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Alveolar Trill




The alveolar trill is a type of Consonant al sound, used in some Spoken Language s (such as Russian , Spanish , Armenian , and Polish ). The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents Dental , Alveolar , and Postalveolar Trills is , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is r. It is informally called the '''rolling R''' or '''rolled R'''.


FEATURES


Features of the alveolar trill:



IN ENGLISH

Most dialects of English lack an alveolar trill. The most notable exception is the Scottish dialect. This particular sound is challenging to produce for people who do not have it in their native tongue.

Although not used in day-to-day language, a TV ad campaign in Canada for the Tim Hortons doughnut shop chain brought the sound to prominence with the expression "Roll up the rim to win", which used rolled R's to make the ad campaign more memorable. A similar ad appeared on American television for Ruffles brand potato chips with the slogan, "R-r-ruffles have r-r-ridges."


IN OTHER LANGUAGES

Alveolar trills are common in Slavic languages like Russian and Polish , as well as Romance languages such as Spanish and Italian . French and German , however, use the Uvular Trill instead, albeit Allophonically . The trill is also found in colloquial and standard Arabic where it is represented by the letter ر.

A voiceless version of this sound, , occurs in Welsh , and is written as ''rh''. The voiceless alveolar trill also was most likely allophonic to its voiced counterpart in Ancient Greek .

Some Malayalam speakers pronounce both of their language's rhotics as trills. These people contrast a ''prealveolar'' (~ dental) and a ''postalveolar'' trill: vs. .


NOTES ON PHONETIC TRANSCRIPTION

In English and German dictionaries, the symbol {Link without Title} is usually used to represent the alveolar or retroflex approximant in English (IPA symbols: and ) or the uvular trill in German (IPA symbol: ).


SEE ALSO