Voiced uvular fricative

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IPA – number	143
IPA – text	ʁ
IPA – image
Entity	ʁ
X-SAMPA	R
Kirshenbaum	g"
Sound sample (help·info)

The voiced uvular fricative is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ʁ, and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is R. This consonant is one of several collectively called guttural R when found in European languages.

Because the IPA symbol stands for both the uvular fricative and the uvular approximant, the fricative nature of this sound may be specified by adding the uptack to the letter, [ʁ̝]. (The approximant can be specified by adding the downtack, [ʁ̞].)

[edit] Features

Features of the voiced uvular fricative:

• Its manner of articulation is fricative, which means it is produced by constricting air flow through a narrow channel at the place of articulation, causing turbulence.
• Its place of articulation is uvular which means it is articulated with the back of the tongue (the dorsum) against or near the uvula.
• 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.

[edit] Occurs in

Arabic has a specific letter for this sound: 'غ'.

Armenian has a specific letter for this sound: 'Ր'.

It is used in some very rare dialects of Bengali as an allophone of /r/ when it occurs before velar consonants.

In Western Europe, a uvular trill or voiced fricative pronunciation of orthographic r spread from northern French to several dialects and registers of Danish, Dutch, German, Hebrew, Norwegian, Portuguese, and Swedish. However, not all of these remain either uvular or fricative today. In Standard German, r tends to be a uvular fricative or trill initially, but a uvular approximant between vowels, as in Ehre [eʁ̞ə] 'honour'; while in Danish the r is a pharyngeal approximant in all but the most conservative speech. In Brazilian Portuguese, it is usually a voiceless velar fricative [x] or a voiceless glottal fricative [h]. See also guttural R.

The now-extinct Ubykh language had palatalized, pharyngealized, and labialized varieties of this sound (its full inventory of voiced uvular fricatives was /ʁʲ ʁ ʁʷ ʁˁ ʁˁʷ/).

Some phonemic transcriptions use the /r/ symbol instead of /ʁ/ for ease of typesetting when the language in question has no other rhotics.

[edit] See also

• List of phonetics topics

Consonants (List, table)	See also: IPA, Vowels
Pulmonics Bilabial Lab'den. Dental Alveolar Postalv. Retroflex Palatal Velar Uvular Pharyn. Epiglottal Glottal Non-pulmonics and other symbols Nasals m ɱ n ɳ ɲ ŋ ɴ Clicks  ʘ ǀ ǃ ǂ ǁ Plosives p b • • t d ʈ ɖ c ɟ k ɡ q ɢ ʡ ʔ Implo­­sives  ɓ ɗ ʄ ɠ ʛ Fricatives ɸ β f v θ ð s z ʃ ʒ ʂ ʐ ç ʝ x ɣ χ ʁ ħ ʕ ʜ ʢ h ɦ Ejec­­tives  pʼ tʼ kʼ qʼ sʼ Approximants β̞ ʋ ɹ ɻ j ɰ Other laterals  ɺ ɫ Trills ʙ r • ʀ • Co-articulated approximants  ʍ w ɥ Flaps & Taps ѵ̟ ѵ ɾ ɽ • Co-articulated fricatives  ɕ ʑ ɧ Lat. Fricatives ɬ ɮ • • • Affricates  ʦ ʣ ʧ ʤ Lat. Appr'mants l ɭ ʎ ʟ Co-articulated stops  k͡p ɡ͡b ŋ͡m
This page contains phonetic information in IPA, which may not display correctly in some browsers. [Help] Where symbols appear in pairs, the one to the right represents a voiced consonant. Shaded areas denote pulmonic articulations judged impossible.