Guttural R
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In linguistics, guttural R (throaty R or French R) refers to pronunciation of the phoneme R as a guttural consonant. These consonants are usually found as a uvular R, but can also be realized as a velar R, a pharyngeal R or a glottal R. Speakers of some languages regard alveolar and uvular /r/ to be alternative pronunciations of the same phoneme. This is remarkable in light of how different these sounds are in terms of their articulation.
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Guttural R languages
The guttural R is common in northern Europe, and is the usual form of the consonant R in most of what is now France, Belgium, Netherlands, northern Germany and Denmark. The consonant is also found other parts of the world, but in most other places it has little or no cultural association nor interchangeability with the more common alveolar and retroflex /r/.
Romance languages
French
The French language is perhaps the most well-known example of a guttural R language, to the extent that this pronunciation is widely stereotyped. In the standard dialect of Paris, it is pronounced as a trill (IPA //), while in most of the rest of France it is pronounced as a voiced (IPA //) or voiceless (IPA /χ/) uvular fricative. However, in much of southern France /r/ remains non-uvular.
The nearby Breton language in Brittany, which is not a Romance language but is heavily influenced by French, but retains an alveolar R in some parts.
Portuguese
Portuguese as spoken in Lisbon has three distinct pronunciations for "r". One of these is uvular, the other two being voiced alveolar tap and alveolar trill. All three sounds are widely used. The uvular R occurs when a word starts with "r", like "russo" (Russian; IPA /'/), or in the case of "rr" : like "carro" (car; //). In Brazil, uvular R is not common. Word-initial "r" and/or double "rr" are voiceless glottal fricatives (IPA /h/) /'husu/, /kahu/, with an exception of Rio accent, where they are realized as a voiceless velar fricative (/x/): /'xusu/, /'kaxu/. At the end of a syllable/word Brazilian "r" can be pronounced in many ways (depending on the region and other factors)
- as a glottal /h/
- as an alveolar tap
- as an alveolar trill
- as a retroflex consonant
- as a voiceless velar fricative (/x/).
The first two realizations are considered the most neutral.
Continental West Germanic
Traditionally, the languages of what are now the Netherlands, Germany, Switzerland and Austria were split between language families of the Lower, Middle and Upper Rhine River. The Lower dialects evolved into Dutch and Low German dialects, evolving a uvular R. The dialects upriver underwent a consonant shift that distinguished them as the High German languages, which further subdivided into the Middle and Upper dialects. While the Upper dialects spoken in Switzerland in Austria maintained an alveolar trill (IPA /r/), the Middle dialects of central Germany also developed a uvular R. The development of a uvular R in these regions is not entirely understood, but a popular theory is that these languages adopted a uvular R because of French influence, though the reason for uvular R in modern European French is not itself well understood.
The Frisian language, though spoken in part on the continent and surrounded by guttural R languages, is more closely related to English and Scots and unusually retains an alveolar R.
Dutch, Flemish and Afrikaans
In modern Dutch, quite a few different R-sounds are used. In Belgium (Flemish), the usual R is an alveolar trill, but uvular R does occur, mostly in the province of Limburg and in the cities of Ghent and Brussels. In the Netherlands, uvular R is the dominant R-sound in the southern provinces of Noord-Brabant and Limburg. In the rest of the country, the situation is more complicated. Uvular R is common, but not dominant, in the western agglomeration Randstad, including cities like Rotterdam, The Hague and Utrecht (the dialect of Amsterdam usually has an alveolar R though). Uvular R is also used in some major cities outside of the Randstad area, such as Zwolle, Almelo and Leeuwarden. Outside of these uvular R core areas, alveolar trill is common. People learning Dutch as a foreign language also tend to use the alveolar trill because it contrasts better with the velar fricative sound /x/ used for CH and G in Dutch. The Afrikaans language of South Africa also uses an alveolar trill R, except in the non-urban rural regions around Cape Town where it is uvular.
Standard German
Most German varieties of Standard German are spoken with a uvular R, even though the first standardized pronunciation dictionary by Theodor Siebs prescribed an alveolar pronunciation. The alveolar pronunciation is used in many standard German varieties of Southern Germany, Austria and Switzerland. In many varieties, both with uvular R and with alveolar R, R is often vocalized at the ends of syllables.
Yiddish
The upper/lower distinction also historically influenced the development of upper and lower dialects of Yiddish, the particular High German dialect originally spoken by Ashkenazi Jews along the Rhine. As these Jews migrated to other lands such as the United States and Russia, they brought their particular pronunciations with them.
North Germanic
Danish and Swedish
The alveolar pronunciation of R predominates in most of Scandinavia, with additional retroflex pronunciations of consonant clusters /rd/, /rl/, /rn/, /rs/ and /rt/ in most of Norway and Sweden. However, Denmark proper speaks R entirely as a voiced pharyngeal fricative, and the Swedish region of Skåne speaks R entirely as a uvular trill. The Swedish as spoken in Skåne is considered a dialect of Swedish, though for historical reasons it is also largely mutually intelligible with the Danish spoken across the strait in Denmark. The origin of guttural R in Denmark and Skåne is not well understood, as R in both regions was alveolar before Sweden received Skåne.
Norwegian
Most of Norway uses an alveolar flap. In the western and southern part of South-Norway however, uvular R is gaining ground. The centre of uvular R spreading is the city of Bergen, and it's still spreading today. Linguists suppose that dialects that use retroflexes have a 'natural defense' against uvular R and thus will not adopt it. These dialects are primarily found in the eastern part of South-Norway and in North-Norway. It is estimated that uvular R eventually will spread to every non-retroflex dialect in Norway.
Sorbian
Unusual among Slavic languages but common in the region where it is spoken, the two Sorbian languages in eastern Germany are typically spoken with a uvular trill, under German influence.
Semitic languages
Arabic
While most dialects of Arabic retain the Classical pronunciation of ر rāʾ as an alveolar trill (IPA /r/) or flap in some cases (IPA ), several dialects convert it to a uvular trill (IPA ). These include:
Hebrew
In Hebrew, the classical pronunciation of the consonant ר rêš was an alveolar flap (IPA //), and was grammatically treated as an ungeminable phoneme of the language. In most dialects of Hebrew among the Jewish diaspora, it remained a flap or a trill (IPA /r/). However, the Ashkenazi dialects as preserved among Jews in northern Europe carried a uvular R, either as a trill (IPA //) or fricative (IPA //). This was because their native dialects of Yiddish were spoken that way, and their liturgical Hebrew carried the same pronunciation.
Yiddish Influence
Though an Ashkenazi Jew in Czarist Russia, the Zionist Eliezer ben Yehuda based his Standard Hebrew on the Sephardic dialect originally spoken in Spain, using an alveolar R. But as the first waves of Jews to resettle in the Holy Land were northern Ashkenazi, they came to speak Standard Hebrew with their preferred uvular articulation as from Yiddish, and it gradually became the most prestigious pronunciation for the language. The modern State of Israel has Jews whose ancestors came from all over the world, but nearly all of them today speak Hebrew with a uvular R because of its modern prestige and historical elite status.
Israeli Hebrew
Many Jewish immigrants to Israel spoke Arabic in their countries of origin, and pronounced Hebrew R as an alveolar trill identical to Arabic ر rāʼ. Under pressure to integrate, many of them compensated by pronouncing their Hebrew R as Arabic غ ġayn, which is itself usually pronounced as a voiced uvular fricative. However, in modern Sephardic and Mizrahi poetry and folk music, an alveolar R is sometimes used in preference.
Guttural Pseudo-R
Some languages have a guttural consonant spelled as R, but mostly for associative convenience without any historical association with an alveolar /r/ phoneme. These are not considered true guttural R languages for this reason.
Kalaallisut
The dialects of Kalaallisut transliterate their voiced uvular fricative in Latin script as R. Kalaallisut R is the fricative counterpart of Q, a voiceless uvular plosive. The choice to use R was simply a convenience for the language's orthographers, drawing on uvular association with R in continental northern European languages.
Vietnamese
Under French influence, the R phoneme from words in French and other European languages tends to be loaned into Vietnamese as velar C, K or KH.
J.R.R. Tolkien
The fantasy novels of J.R.R. Tolkien contained heavy linguistic detail, along with philosophical ideals of what constituted notions of beautiful and ugly language. Tolkien personally loathed "guttural" consonants, so in his fictional "fair" languages, he completely omitted uvular consonants and the voiced velar fricative (IPA ), but kept other velar consonants intact. He further demonized the uvular R, using it only in his fictional "black" languages such as the Black Speech along with the native languages spoken by the Orcs. In contrast, the Elves spoke R as a "fair" alveolar trill at all times.
These conventions were not as strictly adhered to in the various film and animation versions of Tolkien's works. In particular, the Rankin-Bass animated adaptation of The Hobbit has the Elves of Mirkwood speaking with a voiced uvular fricative. In contrast, in Peter Jackson's The Lord of the Rings movie trilogy, the orcs and Uruk-hai speak in Cockney-style accents with alveolar and retroflex approximants.