R-colored vowel
In phonetics, an r-colored vowel or rhotacized vowel is a vowel either with the tip or blade of the tongue turned up during at least part of the articulation of the vowel or with the tip of the tongue down and the back of the tongue bunched. Both articulations produce basically the same auditory effect, a lowering in frequency of the third
formant. In
English, only some
rhotic accents like
General American contain r-colored vowels. They are rarely attested in other languages, but do occur in some varieties of
Dutch.
Encyclopedia
In phonetics, an
r-colored vowel or
rhotacized vowel is a vowel either with the tip or blade of the tongue turned up during at least part of the articulation of the vowel or with the tip of the tongue down and the back of the tongue bunched. Both articulations produce basically the same auditory effect, a lowering in frequency of the third
formant. In
English, only some
rhotic accents like
General American contain r-colored vowels. They are rarely attested in other languages, but do occur in some varieties of
Dutch.
In Mandarin Chinese, the rhotacized ending of some words is the prime way by which to distinguish speakers of Beijing dialect from those of other forms of Mandarin. In words ending in a nasal, the final consonant is displaced by the
-r sound. In simplified written Chinese, the change is indicated with the suffix ?.
In the
1930s the Dravidian language Badaga had two degrees of rhoticity among all five of its vowels, but few speakers maintain the distinction today, and then only in one or two vowels. An example is non-rhotic
mouth, slightly rhotacized
bangle, and fully rhotacized
crop.The r-colored vowels of General American are sometimes written differently depending on whether they are stressed or reduced .
R-colored schwa
The
r-colored schwa or
schwer is a type of rhotacized
vowel sound, used in some
spoken languages. The symbol in the
International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is , and the equivalent
X-SAMPA symbol is [@`]. In
English, this vowel sound occurs in
rhotic accents in words like
better and
meter.
In singing
Most
vocalists who would normally speak
English with r-colored vowels will suppress them at the ends of words while singing in English. Exceptions include many
Irish singers, as well as
Céline Dion .
See also
- List of phonetics topics
- Linking R
