The Letter R

Colm, Atha Cliath, Eire   Saturday, June 04, 2005, 11:54 GMT
American West Country accents do you mean? I'm from Ireland and am not familiar with the West Country!
Deborah   Saturday, June 04, 2005, 18:52 GMT
Colm,

Sorry, that was unclear. I was referring to England.
Colm   Saturday, June 04, 2005, 18:54 GMT
No problem! By the way did u finally manage to shake off that annoying impersonator of yours?
Deborah   Saturday, June 04, 2005, 18:57 GMT
Me, personally? No, but I noticed that in some threads mjd* apparently has. (Thanks!)
Mxsmanic   Sunday, June 05, 2005, 02:14 GMT
The "r-sound" in languages is definitely a consonant, but it's a rhotic, which means "r-sound," and also means that it's a unique sound, unlike any other consonant. It's very difficult to define rhotics, but we all know one when we hear one, no matter how the rhotic is pronounced.

English uses a postalveolar approximant most of the time for its r-sound. This is produced by curving the tip of the tongue back slightly and holding it near the back of the alveolar ridge (the ridge behind the upper teeth inside the mouth). It's easy to pronounce once you get used to it. It's not a very common rhotic, though.

The standard French r-sound is a uvular fricative, pronounced by holding the back of the tongue lightly against the uvula (the dangling thing at the top back of the mouth that you can see when you open your mouth wide in front of a mirror), and letting air hiss past it. This r-sound is not trilled (rolled), but some regional French accents will trill the r-sound in this position. Mireille Mathieu does this when she sings, as did the singer Brassens and Edith Piaf (although I don't think any of them rolled the r-sound when they spoke).

Many languges use an alveolar trill for the r-sound, pronounced by simply placing the tongue against the alveolar ridge and letting it vibrate as air passes it. If it is only allowed to do this once, it's a tap or flap rather than a trill; some languages make a distinction between the two pronunciations (like Spanish).

There are other rhotics, too, like true retroflex taps and approximants.