/r/; Voiced, lenis, palatal, retroflex.
Description: Tap /r/: the tongue taps the alveolar ridge once. It is voiced. Paro.
Trill: The tongue taps the alveolar ridge repeatedly in rapid succession. It is voiced. Rosa, carro.
Retroflex /r/: The tongue curls under without touching the alveolar ridge, producing a vowel-like quality Rare.
/r/ has a long, complicated, and controversial history. The earliest type of /r/ was a strong trill formed by allowing the tip of th tongue to vibrate against the alveolar ridge. This excessive energy required for the trill has, however, led to a weakening of the sound in most parts of the English-speaking world.
One weaker form is the reduction of the trill to a single tap which is hardly distinguishable from a weak /d/. This variety survives, between vowels as in very and marry, in the south of England, and in the speech of a few Americans who ape the British style. Also following / / and / /, e.g., three, with respect.
As the historical process of weakening the /r/ continued, there developed first a frictional type formed with the tongue close to the roof of the mouth, and later a semivowel without audible friction, and with the tongue somewhat lower.
In some parts of the English-speaking world, the weakening of /r/ led to its complete elimination from certain positions. First, /r/ dropped out of a limited number of words, chiefly before voiceless consonants. Later, in early decades of the nineteenth century, a more extensive loss of /r/ took place in some regional varieties of English. In the south of England, and in the speech of many Americans in eastern New England, New York City and the lowland South, r is not now pronounced as /r/ at the end of a word or before a consonant. In these dialects /r/ dropped completely out of such words as far and farm, and was replaced by compensatory lengthening of the vowel. In some areas, notably New York City and the South, the added length of the vowel may be the sole factor that distinguishes hard from hod, dark from dock, and harp from hop.
Dialects which limit the use of /r/ regularly replace it with a weak allophone of /schwa/ in such words as fear, there, poor, fire and flour. In the south of England, /r/ may survive at the end of a word if the next word begins with a vowel and there is no pause between the words. Thus r may be silent in far but pronounced /r/ in far away.
The variety just described is sometimes called the linking or liaison /r/, because it breaks the hiatus between consecutive vowels. It leads to the intrusion of /r/ when no historical r has existed, as in vanilla (r) ice cream and law (r) of the land. An intrusive /r/ may also result from mixture of dialects. If one sometimes hears dear with /r/ and sometimes without, it is but a step to the pronunciation of idea sometimes with and sometimes without a final /r/.
According to Thomas, in "Some Notes of American R", American Speech, 1926, 333, John S. Kenyon estimated that about two-thirds of the American population normally pronounced r in all positions. Thomas estimated the proportion as nearer to three-fourths of the total population (Phonetics of American English, 1947, 1958, p. 89).
Allophonic variants:
Completely devoiced following stressed /p, t, k/, as in price, try, cream, oppress, attract, across.
Partially devoiced following unstressed /p, t, k/, /sp, st, sk/ and voiceless consonants in general, as in upright, cockroach, acrobat, spring, string, scream, fry, thrine, shrink, horse race, mushroom.
Spanish /rr/ and /r/ are articulated like stop consonants, with obstruction of air. English /r/ is articulated with very little air obstruction, like a vowel. Spanish [r] is a voiced alveolar tap. Spanish [rr] is a voiced alveolar trill. English [r] is a voiced alveolar retroflex.
There is a considerable dialect variation in the pronunciation of English /r/ and the vowels that precede it. All English dialects fall into two large groups: the "R-full" and the "R-less" dialects. In the "R-full" dialects, /r/ is pronounced [r] in all positions; in the "R-less" dialects, /r/ changes to schwa in final position and before consonants or it may drop out altogether. (fierce, wear, poor, court, tar, tired, hour.)
Error: It is substituted by Spanish /r/ in all positions. The sound produced in the error is too tense, there is obstruction of the air-stream. It may be assimilated when medial before consonants, e.g. carpenter /‘kAp:«ntɚ/*.
Accuracy: To avoid the production of Spanish /r/, let us shade the pronunciation of /r/ towards /w/, in whose pronunciation the absence of obstruction of the air-stream is more evident. To avoid its assimilation, we should lengthen the sound when medial before consonants. For example:
On the road.
Carpenter.
