Dental, alveolar and postalveolar trills

"r (IPA)" redirects here. For the 'r' sound (as in English red) often transcribed /r/ for convenience, see Alveolar approximant ([ɹ]).

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 commonly called the rolled R, rolling R, or trilled 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 the letter used in the orthographies of these 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 Albanian, Spanish, Cypriot Greek, and a number of Armenian and Portuguese dialects, which treat them as distinct phonemes.

People with ankyloglossia may find it exceptionally difficult to articulate this consonant due to the limited mobility of their tongues.

Voiced alveolar trill

Most commonly, the alveolar trill is voiced.

Features

Features of the alveolar trill:

• Its manner of articulation is trill, which means it is produced by directing air over the articulator so that it vibrates.
• Its place of articulation is dental, alveolar or post-alveolar, which means it is articulated behind upper front teeth, at the alveolar ridge or behind the alveolar ridge. It is most often apical, which means that it is pronounced with the tip of the tongue.
• Its phonation is voiced, which means the vocal cords vibrate during the articulation.
• It is an oral consonant, which means air is allowed to escape through the mouth only.
• It is a central consonant, which means it is produced by directing the airstream along the center of the tongue, rather than to the sides.
• The airstream mechanism is pulmonic, which means it is articulated by pushing air solely with the lungs and diaphragm, as in most sounds.

Occurrence

Dental

Language		Word	IPA	Meaning	Notes
Hungarian		arra	[ɒr̪ːɒ]	'that way'	See Hungarian phonology
Romanian		repede	[ˈr̪e̞pe̞d̪e̞]	'quickly'	Apical. See Romanian phonology
Russian		рьяный	[ˈr̪ʲjän̪ɨ̞j]	'zealous'	Apical, palatalized. Often a tap. It contrasts with a post-alveolar trill. See Russian phonology

Alveolar

Language		Word	IPA	Meaning	Notes
Afrikaans	Standard	rooi	[roːi̯]	'red'	May be a tap [ɾ] instead. See Afrikaans phonology
Armenian	Eastern	ռումբ	<phonos file="rumb.ogg">[rumb]</phonos>	'cannonball'
Czech		chlor	[xlɔ̝ːr]	'chlorine'	Contrasts with /r̝/; may be syllabic. See Czech phonology
Danish	Few speakers of the Jutlandic dialect				Corresponds to much more back [ʁ ~ ʕ] in standard Danish. See Danish phonology
English	Scottish	curd	[kʌrd]	'curd'	Only some dialects. Corresponds to [ɾ ~ ɹ] in others. See English phonology
Greek	Standard	άρτος	[ˈartos]	'Communion bread'	Allophone of /r/. Usual in clusters, otherwise a tap or an approximant. See Modern Greek phonology
	Cypriot	βορράς	[voˈrːas]	'north'	Contrasts with /ɾ/.
Italian		terra	<phonos file="It-Terra.wav">[ˈt̪ɛrːä]</phonos>	'earth'	See Italian phonology
Kele		[ⁿrikei]		'leg'
Kyrgyz		ыр	[ɯr]	'song'
Latvian		rags	[räks̪]	'horn'	See Latvian phonology
Polish		krok	<phonos file="Pl-krok.ogg">[krɔk]</phonos>	'step'	Contrasts with /r̝/ for few speakers. See Polish phonology
Serbo-Croatian		рт / rt	[r̩t]	'cape'	May be syllabic. See Serbo-Croatian phonology
Slovak		krk	[kr̩k]	'neck'	May be a tap, particularly when not syllabic.
Slovene		riž	[ríːʃ]	'rice'	Also described as tap [ɾ], and variable between trill [r] and tap [ɾ]. See Slovene phonology
Spanish		perro	[ˈpe̞ro̞]	'dog'	Contrasts with /ɾ/. See Spanish phonology
Titan		[ⁿrakeiʔin]		'girls'
Yiddish	Standard	בריק	[brɪk]	'bridge'	More commonly a flap [ɾ]; can be uvular [ʀ̆ ~ ʀ] instead. See Yiddish phonology
Zapotec	Tilquiapan	r-ree	[rɘˀɘ]	'go out (habitually)'	Underlyingly two sequences of /ɾ/.

Post-alveolar

See also: Retroflex trill

Language		Word	IPA	Meaning	Notes
Catalan		roba	[ˈr̠ɔβ̞ə]	'clothes'	Contrasts with /ɾ/. See Catalan phonology
Gokana		bele	[bēr̠ē]	'we'	Allophone of /l/, 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 [l] instead.
Russian		играть	[ɪˈɡr̠ätʲ]	'to play'	Contrasts with a palatalized dental trill. See Russian phonology

Variable

Language		Word	IPA	Meaning	Notes
German	Standard	Schmarrn	[ʃmaːrn]	'nonsense'	Varies between apical dental and apical alveolar; may be a tap instead. See 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 [ˈrɪbaːr̝ɪ] 'fishermen' and the common surname Dvořák. Its manner of articulation is similar to [r] but is laminal and the body of the tongue is raised. It is thus partially fricative, with the frication sounding rather like [ʒ] but not so retracted. In the IPA, it is typically written as ⟨r⟩ plus the raising diacritic, ⟨r̝⟩, but it has also been written as laminal ⟨r̻⟩. Non-native speakers may pronounce it as [rʐ] or [rʒ]. (Before the 1989 IPA Kiel Convention, it had a dedicated symbol ⟨ɼ⟩). The Kobon language of Papua New Guinea also has a fricative trill, but the degree of frication is variable.

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,
• Its phonation is voiced, which means the vocal cords vibrate during the articulation.
• It is an oral consonant, which means air is allowed to escape through the mouth only.
• It is a central consonant, which means it is produced by directing the airstream along the center of the tongue, rather than to the sides.
• The airstream mechanism is pulmonic, which means it is articulated by pushing air solely with the lungs and diaphragm, as in most sounds.

Occurrence

Language		Word	IPA	Meaning	Notes
Czech		čtyři	<phonos file="cs-čtyři.ogg">[ˈt͡ʃtɪr̝ɪ]</phonos>	'four'	May be a non-sibilant fricative. It contrasts with /r/ and /ʒ/. See Czech phonology
Kashubian					Only some northern and northwestern speakers.
Kobon					Amount of frication variable. May also be a fricative flap
Polish	Some dialects	rzeka	<phonos file="Cs-řeka.ogg">[ˈr̝ɛkä]</phonos>	'river'	Contrasts with /r/ and /ʐ/. 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 from Wieleń, around Wołomin, southeast from Ostrów Mazowiecka and west from Siedlce, from Brzeg to Opole and those north of them, and roughly from Racibórz to Nowy Targ. Most speakers, as well as standard Polish merge it with /ʐ/, and speakers maintaining the distinction (which is mostly the elderly) sporadically do that too. See Polish phonology
Portuguese		os rins	[u ˈr̝ĩʃ]	'the kidneys'	Possible realization of the sequence /sr/ for speakers who realize /r/ as [r]. See Portuguese phonology
Silesian	Gmina Istebna				Contrasts with /r/ and /ʒ/. Merges with /ʐ/ in most Polish dialects.
	Jablunkov
Slovak	Northern dialects	řyka	[ˈr̝ɪkä]	'river'	Only in a few dialects near the Polish border. See Slovak phonology

See also

• Index of phonetics articles