Voiced dental, alveolar and postalveolar trills

The voiced alveolar trill is a type of consonantal sound used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents dental, alveolar, and postalveolar trills is Template:Angbr IPA, and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is r. It is commonly called the rolled R, rolling R, or trilled R. Quite often, Template:Angbr IPA is used in phonemic transcriptions (especially those found in dictionaries) of languages like English and German that have rhotic consonants that are not an alveolar trill. That is partly for ease of typesetting and partly because Template:Angbr is the letter used in the orthographies of such languages.

In many Indo-European languages, a trill may often be reduced to a single vibration in unstressed positions. In Italian, a simple trill typically displays only one or two vibrations, while a geminate trill will have three or more. Languages where trills always have multiple vibrations include Albanian, Spanish, Cypriot Greek, and a number of Armenian and Portuguese dialects.

People with ankyloglossia may find it exceptionally difficult to articulate the sound because of the limited mobility of their tongues.Template:SfnpTemplate:Sfnp

Voiced alveolar trill

Features

Features of the voiced alveolar trill:

• Its place of articulation may be

dental (behind the upper front teeth),

alveolar (at the alveolar ridge), or

post-alveolar (behind the alveolar ridge).

• It is most often apical, which means it is pronounced with the tip of the tongue.Template:Sfnp

Occurrence

File:Alveolar-trill-slomo.webm

A trill extended for about 2 seconds, captured in slow motion to reveal the individual 36–44 Hz tongue oscillations.

Dental

Language		Word	IPA	Meaning	Notes
Hungarian				'that way'	Laminal dental. See Hungarian phonology
Marshallese				'to be small'	Palatalized. The language's two other rhotic phonemes, (velarized) and (rounded), are post-alveolar.
Romanian				'quickly'	Apical. See Romanian phonology
Russian		/Template:Transliteration		'zealous'	Apical, palatalized. Usually only a single vibration, presumably due to the palatalization. It contrasts with a post-alveolar trill. See Russian phonology

Alveolar

Language		Word	IPA	Meaning	Notes
Afrikaans	StandardTemplate:Sfnp			'red'	May be a tap Template:IPAblink instead.Template:Sfnp See Afrikaans phonology
Arabic	Modern Standard	/Template:Transliteration		'saw' (verb)	In free variation with Template:IPAblink by many speakers.
Aragonese				'basement'	Allophone of /ɾ/.
Armenian	EasternTemplate:Sfnp	/Template:Transliteration	{{errorTemplate:Main other|Audio file "rumb.ogg" not found}}Template:Category handlerTemplate:Category handler	'cannonball'
Asturian				'tool'	Allophone of /ɾ/.
Bengali		/Template:Transliteration		'night'	More commonly [[[:Template:IPA link]] ~ Template:IPA link] for most speakers. May occur word-initially; as against , which occurs medially and finally. See Bengali phonology
Breton				'king'	Dominant in and around Léon and Morbihan while many other dialects have adopted the voiced uvular fricative. See Breton phonology
Bulgarian				'work'	See Bulgarian phonology
Chuvash		арăслан/araslan	[arəs'lan]	'lion'
CzechTemplate:Sfnp				'chlorine'	Contrasts with ; may be syllabic. See Czech phonology
Danish	Few speakers of the Jutlandic dialectTemplate:Sfnp	Template:Example needed			Corresponds to much more back in standard Danish. See Danish phonology
Dutch	Standard			'window'	See Dutch phonology
English	Scottish	curd		'curd'	Only some dialects. Corresponds to [[[:Template:IPA link]] ~ Template:IPA link] in others. See English phonology
	Welsh	bright		'bright'	Some dialects under Welsh influence. Corresponds to in others.
Estonian				'floor'	See Estonian phonology
Finnish			{{errorTemplate:Main other|Audio file "Fi-raaka.ogg" not found}}Template:Category handlerTemplate:Category handler	'raw'	See Finnish phonology
Greek	Standard	/Template:Transliteration		'artos'	Allophone of . Usual in clusters, otherwise a tap or an approximant. See Modern Greek phonology
	CypriotTemplate:Sfnp	/Template:Transliteration		'north'	Contrasts with .
Hindustani	Hindi	/ Template:Transliteration		'stone'	See Hindustani phonology
	Urdu	/ Template:Transliteration
Indonesian				'vibrate'	See Indonesian phonology
ItalianTemplate:Sfnp			{{errorTemplate:Main other|Audio file "It-Terra.wav" not found}}Template:Category handlerTemplate:Category handler	'earth'	See Italian phonology
Japanese	Shitamachi dialect			'from'	Allophone of /ɾ/. See Japanese phonology.
	Kansai dialect
Kele				'leg'
Khmer		/ Template:Transliteration		'fish' or 'three'	See Khmer phonology
KyrgyzTemplate:Sfnp		/		'song'
LatvianTemplate:Sfnp				'horn'	See Latvian phonology
Lithuanian				'and'	See Lithuanian phonology
Malay		کورڠ /		'less'	May be postalveolar approximant [], or more commonly, flap . See Malay phonology
Malayalam		/		'rummy'	See Malayalam phonology
Mandarin	Huguang Southwestern Mandarin			'saw'	Found in the suffix in various localities, including by not limited to Template:Ill (in Jingzhou), Zhongxiang, Yicheng, Jingmen, and Jiangling.
Nepali		/ghórra		'drawer'	See Nepali phonology
PolishTemplate:Sfnp			{{errorTemplate:Main other|Audio file "Pl-krok.ogg" not found}}Template:Category handlerTemplate:Category handler	'step'	Usually realized as Template:IPAblink. See Polish phonology.
Portuguese				'mouse'	Contrasts with . Many northern dialects retain the alveolar trill, and the trill is still dominant in rural areas. See Portuguese phonology and Guttural R.
Scots				'bright'
Scottish Gaelic				'false'	Velarized. Pronounced as a trill at the beginning of a word, or as rr, or before consonants d, t, l, n, s; otherwise a voiced alveolar tap. Contrasts with and intervocally and word-finally. See Scottish Gaelic phonology
Serbo-CroatianTemplate:SfnpTemplate:Sfnp		/		'cape'	May be syllabic.Template:Sfnp See Serbo-Croatian phonology
SlovakTemplate:Sfnp				'neck'	May be a tap, particularly when not syllabic.
SloveneTemplate:Sfnp				'rice'	Also described as tap Template:IPAblink,Template:Sfnp and variable between trill and tap Template:IPAblink.Template:Sfnp See Slovene phonology
SpanishTemplate:Sfnp			{{errorTemplate:Main other|Audio file "Perro Voiced alveolar trill.wav" not found}}Template:Category handlerTemplate:Category handler	'dog'	Contrasts with . See Spanish phonology
Swedish	Some West coast and Northern dialects			'good'	See Swedish phonology
Tagalog				'rambutan'	Allophone of the more common , especially with more conservative speakers. See Tagalog phonology
Tamil		/		'bird'	See Tamil phonology
Thai	Standard	/Template:Transliteration	{{errorTemplate:Main other|Audio file "th-chonburi.ogg" not found}}Template:Category handlerTemplate:Category handler	'Chonburi'
Titan				'girls'
Ukrainian		/Template:Transliteration	{{errorTemplate:Main other|Audio file "Uk-рух.ogg" not found}}Template:Category handlerTemplate:Category handler	'motion'	See Ukrainian phonology
Welsh				'December'	Contrasts with the voiceless alveolar trill, . See Welsh phonology
Wu Chinese	Xuanzhou Wu (Qiugong locality)			'younger brother'	Found in the speech of Qiugong residential community, Template:Ill, Xuanzhou District, Xuanzhou prefecture. Equivalent to in other Wu varieties (cf. Shanghainese ).
Yiddish	Standard	/brik		'bridge'	More commonly a flap Template:IPAblink; can be uvular instead. See Yiddish phonology
Zapotec	TilquiapanTemplate:Sfnp			'go out (habitually)'	Underlyingly two sequences of .

Post-alveolar

Language		Word	IPA	Meaning	Notes
CatalanTemplate:Sfnp				'donkey'	Contrasts with . See Catalan phonology
Gokana				'we'	Allophone of , medially between vowels within the morpheme, and finally in the morpheme before a following vowel in the same word. It can be a postalveolar tap or simply Template:IPAblink instead.
Marshallese				'whale'	is velarized and is rounded. Another rhotic phoneme in the language, , is dental and palatalized.
				'ebb tide'
Russian		/igrať		'to play'	Contrasts with a palatalized dental trill. See Russian phonology

Variable

Language		Word	IPA	Meaning	Notes
German	Standard (chiefly areas with Upper German or Low German influence as well as immigrant speakers)			'nonsense'	Varies between apical dental and apical alveolar; may be a tap instead. See Standard German phonology

Voiced alveolar fricative trill

In Czech, there are two contrasting alveolar trills. Besides the typical apical trill, written r, there is another laminal trill, written ř, in words such as rybáři 'fishermen' and the common surname Dvořák. Its manner of articulation is similar to but is laminal and the body of the tongue is raised. It is thus partially fricative, with the frication sounding rather like but less retracted. It sounds like a simultaneous and , and some speakers tend to pronounce it as , , or . In the IPA, it is typically written as Template:Angbr IPA plus the raising diacritic, Template:Angbr IPA, but it has also been written as laminal Template:Angbr IPA. (Before the 1989 IPA Kiel Convention, it had a dedicated symbol Template:Angbr IPA.) The Kobon language of Papua New Guinea also has a fricative trill, but the degree of frication is variable. The Kpwe language of Cameroon has been reported to have a similar sound.

Features

Features of the voiced alveolar fricative trill:

• Its manner of articulation is fricative trill, which means it is a non-sibilant fricative and a trill pronounced simultaneously.
• Its place of articulation is laminal alveolar, which means it is articulated with the blade of the tongue at the alveolar ridge.

Examples

Language		Word	IPA	Meaning	Notes
CzechTemplate:Sfnp			{{errorTemplate:Main other|Audio file "cs-čtyři.ogg" not found}}Template:Category handlerTemplate:Category handler	'four'	May be a non-sibilant fricative. It contrasts with and . See Czech phonology
Dzongkha		་/Template:Transliteration		'bone'	Usually released as a normal trilled [r], sometimes it has a slightly fricative character vaguely reminiscent of Czech ř. Dzongkha r is followed by the low register tone.
Kashubian				'river'	Only some northern and northwestern speakers. Formerly common over the whole speaking area.
Kobon		Template:Example needed			Amount of frication variable. May also be a fricative flap
Ormuri	Standard (Kaniguram)	/Template:Transliteration		'summer'	Corresponds to /ʃ/ in Logar dialect.
Polish	Some dialects			'river'	Contrasts with and . Present in areas from Starogard Gdański to Malbork and those south, west and northwest of them, area from Lubawa to Olsztyn to Olecko to Działdowo, south and east of Wieleń, around Wołomin, southeast of Ostrów Mazowiecka and west of Siedlce, from Brzeg to Opole and areas to the north, and roughly from Racibórz to Nowy Targ. Most speakers, as well as standard Polish, merge it with , and speakers maintaining the distinction (which is mostly the elderly) sporadically do as well. See Polish phonology
Portuguese	European			'the kidneys'	Possible realization of the sequence for speakers who realize as . See Portuguese phonology
Silesian	Gmina Istebna			'(he) died'	Contrasts with and . Merges with in most Polish dialects.
	Jablunkov	Template:Example needed
Slovak	Northern dialectsTemplate:Sfnp			'river'	Only in a few dialects near the Polish border. See Slovak phonology
Spanish			[ˈr̝änä]	'frog'	Possible realization of /r/ in some dialects, may also be realized as a non-sibilant alveolar fricative [ɹ̝-] or as a sibilant retroflex fricative [ʐ].
Chicahuaxtla Trique			or	'hand'	Initial allophone of /r/.
Tsakonian			[r̝inoðitɕi]	'justice of the peace'	/ʒ/ appears to have been a fricative trill in the 19th century, and [ʒ] survived latterly only in women's usage in Southern Tsakonian.

See also

• Index of phonetics articles

References

• Template:SOWL

External links

• Template:Phoible