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From: na...@mips.inka.de (Christian Weisgerber)
Newsgroups: sci.lang
Subject: Re: and [l]
Date: Wed, 26 Sep 2012 17:57:59 +0000 (UTC)
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Harlan Messinger <h.rem...@gavelcade.com> wrote:

> > http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rhotic_consonant
> 
> I had the idea that what makes all these so-called "r-like" sounds 
> "r-like" is historical circumstance: that among the Indo-European 
> languages there have been various shifts among those particular sounds 
> over the centuries, while the spelling has been kept constant ("r", "Ï ", 
> "Ñ€"). So we say "a Spanish 'r' is like this, and a French 'r' is like 
> that, and an English 'r' is like that), and then we've gone and used "r" 
> to transcribe ANY of those sounds from languages around the rest of the 
> world.

But there is also the somewhat related fact that in some European
languages, several of these sounds are allophones.

The Duden pronunciation dictionary recognizes four (!) realizations
of consonantal /r/ in German:
* uvular trill
* uvular fricative
* alveolar trill
* alveolar tap

French also has at least historically allowed both uvular r's and
the alveolar trill, although the latter is now stigmatized.

Even in English as spoken in Great Britain the alveolar approximant
is not universal, as can be readily discovered when listening to
speakers from Scotland and Wales.

-- 
Christian "naddy" Weisgerber                          na...@mips.inka.de