Voiced uvular fricative
The
voiced uvular fricative is a type of
consonantal sound, used in some
spoken languages. The symbol in the
International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , and the equivalent
X-SAMPA symbol is
R. This consonant is one of several collectively called
guttural R when found in European languages.
Because the IPA symbol stands for both the uvular fricative and the uvular
approximant, the fricative nature of this sound may be specified by adding the
uptack to the letter, . (The approximant can be specified by adding the
downtack, .)
Features of the voiced uvular fricative:
* Its
manner of articulation is
fricative, which means it is produced by constricting air flow through a narrow channel at the place of articulation, causing
turbulence.
* Its
place of articulation is
uvular which means it is articulated with the back of the
tongue (the dorsum) against or near the
uvula.
* 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.
In Western Europe, a uvular trill or voiced fricative pronunciation of orthographic
r spread from northern
French to several dialects and
registers of
German,
Dutch,
Norwegian,
Danish,
Swedish,
Hebrew, and
Portuguese. However, not all of these remain either uvular or fricative today. In Standard German,
r tends to be a uvular fricative or trill initially, but an
uvular approximant between vowels, as in
Ehre 'honour'; while in Danish the
r is a
pharyngeal approximant in all but the most conservative speech. In Brazilian Portuguese,
r is usually a
voiceless velar fricative , or a
voiceless glottal fricative at the start of syllables.
It is used in some very rare dialects of
Bengali as a version of the /r/ phoneme which occurs before
velar consonants.
Armenian has a specific letter for this sound: 'Ր'.
Some phonemic transcriptions use the /r/ symbol instead of // for the 'r' sound for ease of typesetting.
*
List of phonetics topics
