On 05-03-03 10:26, Mate Kapovic wrote:
> I think that in case of /r/ there are more idiosyncracies than elsewhere.
> Thus, a chance that an idiosyncracy will spread is bigger. They say that the
> French /r/ was also (king's) idiosyncracy in the beginning.
But which king, and which French /r/ -- the "grasseyé" uvular trill or
the now-normative dorso-velar approximant/fricative? The former, as far
as I know, is considered provincial and substandard; the latter is said
to have spread about the time of the Revolution as a popular Parisian
pronunciation. Some aristocrats actually condemned it as vulgar (while
their younger cousins were already using it). The "norm" until the 18th
century was allegedly the apical trill (which certainly doesn't mean
that everybody used it).
Piotr