Talk:Retroflex consonant

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Whilst I am sure this article is meaningful to some, could it not be explained in simpler language. It's rather too technical for my understanding. Should it not instead contain a statement like: pronounced with the tongue touching the palate. Rellis1067 22:00, 28 July 2005 (UTC)

I agree. The language of this article assumes the reader already knows a lot of detail about oral anatomy and how it applies to articulatory phonetics. These people already know what a retroflex consonant is, so this article isn't much use to anybody in its current state. I will try to tone down the technical language. Nohat 23:22, 28 July 2005 (UTC)
That's great! The other thing I don't understand is the caption: Sublaminal retroflex plosive. It would be clearer - to me at least - if someone could reword it, making it less technical. Rellis1067 19:03, 31 July 2005 (UTC)
I changed it from 'sublaminal' to 'subapical' to match the description of the article. If you still have trouble, then we need to work on the article some more, not just the caption. kwami 23:07, 2005 August 15 (UTC)
I think it's pretty understandable if you have some knowledge of phonetics. The article was very very useful to me when I found it. I was just wondering if someone could maybe put up an image of the articulation of the retroflex fricative comparing it to the alveolo-palatal and palato-alveolar fricatives'. Radek

[edit] My edit

I removed the Mandarin example for [ʐ] and replaced it by Russian and Polish. Firstly, Pīnyīn r isn't [ʐ] but something more complicated (usually it's simultaneous [ɻ] and [ʐ]*, though some pronounce it as [ɻ] alone); secondly, the transcription was quite broad anyway; thirdly, it increases the diversity of the examples (there is already a Mandarin example, but no Slavic one); fourthly, it shows people at a glance that retroflex consonants are also common in less exotic** languages.

(*) Analogous to Czech ř, just with "American" [ɻ] rather than "Spanish" [r].

(**) From a western European POV – which most readers of the English-language Wikipedia will inevitably have.

David Marjanović | david.marjanovic[at]gmx.at | 2005/11/19 | 16:34 CET

That's fine, though I wonder about your description of Mandarin r, since simultaneous [ɻ] and [ʐ] (an approximant and fricative at the same place of articulation) isn't physically possible. Do you mean it's [ʐ] with some sort of secondary articulation? I can pronounce it, but I'm not quite sure what I'm doing! kwami 15:53, 19 November 2005 (UTC)
I thought "simultaneous" meant "at the same time". You could describe the sound as [ʐ] with a secondary articulation or as [ɻ] with a secondary articulation. I don't think it makes much sense here to tell apart which articulation, if any, is primary and which secondary. (Of course you're right that two places of articulation are involved.)
It's impossible to pronounce [ʐ] and [ɻ] at the same time unless you have two tongues: You can't have the tongue close enough to the roof of the mouth to produce turbulence, yet at the same time have it too far away to produce turbulence at the same location. You're claiming coarticulation with a single place of articulation - a contradiction in terms. kwami 23:18, 5 January 2006 (UTC)
It is, however, true that the thing is pronounced [ɻ] or [ɹ] or both either by some people or at some occasions (I haven't listened enough, but probably Peter Isotalo is right in saying it is the word-final allophone) or both.
David Marjanović | david.marjanovic[at]gmx.at | 2006/1/5 | 23:50 CET
According to San Duanmu in The Phonology of Standard Chinese, the initial /r/ is not retroflex, but rather an [ɹ] of some sort. He bases this partially on very well-founded skepticism concerning the existance of [ʐ], a voiced fricative, as an allophone in a phonology that has doesn't have any voiced/voiceless phoneme pairs. I think the only allophonic exceptions are in words like bàba ("father") where the second consonant is voiced because its between vowels. Whatever the Mandarin initial /r/ is, it is not the same as the [ɻ]-suffix which forms the rhotic final in words like háir ("child") or ménr' ("door").
I will reserve myself for perhaps missing some essential explanation of the nature of the sound, since the book won't be available to me again until late January.
Peter Isotalo 17:10, 1 January 2006 (UTC)
Best to leave it out then. And you're right, it's not like the [ɻ]-suffix. It's definitely voiced, though, and is quite fricated. Maybe not as fricated as sh, but then voiced fricatives tend to be less fricated than voiceless ones. Think of English thy vs. thigh - that's the difference in quality I hear between Mandarin r and sh. I never spoke the language well, though, so my opinion can't count for much.
Philosophic arguments based on an ideally symmetrical phonemic inventory aren't very convincing. There are just too many irregularities in the world's languages, so we need laboratory measurements. Mandarin r seems to have historically been some sort of nasalized fricative; perhaps a originally a palatal nasal where palatalization became fricated. An odd history for a phoneme like that could easily make the inventory asymmetric. kwami 17:44, 1 January 2006 (UTC)
Gotta revise my statement after reading San more carefully. He uses the [ɹ] for narrow transcription ([r] elsewhere), but when he analyzes the sound, he defines it as retroflex and doesn't make a distinction between the suffix, the /i/-allophone and the initial. He notes that there are those who transcribe it as a [ʐ], but that they are few and then goes on to cite studies that show that the sound has little or no friction. So actually transcribing it as a fricative seems rather misleading to me, especially considering that the suffix-/r/ never has friction. So it's more than just a philosophic argument.
Peter Isotalo 20:16, 4 February 2006 (UTC)

[edit] American English

Shouldn't it be mentioned that there are allophones of some consonants preceeding retroflex approximant :

Is it true that lateral approximant becomes lateral retroflex approximant under the influence of retroflex approximant? --Dennis Valeev 14:48, 11 December 2005 (UTC)

Yes, that's a good illustration. It may be pretty opaque to native speakers, but the more ways to get an idea across the better. I doubt it's a universal feature though: not all speakers of rhotic dialects have retroflex ars. People in the same family may differ, as there are at least three articulations that produce the same acoustic effect. I don't know if they all have the same articulatory effect on following consonants, even if the acoustic effects are the same. It could be very confusing to someone to tell them that GA /r/ is retroflex if their articulation is otherwise.
As for the el, it seems slightly retracted to me, but not retroflex like the others. Girl is sesquisyllabic, as all syllables with a diphthong followed by el are, and the slight break between the r and the l is enough to allow rearticulation. (That's one argument for /i/ and /u/ being diphthongs in GA English: peel is a syllable and a half, while pill is a single syllable.)
kwami 19:56, 11 December 2005 (UTC)
Yeah, I agree that there are at least three kinds of Rs out there: alveolar, retroflex, and "bunched" as it were. I was surprised by the fact that I couldn't quite force myself into articulating "lateral retroflex approximant" (I wish I had an auto-replacing soft running on this computer; do you have any idea of good resident substitute for a MS Word with its autoreplace feature?); because I heard that distinctive "click", which can be easily reproduced by saying "tl" together. Do you have an IM? --Dennis Valeev 20:07, 11 December 2005 (UTC)
Are 'd' and 't' in "drink" and "tree" retroflex for you? As far as I am concerned, I start from alveolar though a bit retracted "d" and "t"; I find it very hard to start from retroflex coronal consonants in such preconditions as "in the" (where 'n' is dental), as in "in the truck", because there's such a huge gap between dental position of your tongue and retroflex one, though I have no difficulty in pronouncing "through", for example. --Dennis Valeev 20:43, 11 December 2005 (UTC)
Sorry, I don't know what 'IM' is.
I pronounce tree and drink as you describe them, with my tongue retracting to pronounce the r, but with some anticipatory retraction in the plosive.
I don't follow the other question. I have no problem making the /t/ of truck retroflex in the phrase in the truck, though of course I would never pronounce it that way. kwami 21:06, 11 December 2005 (UTC)
Oh, I see, I can't pronounce "in the truck" with retroflex "T" either, although I read in a book on linguistics that it is, in fact, retroflex before "r". If you have a google account you can search for this book: "Essential Introductory Linguistics" by Grover Hudson, or access this page and loading the aforementioned book on page 48: http://print.google.com/print?q=consonant%20retroflex%20american
It says that "coronal consonant /d, t, s/ is retroflex before [r]: ʈruck, ɖrink". What? --Dennis Valeev 23:05, 11 December 2005 (UTC)
Maybe in his dialect it is. Not in mine. kwami 05:49, 12 December 2005 (UTC)
Perhaps he just means 'non-palatal postalveolar'? I could see the /t/ of truck being postalveolar. kwami 06:29, 21 December 2005 (UTC)
Exactly, this is the way I used to pronounce "truck" but he deliberately used retroflex T down there, so what was that for? And he's definitely an expert in his field, but all the same I don't see how it's possible to easily articulate this, no matter how many people I enquired they answered something along the follwing lines: "no! that's absolutely impossible, the pal must be nuts". Yet, I have another question pertaining "retroflex taps". Is there any tap here: "ask her to be here" or "it's similar to the..."(there is the retroflex tap in "where did you go?", as far as I'm concerned). Thanks! --Dennis Valeev 22:07, 23 December 2005 (UTC)

Definitely a flap in "ask her to be here": I retract my tongue for the /r/, then release it as a flap for the /t/. The retraction is pretty retroflex, but I don't think the flap is: it is released from a retroflex position, but the contact appears to be alveolar. It's a little hard to be sure what's going on with such a brief sound, though. kwami 22:16, 23 December 2005 (UTC)

Yup, that's how I was saying this, too; I think it has something to do with "her" word, because there are so many people who don't care to say both 'h' and 'r' carefully in it, so they end up saying [æskɚɾəbihiɻ] or even [æsəkɾəbihiɻ], but when it comes to saying something more complicated as "it's similar to..." or "where did you go?" the tap seems to be completely of retroflex nature.

Both /r/s are the same for me, though it's harder to tell what's going on with similar to because the word's so much longer. Doesn't seem any more retroflex to me than her to did. And where did you go? is palatalized [wεɹʤuɡo]. So no, I don't appear to retroflex any of them. kwami 23:35, 23 December 2005 (UTC)

As for the "where did you go?" example, it's [ʍɝɻɽəʤuɡɔʊ] to my ear, though I've got a tin ear problem, and need some help myself *smiles*. --Dennis Valeev 23:57, 23 December 2005 (UTC)


[edit] Some clarification required regarding Retroflex consonant in English & Hindi

In article page, Hindi `t' in `tapu' is called as Retroflex consonant. But it's pronunciation is same as `T' found in pronouncing Tea , Train , Total etc. So, can we call that even English contains Retroflex consonant ?

I am an Indian and knows Hindi like mothertongue. WIN 12:04, 13 December 2006 (UTC)

No. Maybe in Indian English, but certainly not in other dialects. Ƶ§œš¹ [aɪm ˈfɻɛ̃ⁿdˡi] 12:14, 13 December 2006 (UTC)
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