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American English "R" sound | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Specific Languages |  | |
| IronFist Senior Member United States Joined 6436 days ago 663 posts - 941 votes  Speaks: English* Studies: Japanese, Korean | Message 1 of 17 17 March 2010 at 4:36am | IP Logged | |||||
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I wanted the subject to say "Is American English the only language that uses that 'R' sound?" but it was too long.
But that's basically my question. Every other language I've ever heard either has a rolled R, a flap R, and/or a guttural R. British English has their own issues with the letter R (it appears where it doesn't exist, like in Bananar, it's replaced with "ah" in some words, sometimes it's flapped or rolled (is this a dialect thing???), and I've also noticed that initial-R's by British speakers sound almost like a "W"). Question 1: - Are there any languages that use the same R sound as Standard American English? As I mentioned in another thread, this seems to be a hard sound to make, as it's one of the last ones that children master, often replacing it with an "aw" sound, as in "together" being pronounced as "togethaw." Question 2: - Can someone explain the British R rules to me? - When is it rolled? - When is it flapped? - Why does it appear at the end of words that end with "a", such as "banana"? - Why do British initial-R's sound kind of like "W's"? (the only example I can think of offhand here is in the movie Zoolander, at one point the "bad guy DJ" says "your boy is rolling". I think that's when I first noticed it, and then I heard it every time a British person said a word that began with R. "Your boy is rwolling." - Are some of these things dialect-specific? Thanks!! Edited by IronFist on 17 March 2010 at 4:38am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| egill Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5695 days ago 418 posts - 791 votes Speaks: Mandarin, English* Studies: German, Spanish, Dutch | Message 2 of 17 17 March 2010 at 5:24am | IP Logged | |||||
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See:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alveolar_approximant In short, not a whole lot. The Faroese one really surprised me. Many of the ones in that list are dialectal to boot. For part 3 of your 2nd question see here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intrusive_r 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| kyssäkaali Diglot Senior Member United States Joined 5552 days ago 203 posts - 376 votes Speaks: English*, Finnish | Message 3 of 17 17 March 2010 at 5:25am | IP Logged | |||||
It's a /ʋ/ ;) Kind of like a mix between a /w/ and a /v/. As for the American 'r', you should know that you are grouping two (maybe even more) sounds together in your questions. There is the 'r' in words like "rain" and "run," and then there's the "er" sound in words like "burn," "learn" and "murmur." The latter is an r-coloured vowel which exists in only a few languages (such as Mandarin Chinese), and in those languages that it does exist, it is not pronounced quite the way it is in English. I'm not an expert on English phonetics but this is what I have learned through observation. I personally liken the English "er" to some darkly pronounced /ö/, moreso in the British pronounciation than the American. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Johntm Senior Member United StatesRegistered users can see my Skype Name Joined 5421 days ago 616 posts - 725 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish | Message 4 of 17 17 March 2010 at 5:38am | IP Logged | |||||
Since I started studying Spanish, I realized how weird our "r" sound is and how much I love making and hearing the rolled "r".
That's now because it's difficult (at least I don't think it is) but mainly because people always pronounce it like that colloquially. It's more of "togetha" or "tuhgetha" where I live though. Pretty much any word ending in -er will be pronounced like it has an "a" at the end. 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Levi Pentaglot Senior Member United States Joined 5566 days ago 2268 posts - 3328 votes Speaks: English*, French, Esperanto, German, Spanish Studies: Russian, Dutch, Portuguese, Mandarin, Japanese, Italian | Message 5 of 17 17 March 2010 at 5:49am | IP Logged | |||||
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Mandarin Chinese has the same sound, but it only occurs at the ends of syllables. It is especially prevalent in the northern dialects such as that of Beijing.
In English, there are two general types of dialects, rhotic and non-rhotic. Rhotic dialects pronounce "R" wherever it occurs in writing, and non-rhotic dialects omit the sound in certain circumstances. Not all British dialects are non-rhotic; for example, Scottish English is rhotic. And there exist non-rhotic accents outside Britain, such as in Australia, New Zealand, the American South, and New York City. As for the rules on pronouncing the R-sound in non-rhotic dialects, basically it occurs whenever it precedes a vowel, and it is omitted whenever it is preceded by a consonant or occurs at the end of an utterance. It will only occur in a word like "banana" when the next word begins with a vowel. In non-rhotic dialects, there is no perceived difference between words that end with a schwa and words that end with an "-er" sound, so for example "karma" and "calmer" are homophones. English only has a few words that end with schwa, mostly foreign loanwords, but a very large number of English words end with "-er", so non-rhotic accents treat all words that end with schwa as if they end with "-er", inserting the R-sound when the next word begins with a vowel (euphony and ease of pronunciation are probably contributing factors as well). 2 persons have voted this message useful | ||||||
| reltuk Groupie United States Joined 6815 days ago 75 posts - 110 votes Speaks: English* Studies: Spanish, French | Message 6 of 17 17 March 2010 at 7:21am | IP Logged | |||||
The question of whether a particular consonant is actually "hard" in a cross-linguistic sense is a little hard to pin down. Nonetheless, it's safe to say that American children acquire the American /r/ relatively late in their development, it was one of the last consonant sounds to be mastered, and that a number of children end up visiting speech therapists in the public schools in order to remedy their mispronunciation of it. I was one such child. Found by looking around a little bit on Google and Wikipedia, the following articles by speech pathologists explain some of the reasons for the difficulty, and are meant as suggestions for other speech pathologists on how to help kids overcome their difficulties with the sound: Phonologic Strategy for /r/ Remediation A Phonemic-Based Remediation Approach for /r/ 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| MäcØSŸ Diglot Senior Member United Kingdom Joined 5808 days ago 259 posts - 392 votes Speaks: Italian*, EnglishC2 Studies: German | Message 7 of 17 17 March 2010 at 7:39am | IP Logged | |||||
The English R sound is a retroflex approximant /ɻ/. It is also found in Mandarin (but pronounced as /ʐ/ by some speakers, especially outside of Beijing), in Malayalam and Tamil and in two rare language (Enindhilyagwa and Yaghan). Of these languages, only Mandarin uses /ɻ/ as its only R sound, the other four also have a flapped R which is considered their main R phoneme (e.g. in Tamil transliteration R is /ɾ/ while ZH is /ɻ/. American English also have a flapped R sound, which occurs to the T in some intervocalic environments (like waTer).
-It is never rolled, but it may be flapped in Scottish English and in certain positions in older RP. -It happens at the end of a word when it is followed by a vowel (it’s called linking R). -It is not very common to pronounce R as [ʋ], it’s mostly a Cockney/Southern English phenomenon (I think it’s somewhat considered uneducated). The main British R sound is an alveolar approximant [ɹ]. Edited by MäcØSŸ on 17 March 2010 at 7:40am 1 person has voted this message useful | ||||||
| Levi Pentaglot Senior Member United States Joined 5566 days ago 2268 posts - 3328 votes Speaks: English*, French, Esperanto, German, Spanish Studies: Russian, Dutch, Portuguese, Mandarin, Japanese, Italian | Message 8 of 17 17 March 2010 at 8:36am | IP Logged | |||||
"R" in Pinyin has two different sounds: at the beginning of syllables (i.e. 肉 ròu) it is most often pronounced as /ʐ/, but in the 儿 -r suffix (i.e. 点儿 diǎnr) it is pronounced /ɻ/ by all speakers that I have heard. 2 persons have voted this message useful |
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