A voiced alveolar trill is a type of consonantal sound used in some spoken languages. An alveolar trill is familiar to many people as the sound of an Italian or Spanish .
The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents dental, alveolar, and postalveolar trills is . It is commonly called the rolled R, rolling R, or trilled R. Quite often, 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 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.
Features
Features of a 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.
Occurrence
thumb|A trill extended for about 2 seconds, captured in slow motion to reveal the individual 36–44 Hz tongue oscillations.
Dental
{| class="wikitable"
|-
! colspan="2"| Language !! Word !! IPA !! Meaning !! Notes
|-
| colspan="2" | Hungarian || || || 'that way' || Laminal dental. See Hungarian phonology
|-
| colspan="2" | Marshallese || || || 'to be small' || Palatalized. The language's two other rhotic phonemes, (velarized) and (rounded), are post-alveolar.
|-
| colspan="2" | Romanian || || || 'quickly' || Apical. See Romanian phonology
|-
| colspan="2" | Russian || / || || 'zealous' || Apical, palatalized. Usually only a single vibration, presumably due to the palatalization. See Bengali phonology
|-
|colspan=2| Breton || || || 'king' || Dominant in and around Léon and Morbihan while many other dialects have adopted the voiced uvular fricative. See Breton phonology
|-
| colspan="2" |Bulgarian
|/
|
|'work'
|See Bulgarian phonology
|-
| colspan="2" |Chuvash
|/
|[arəs'lan]
|'lion'
|
|-
| colspan="2" | Czech || || || 'register' || Contrasts with ; may be syllabic. See Czech phonology
|-
| Danish || Few speakers of the Jutlandic dialect || || [rɑɪ̯ˀn]|| || Corresponds to much more back in standard Danish. See Danish phonology
|-
| Dutch || Standard || || || 'window' || See Dutch phonology
|-
| rowspan="2" | English || Scottish || curd || || 'curd'|| Only some dialects. Corresponds to [ ~ ] in others. See English phonology
|-
| Welsh || bright |||| 'bright'|| Some dialects under Welsh influence. Corresponds to in others.
|-
| colspan="2" | Estonian || || || 'floor'|| See Estonian phonology
|-
| colspan="2" | Finnish || || || 'raw'|| See Finnish phonology
|-
| rowspan="2" | Greek || Standard || /|| || 'artos' || Allophone of . Usual in clusters, otherwise a tap or an approximant. || /|| || 'north' || Contrasts with .
|-
| rowspan="2" | Hindustani || Hindi || / || rowspan="2" | || rowspan="2" | 'stone' || rowspan="2" | See Hindustani phonology
|-
|Urdu
| /
|-
| colspan="2" |Indonesian || || ||'vibrate'|| See Indonesian phonology
|-
| colspan="2" | Italian || || || 'earth'|| See Italian phonology
|-
| rowspan="2" | Japanese || Shitamachi dialect
| rowspan="2" |
| rowspan="2" |
| rowspan="2" | 'from'
| rowspan="2" | Allophone of /ɾ/. See Japanese phonology.
|-
| Kansai dialect
|-
| colspan="2" | Kele || colspan="2" style="text-align:center;"| || 'leg'||
|-
| colspan="2" | Kharia || colspan="2" style="text-align:center;"| || 'tear'||
|-
| colspan="2" | Khmer || / || || 'fish' or 'three' || See Khmer phonology
|-
|Korean
|Yukjin Korean
|/
|[to̞tʰɨr]
|'patience'
|Allophone of . Influenced by Soviet presence in the Yukjin region.
|-
| colspan="2" | Kyrgyz || /|| || 'song' ||
|-
| colspan="2" | Latvian || || || 'horn' || See Latvian phonology
|-
| colspan="2" | Lithuanian || || || 'and' || See Lithuanian phonology
|-
| rowspan="3" |Malay
|Standard
| rowspan="3" | /
| rowspan="3" |
| rowspan="3" |'less'
|May be postalveolar approximant [], or more commonly, flap . Silent in word-final position for speakers of 'schwa-varieties'. See Malay phonology
|-
|Brunei
| rowspan="2" |Corresponds to and in other Malay varieties
|-
|Sabah
|-
| colspan="2" |Malayalam
|/
|
|'rock'
| See Malayalam phonology
|-
| Mandarin|| Huguang Southwestern Mandarin || || || 'saw' || Found in the suffix in various localities, including by not limited to (in Jingzhou), Zhongxiang, Yicheng, Jingmen, and Jiangling.
|-
| colspan="2" | Nepali ||/|||| 'drawer' || See Nepali phonology
|-
| colspan="2" | Polish || || || 'step'|| Usually realized as . See Polish phonology.
|-
| colspan="2" | 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.
|-
| colspan="2" | Scots|| || || 'bright' ||
|-
| colspan="2" | 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
|-
| colspan="2" | Serbo-Croatian || / || || 'cape' || May be syllabic. See Serbo-Croatian phonology
|-
| colspan="2" | Slovak || || || 'neck'|| May be a tap, particularly when not syllabic.
|-
| colspan="2" | Slovene || || || 'rice' || Also described as tap , and variable between trill and tap . See Slovene phonology
|-
| colspan="2" | Spanish || || || 'dog'|| Contrasts with . See Spanish phonology
|-
| Swedish || Some West coast and Northern dialects || || || 'good'|| See Swedish phonology
|-
| colspan="2" | Tagalog || || || 'rambutan'|| Allophone of the more common , especially with more conservative speakers. See Tagalog phonology
|-
| colspan="2" |Tamil
|/
|
|'bird'
|See Tamil phonology
|-
| Thai || Standard || / || style="text-align:center;" | || 'Chonburi' ||
|-
| colspan="2" | Titan
|-
| Yiddish || Standard || / || || 'bridge' || More commonly a flap ; can be uvular instead. || || || 'we' || Allophone of , medially between vowels within the morpheme, and finally in the morpheme<br>before a following vowel in the same word. It can be a postalveolar tap or simply instead. || || || 'whale' || rowspan="2" | is velarized and is rounded. Another rhotic phoneme in the language, , is dental and palatalized.
|-
| || || 'ebb tide'
|-
| colspan="2" | Russian (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. (Before the 1989 IPA Kiel Convention, it had a dedicated symbol .) 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 place of articulation is laminal alveolar, which means it is articulated with the blade of the tongue at the alveolar ridge.
Examples
{| class="wikitable"
|-
! colspan="2" | Language !! Word !! IPA !! Meaning !! Notes
|-
| colspan="2" | Czech || || || 'four' || Contrasts with and . May be a non-sibilant fricative.
|་/
|
|'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.
|-
| colspan="2" | Kashubian || ||
|'river'
| Only some northern and northwestern speakers. Formerly common over the whole speaking area. || || || 'river' || Contrasts with and . Present in areas from Starogard Gdański to Malbork || European || || || 'the kidneys' || Possible realization of the sequence for speakers who realize as . || || || '(he) died' || rowspan="2" | Contrasts with and . Merges with in most Polish dialects.
|-
| Jablunkov
|
| or
|'hand'
|Initial allophone of /r/.
|-
| colspan="2" | Tsakonian
|
|
|'justice of the peace'
| appears to have been a fricative trill in the 19th century, and survived latterly only in women's usage in Southern Tsakonian.
|}
See also
- Index of phonetics articles