From: Andrew Jarrette
Message: 36571
Date: 2005-03-02
On 05-03-01 20:26, Miguel Carrasquer wrote:
>> [Andrew Jarrette:]
>> Thanks for your illumination on this topic. You seem to know
>> everything about everything. What a coincidence that you are right
>> now working on an article on the pronunciation of /r/ in Old
>> English. I would love to read it. The conclusion I draw from what
>> you have said is that /r/ was probably always variable in its
>> pronunciation, and one cannot say what the archetypal pronunciation
>> was. But I will definitely read that article by J. Catford in
>> which he debunks the "myth" of the original trill. But I still
>> wonder why English is the only modern Indo-European language with
>> an approximant, non-vibrational /r/ (as far as I know, that is)
>
>
> Also Armenian, I think.
Actually, there are accents of English with trilled or tapped
realisations of /r/ at least in some positions, so English as a
dialectal complex isn't entirely without them. On the other hand, there
are other IE languages with approximant/fricative rhotics (standard
French is one!), or with a contrast between two rhotic phonemes, e.g.
tap or approximant vs. a trill (Albanian, Spanish, Armenian). Widely
different realisations of /r/ can be found in dialects of German,
Danish, Portuguese, etc., etc., etc. (not to mention idiolectal
deviations from the norm, which are especially frequent in the case of
rhotics and are a never-drying source of potential innovations -- see
the recent spread of labiodental /r/ in England). English is not as
special as it might seem.
Piotr
______________________________________Yes, there are widely diverging pronunciations of /r/ in many languages, and of course I know about the tap or trill pronunciations of English /r/ in certain dialects. But do those variations of /r/ in other languages include an alveolar/retroflex approximant, as it is most commonly pronounced overall in English (including North American)? Especially before vowels? (I have heard a somewhat retroflex approximant pronunciation in Dutch speakers when /r/ is before a consonant, but the trill or tap seems to be the norm in most other positions). I have never heard a speaker of a foreign language use an apical approximant /r/ before vowels, I have only heard this in English. I still feel English is unique in this respect.
Those labiodental /r/'s among some speakers of English I think is regarded as either substandard or a speech impediment, I dare say. I think they are always perceived as abnormal, unlike Scottish trilled /r/ which is seen as dialectal.