Wow, this has been the best video about the IPA I've ever seen. I basically learned it by reading dictionaries, but I did take some courses at uni, and it was nothing like this. Bravo!
About the uvular rhotics - the consonant occurring in my native language, Hebrew, represented by the letter "resh" "ר" in its most frequent articulation is actually a uvular *approximant* which is represented as in the IPA (that diacritic meaning "tongue is lowered"). As a phonetician with certain experience analyzing sound waves, I've found this consonant to be very sonorous (=having significantly less friction) compared to the French 'r' in the word 'rat' which is a clear voiced uvular *fricative* . In German, I've actually found that the 'r', when not representing a schwa (like in the word "aber"), actually has three phonetic realizations - the uvular trill (as you demonstrated), the voiceless uvular fricative and the uvular approximant.
The reversed capitalized R is the most common one in France, the other one being associated with wartime and 50s artists like Edith Piaf and Jacques Brel (and yet I'm not sure they would speak that way, might only be while singing). Probably just a temporary fad from Paris. However in the countryside and up to people born in the 60s, it is still common to hear a flap r.
This is a wonderfully clear descriptive summary of the r sounds - unfortunately it also shows that I've been using the Rong symbol when writing words with ulvular R and I've been wring in the ordinary English r upside down symbol - so now I've got to go and correct my notes. Byeee!
I learned incorrect/alternate ones early in my time with IPA because I was begin taught Broad transcription instead of Narrow. Once I understood that those were the framing concepts for what the people had been trying to teach, it helped me to see that it's not "wrong" - it's just another context than what is more universally used. I'm happy to report that after years of IPA therapy, I'm doing okay...
I think the "loose uvular" one is common in modern _common_ Hebrew--which surprises me, but a user on another site told me the (influx of) Yiddish has influenced it a lot.
English r is absolutely not the most common one for people to use, in fact I’m pretty sure it’s one of the rarest. Tap r is the most common one. Alveolar trill is fairly common. Both uvulars are fairly common as well. Dental~Retroflex approximants are rare but not exceedingly so. The exceedingly rare ones are the pharyngeal ones.
I speak Spanish, and there's no way that our "rr" sound can get mixed with any of the others. The rule is very simple: trill the R whenever you see RR, or whenever R is the first letter in the word. That's all.
Welcome to the Portuguese language. We have a ridiculous amount of rhotics possibilities within the numerous accents in the language. You can test this and ask Portuguese speakers how they pronounce "porta" (door) and "carro" (car) - the 4 "major" r sounds are the final-syllable r (poR-ta, aR-co, coR-po), the first letter of a word OR first in a syllable when written with double r (caR-RO iR-Ri-tar, Ra-to, Ra-ro), the one in-between vowels (a-Ra-Ra, pa-Re, cou-Ro), and finally, the r preceding another consonant (fRa-co, pRi-var, tRom-ba). And so, how do you pronounce these Rs? It COMPLETELY depends on which accent of the Portuguese language you're learning. I think that there's only one R that is the most "standard", the in-between vowels and preceding another consonant is USUALLY the tapped r, but even that is not completely true to all accents. If you're a native speaker of a rhotacized accent of English, you have trouble pronouncing most of the other Rs, you'll probably be well understood for Caipira dialect speakers, and in countryside São Paulo state - their Rs are the most common in English :) All the Rs found in Portuguese in the IPA: ɾ r ɹ ɻ ɻ̝̊ ç x ɣ χ ʁ ʀ ħ h ɦ
@@Inseut Eu estou gostando muito sim :) Eu adoro o sotaque carioca, mas estou praticando com alguns brasileiros e metade deles fala com o rótico ɹ ɻ, então acabo usando os dois sons quando falo, e tenho certeza que soa engraçado kkkk :D
Almost everybody is ignorant about existence of multiple pronoucuations like this. As a kid, I always thought American English must be so hard to pronounce for them because they do weird sounds. While we Indians do straight sounds. Now I know the weird sounds they make is normal for them. And our sounds must be weird for them. And today I learned why some Europeans can't pronounce R. Because their pronounciation for R is basically 'gh' And Americans roll their tongue while saying R. Which I managed to do just now. My language apparently had the retroflex R 1000 year ago or so. But dropped it later...
Hello, i hope you good. is there voiceless /r/ in american English /r/ after /p,t,k/becomes voiceless, as in pray /preɪ/, try /traɪ/ , script /skrɪpt/. Thank you.
It may be voiceless or voiced - it's in a transition position between an unvoiced consonant and a vowel (which is voiced) so voicing most commonly begins during the R sound.
The taped R sound is also used in northern german dialects for "D" as in nds. "Vadder" the a is short. -> engl. "Father" the a is long. -> ger. "Vater" the a is long. ʀ is the standard german R sound, trilled in the back. ʁ is the standard french R sound, it is rubbed not trilled.
Thanks...just can't understand how ipa transcription varies on different applications and sites. I'm not referring only to the American v British pronunciation. I used tophonetics today and it only uses [r] in either pronunciation for a variety words such as red, rouge, Russia, etc. So thanks for the clarification here but I don't see the upside down r in usage.
/r/ means, basically, the R sound in general, while [r] means the R that is trilled at the gum ridge. People don't necessarily stick to the brackets as they could be used to make that distinction, but most of the time when a person is talking about a native English speaker's /r/ it's actually [ɹ].
Hi, my son is having issues with letter "R" as non strong/clear saying it, his background is bahasa/Indonesia, back home is called "cadel" refers to almost bullied term. Can you help him out please? He was evaluated at school as a non speech issue, we were really in shock of that, thank you
The R sound - at least as it commonly occurs in English - is typically one of the last sounds to develop in a child, so a delay on that is not uncommon at all. It often manifests as something more like a W or a vowel instead. Unfortunately you're now moving beyond my expertise and into where an SLP (Speech Language Pathologist) would serve you and your son best. Kids can be so cruel, so I'm sorry y'all are dealing with that!
My name is Diane and I am blind. I am trying to get my phone to pronounce the Maori names propperly I have a symbols keyboard on my phone but without knowing the names of the symbols, I can't use it. In your vidio I was hoping to find the "Names" of the symbols. But you only said "This R" or "This R" Please could you help me. Thanks
I'm working out of the country for another couple of weeks, and then I'll do a video with names for these various R symbols - thanks for letting me know, Diane!
Been wondering about other r pronunciations and IPA graphics, mostly regarding rotacism issues and the approximate sounds to the rz used in Polish... any ideas?
Thanks! In working on an Israeli accent, I found it challenging to nail that version of this R, which is ever so slightly different than the French trill. Glad to hear that I passed your test!
We have it in some Swedish dialects too (småländska)! I've noted that it's different from the r used in Scania (skånska) as that would be a trilling "french" r, but I never knew they had different phonetics.
I tend to get very frustrated, especially with regional variations. Often, I'm told, "you're saying that wrong!" or, from across the pond, "That's not the Queen's English!". So, while this video is helpful, I'm still frustrated.
I did go into the second, but not the first. The first is a retroflex version of the tap/flap R sound, which means the tongue tip is a little further back onto the hard palate. I don't find it impactful on learning accents, in my experience.
Dear Sugiarto! Greetings. The first one /ɽ/ is retroflex flap. It's voiced. This consonant sound is predominantly available in Indic Lgs. e.g., In 'Dravidian', the second 'd' is a retroflex flap unlike the first 'd' which rhymes with 'the'. So the word is pronounced as /ðrʌviːɽɪyən/. Due to lack of alphabetical symbols in English it is written with the same alphabet 'd'. Similarly, Lgs like /kʌn-nʌɽɑː/(typed Kannada in English) and my mother-tongue /kʊɽmɑːliː/ (typed Kudmali in English) in their name itself; and several light verbs in HIndi and Urdu have great presence of this consonant. Best wishes. Johar!
That french/deutche R is the main reason why I dont find these two languages favorable to hear 😅 (French for many more reasons, I just must avoid to hear that language at all, dont know why) In our language we only use "r" and those who say "R" instead have speech defection disgnosis with it's own name.
Try a G sound, and keep moving it further back, like you're going to swallow it. There is a plosive uvular, so you'd be doing at least one if you can pull that off! Then if you can open the space a little more, you might find the fricative. The trill is certainly a harder one to get...
