Alveolar trill
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Template:Infobox IPA The alveolar trill is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages (such as Russian, Spanish, Armenian, and Polish). The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents dental, alveolar, and postalveolar trills is Template:IPA, and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is r. It is informally called the rolling R or rolled R.
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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.
In English
Most dialects of English lack an alveolar trill. The most notable exception is the Scottish dialect. This particular sound is challenging to produce for people who do not have it in their native tongue.
Although not used in day-to-day language, a TV ad campaign in Canada for the Tim Hortons doughnut shop chain brought the sound to prominence with the expression "Roll up the rim to win", which used rolled R's to make the ad campaign more memorable. A similar ad appeared on American television for Ruffles brand potato chips with the slogan, "R-r-ruffles have r-r-ridges."
In other languages
Alveolar trills are common in Slavic languages like Russian and Polish, as well as Romance languages such as Spanish and Italian. French and German, however, use the uvular trill instead, albeit allophonically. The trill is also found in colloquial and standard Arabic where it is represented by the letter ر.
A voiceless version of this sound, Template:IPA, occurs in Welsh, and is written as rh. The voiceless alveolar trill also was most likely allophonic to its voiced counterpart in Ancient Greek.
Some Malayalam speakers pronounce both of their language's rhotics as trills. These people contrast a prealveolar (~ dental) and a postalveolar trill: Template:IPA vs. Template:IPA.
Notes on phonetic transcription
In English and German dictionaries, the symbol [r] is usually used to represent the alveolar or retroflex approximant in English (IPA symbols: Template:IPA and Template:IPA) or the uvular trill in German (IPA symbol: Template:IPA).
See also
Template:Consonantsde:Stimmhafter alveolarer Vibrant fr:Consonne roulée alvéolaire voisée gd:Coireall còsagail pt:Vibrante múltipla alveolar ro:Consoană vibrantă alveolară sv:Alveolar tremulant