolar ridge.
* Its
phonation type is voiced, which means the vocal cords are vibrating during the articulation.
* It is an
oral consonant, which means air is allowed to escape through the mouth.
* It is a
central consonant, which means it is produced by allowing the airstream to flow over the middle of the tongue, rather than the sides.
* The
airstream mechanism is
pulmonic egressive, which means it is articulated by pushing air out of the
lungs and through the vocal tract, rather than from the
glottis or the mouth.
Most dialects of English lack an alveolar trill. The most notable exception is the
Scottish dialect. This particular sound is challenging to produce for people who do not have it in their native tongue.
Although not used in day-to-day language, a TV ad campaign in
Canada for the
Tim Hortons doughnut shop chain brought the sound to prominence with the expression "Roll up the rim to win", which used rolled R's to make the ad campaign more memorable. A similar ad appeared on American television for Ruffles brand potato chips with the slogan, "R-r-ruffles have r-r-ridges."
Alveolar trills are common in Slavic languages like
Russian and
Polish, as well as Romance languages such as
Spanish,
Catalan, Occitan, Iberian Portuguese and
Italian. It also figures prominently in
Basque, one of Europe's last remaining original languages. Standard varieties of
French and
German, use the
uvular trill instead, albeit
allophonically. However, the alveolar trill exists in the Southern dialects of both of those languages. The trill is also found in colloquial and standard
Arabic where it is represented by the letter ر. All Indo-European languages, including English and French, are believed to originally have featured this sound.
In some languages, e.g.
Czech and
Slovak, the alveolar trill can be syllabic , i.e. it can supply a
vowel which forms a nucleus of a
syllable as in Czech
krk (neck). Syllabic can be also long in Slovak. The length is denoted by an
acute /ŕ/, e.g.
sŕna (roe-doe).
A voiceless version of this sound, , occurs in
Welsh, and is written as
rh. The voiceless alveolar trill also was most likely allophonic to its voiced counterpart in
Ancient Greek.
Some
Malayalam speakers pronounce both of their language's rhotics as trills. These people contrast a
prealveolar (~ dental) and a
postalveolar trill: vs. .
In English and German dictionaries, the symbol [r] is usually used to represent the alveolar or retroflex approximant in English (IPA symbols: and ) or the uvular trill in German (IPA symbol: ).
There is a
phoneme (different from [r]) which is specific exclusively for the
Czech language. Its manner of articulation is similar but the tongue is raised, it is partially
fricative. It is orthographically represented by the letter <ř>, and in IPA symbols []. The basic manner of pronunciation is voiced but there is also a voiceless counterpart [] which is not an individual phoneme but an
allophone. E.g. it is voiceless in the word
rybář (fisherman) but it is voiced in
rybáři (fishermen).
Unlike [r], it is non-sonorant, i.e. [] cannot be a nucleus of a
syllable.
In the majority of Indo-European languages this sound is at least occasionally allophonic with a voiced alveolar tap , particularly in unstressed positions. Exceptions to this include
Spanish and
Albanian, which treat them as separate phonemes.
In
Swedish this sound is frequently allophonic with a voiced alveolar approximant .
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List of phonetic topics
