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IPA – number	122
IPA – text	r
IPA – image
Entity	r
X-SAMPA	r
Kirshenbaum	r<trl>
Sound sample (help·info)

The 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 [r], and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is r. It is informally and commonly called the rolling R or rolled R. Quite often, /r/ 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. This is partly due to ease of typesetting and partly because <r> is often the symbol used for the orthographies of such languages.

In the majority of Indo-European languages, this sound is at least occasionally allophonic with an alveolar tap [ɾ], particularly in unstressed positions. Exceptions to this include Catalan, Spanish, and Albanian, which treat them as separate phonemes.

Features

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.

Occurrence

Language		Word	IPA	Meaning	Notes
Abkhaz		ашəара	[aʃʷara]	'measure'	See Abkhaz phonology
Afrikaans		rooi	[rɔɪ]	'red'
Albanian		rrush	[ruʃ]	'grape'
Arabic		رأس	[rɑʔs]	'head'	represented by a <ر>. See Arabic phonology
Basque		errota	[eˈrota]	'mill'
Catalan[1]		esborrar	[əsbuˈraɾ]	'to delete'	See Catalan phonology
Croatian		tri	[tri]	'three'	May be syllabic.
Czech		chlor	[xlɔ̝ːr]	'chlorine'	May be syllabic. See Czech phonology
Dutch		rood	[roːt]	'red'	Standard pronunciation. Pronunciation of 'r' varies regionally, see Dutch phonology
English	Scottish	curd	[kʌrd]	'curd'	See English phonology
Estonian		narr	[nɑrː]	'fool'	See Estonian phonology
Finnish		purra	[purːɑ]	'to bite'	See Finnish phonology
French	southern France and Corsica	rouge	[ruʒ]	'red'	See Standard and Quebec French phonologies.
	rural Quebec
	African French
German	southern dialects	Schmarrn	[ʃma:rn]	'nonsense/rubbish'	somewhat rare, often used for emphasis. See German phonology
Greek		ρεβίθια	[reˈviθça]	'chick peas'	See Modern Greek phonology
Hindi		घर	[ɡʱər]	'house'	See Hindi-Urdu phonology
Hungarian		arra	[ɑrːɑ]	'that way'	See Hungarian phonology
Ilokano		gurruod	[gʊ’ruʔod]	'thunder'
Italian[2]		terra	[ˈtɛrra]	'earth'	See Italian phonology
Kele[3]		[nrikei]		'leg'
Malay	Standard	arah	[arah]	'direction'
Ngwe	Njoagwi dialect	[lɛ̀rɛ́]		'eye'
Persian		رضا (Reza)	[rezɒː]	'Reza'	Allophone of [ɾ] in word-initial positions. See Persian phonology.
Polish[4]		krok	[ˈkrɔk] (help·info)	'step'	See Polish phonology
Portuguese		carro	[ˈkäru]	'car'	In some dialects. See Portuguese phonology and Guttural R.
Romanian		măr	[mər]	'apple'	See Romanian phonology
Russian[5]		играть	[ɪˈɡr̠atʲ]	'to play'	Retracted. See Russian phonology
Serbian		рт/rt	[r̩t]	'cape'	May be syllabic
Slovak		ryba	[riba]	'fish'	May be syllabic
Spanish[6]		perro	[ˈpe̞ro̞]	'dog'	See Spanish phonology
Swedish	Central Standard	rov	[ruːv] (help·info)	'prey; loot'	See Swedish phonology
Tajik		арра	[ʌrrʌ]	'saw'
Titan[3]		[nrakeiʔin]		'girls'
Ubykh		[bəqˁʼərda]		'to roll around'
Welsh		Rhagfyr	[ˈr̥aɡvɨr]	'December'
Zapotec	Tilquiapan[7]	r-ree	[rəˤə]	'habitual-go out'	Underlyingly two sequences of /ɾ/

Raised alveolar non-sonorant trill

There is a phone (different from [r]) which is commonly used in Czech (in words such as rybáři [ˈrɪbaːr̝ɪ] 'fishermen', and the common surname Dvořák). Its manner of articulation is similar but the tongue is raised; it is partially fricative. It is orthographically represented by the letter ř in Czech, and in IPA as [r̝] (before the 1989 IPA Kiel Convention, it had a dedicated symbol [ɼ]). The basic manner of pronunciation is voiced but there is also a voiceless allophone r̝̊. (Listen: Antonín Dvořák [ˈantoɲiːn ˈdvor̝aːk] (help·info))

See also

• List of phonetic topics

References

Bibliography

• Carbonell, Joan F.; Llisterri, Joaquim (1992), "Catalan", Journal of the International Phonetic Association 22 (1-2): 53–56 
• Jassem, Wiktor (2003), "Polish", Journal of the International Phonetic Association 33 (1): 103–107 
• Ladefoged, Peter (2005). Vowels and Consonants (Second ed.). Blackwell. 
• Ladefoged, Peter; Maddieson, Ian (1996). The Sounds of the World's Languages. Blackwell Publishing. ISBN ISBN 0-631-19815-6. 
• Martínez-Celdrán, Eugenio; Fernández-Planas, Ana Ma.; Carrera-Sabaté, Josefina (2003), "Castilian Spanish", Journal of the International Phonetic Association 33 (2): 255–259 
• Merrill, Elizabeth (2008), "Tilquipan Zapotec", Journal of the International Phonetic Association 38 (1): 107–114 
• Rogers, Derek; d'Arcangeli, Luciana (2004), "Italian", Journal of the International Phonetic Association 34 (1): 117–121 
• Skalozub, Larisa (1963), Palatogrammy i Rentgenogrammy Soglasnyx Fonem Russkogo Literaturnogo Jazyka, Izdatelstvo Kievskogo Universiteta