The voiced retroflex approximant is a type of consonant used in some languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ???, and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is r\`. The IPA symbol is a turned lowercase letter r with a rightward hook protruding from the lower right of the letter.
| Voiced retroflex approximant | |||
|---|---|---|---|
| ? | |||
| IPA number | 152 | ||
| Audio sample | |||
| Encoding | |||
| Entity (decimal) | ɻ | ||
| Unicode (hex) | U+027B | ||
| X-SAMPA | r\` | ||
| Braille |   | ||
| |||
| Labialized voiced retroflex approximant | |
|---|---|
| ?? | |
| Audio sample | |
The velar bunched approximant found in some varieties of Dutch and American English sounds similar to the retroflex approximant but it has a very different articulation.
Features
edit
Features of the voiced retroflex approximant:
- Its manner of articulation is approximant, which means it is produced by narrowing the vocal tract at the place of articulation, but not enough to produce a turbulent airstream.
- Its place of articulation is retroflex, which prototypically means it is articulated subapical (with the tip of the tongue curled up), but more generally, it means that it is postalveolar without being palatalized. That is, besides the prototypical subapical articulation, the tongue can be apical (pointed) or, in some fricatives, laminal (flat).
- Its phonation is voiced, which means the vocal cords vibrate during the articulation.
- It is an oral consonant, which means that air is exclusively allowed to escape through the mouth.
Documentation
This template is intended to provide a consistent and easy display for the features of consonants. See: Category:Consonant templates.
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- It is a central consonant, which means it is produced by directing the airstream along the center of the tongue, rather than to the sides.
- Its airstream mechanism is pulmonic, which means it is articulated by pushing air solely with the intercostal muscles and abdominal muscles, as in most sounds.
Occurrence
edit| Family | Language | Word | IPA | Meaning | Notes | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Sinitic | Chinese | Mandarin | 日光 rìguāng | [?????????ku?ɑ???] | 'sunlight' | Apical.[1] As an initial in free variation between fricative and approximant, but never has friction as strong as a true fricative (Chinese "fully muddy"/全浊-class) to trigger a (free or conditional) devoicing or postvoicing into /???/, nor weak enough to become an apical vowel. As a rime it is an apical vowel that is frequently coarticulated with a close near-back unrounded vowel /??/ (thus phonetically [????????????ku?ɑ???], but this phonetic representation should be avoided as the tie-bar for coarticulation may be misunderstood as a sliding into an erhua rhotic vowel, a phonemically distinct syllable in Chinese), but it can be prolonged indefinitely and never truly developed into an /??/. Both the consonant and the vowel may gain some friction especially when prolonged to force a more "distinct/clear" effect in teaching or when swearing, and thus it may be inaccurately transcribed as fricative [?] both as initial and as rime (when precision is necessary, a true fricative in Wu Chinese may be transcribed as [???], as that is how it is pronounced in the first syllable). See Standard Chinese phonology.
The character 日 (sun), when pronounced with an overall strengthened friction (on both z and ?), may likely be understood as a profanity,[which?] thus pronouncing as an approximant is important; but the two do not form a minimal pair, because the profanity can also be pronounced with little friction (though in some other dialects they further evolved to form a minimal pair). |
| Nungish | Derung | Tvrung | [t????u???] | 'Derung' | ||
| Germanic | English | Some American dialects | red | [?(?)?d] | 'red' | Labialized (pronounced with lips rounded). See Pronunciation of English /r/ |
| Some Hiberno-English dialects | ||||||
| Some West Country English | ||||||
| Arnhem | Enindhilyagwa | angwura | [a?wu?a] | 'fire' | ||
| Germanic | Faroese[2] | hoyrdi | [h?i???] | 'heard' | Allophone of /?/.[2] Sometimes voiceless [??].[2] See Faroese phonology | |
| Hellenic | Greek | Cretan (Sfakia and Mylopotamos variations) region[3] | γ?λα gála | [??a?a] | 'milk' | Intervocalic allophone of /l/ before /a, o, u/. Recessive. See Modern Greek phonology |
| Eskimo-Aleut | Inuktitut | Nattilingmiutut | kiu?uq | /kiu?uq/ | 'she replies' | |
| Dravidian | Malayalam | ???/ā?am | [a???m] | 'depth' | ||
| Mapudungun | Mapuche[4] | rayen | [???j?n] | 'flower' | Possible realization of /?/; may be [?] or [?] instead.[4] | |
| Romance | Portuguese | Many Centro-Sul registers | cartas | [?ka?t???s] | 'letters' | Allophone of rhotic consonants (and sometimes /l/) in the syllable coda. Mainly[5] found in rural S?o Paulo, Paraná, south of Minas Gerais and surrounding areas, with the more common and prestigious realization in metropolitan areas being [?] and/or rhotic vowel instead. As with [?], it appeared as a mutation of [?].[6][7][8] See Portuguese phonology. |
| Caipira | temporal | [t????p???a?] | 'rainstorm' | |||
| Conservative Piracicabano | grato | [?g?at??] | 'thankful' (m.) | |||
| Dravidian | Tamil[9] | ?????/Tami? | ? | 'Tamil' | See Tamil phonology. May be merged with [?] for some modern speakers. | |
| Pama-Nyungan | Western Desert | Pitjantjatjara dialect | Ulu?u | [?l???] | 'Uluru' | |
| Isolate | Yaghan | wárho | [?wa?o] | 'cave' | ||
See also
editNotes
edit- ^ Lee, Wai-Sum (1999). An articulatory and acoustical analysis of the syllable-initial sibilants and approximant in Beijing Mandarin (PDF). Proceedings of the 14th International Congress of Phonetic Sciences. S2CID 51828449.
- ^ a b c árnason (2011), p. 115.
- ^ Trudgill (1989), pp. 18–19.
- ^ a b Sadowsky et al. (2013), p. 90.
- ^ Brand?o, Silvia Figueiredo (15 December 2007). "Nas trilhas do -R retroflexo". Signum: Estudos da Linguagem. 10 (2): 265. doi:10.5433/2237-4876.2007v10n2p265.
- ^ Ferraz, Irineu da Silva (2005). Características fonético-acústicas do /r/ retroflexo do portugues brasileiro : dados de informantes de Pato Branco (PR) (Thesis). hdl:1884/3955.
- ^ (in Portuguese) Syllable coda /r/ in the "capital" of the paulista hinterland: sociolinguistic analisis. Archived 2025-08-06 at the Wayback Machine Candida Mara Britto LEITE. Page 111 (page 2 in the attached PDF)
- ^ (in Portuguese) Callou, Dinah. Leite, Yonne. "Inicia??o à Fonética e à Fonologia". Jorge Zahar Editora 2001, p. 24
- ^ Keane (2004), p. 111.
References
edit- árnason, Kristján (2011), The Phonology of Icelandic and Faroese, Oxford University Press, ISBN 978-0-19-922931-4
- Keane, Elinor (2004), "Tamil", Journal of the International Phonetic Association, 34 (1): 111–116, doi:10.1017/S0025100304001549
- Sadowsky, Scott; Painequeo, Héctor; Salamanca, Gastón; Avelino, Heriberto (2013), "Mapudungun", Journal of the International Phonetic Association, 43 (1): 87–96, doi:10.1017/S0025100312000369
- Trudgill, Peter (1989), "The Sociophonetics of /l/ in the Greek of Sphakiá", Journal of the International Phonetic Association, 15 (2): 18–22, doi:10.1017/S0025100300002942, S2CID 143943154