Rhotic consonant

Common card · No. 201117

In phonetics, rhotic consonants, or "R-like" sounds, are liquid consonants that are traditionally represented orthographically by symbols derived from the Greek letter ⟨Ρ ρ⟩, including ⟨R r⟩ in the Latin script and ⟨Р p⟩ in the Cyrillic script. They are transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet by variants of Roman ⟨R r⟩: ⟨r, ɽ, ɾ, ɹ, ɻ, ɺ, 𝼈, ʀ, ʁ⟩. Transcriptions for vocalic or semivocalic realisations of underlying rhotics include ⟨ɜː, ə̯, ɐ̯⟩, and, for retroflex vowels, ⟨ɚ⟩ and ⟨ɝ⟩. This class of sounds is difficult to characterise phonetically; from a phonetic standpoint, there is no single articulatory correlate (manner or place) common to rhotic consonants. Rhotics have instead been found to carry out similar phonological functions or to have certain similar phonological features across different languages. Being "R-like" is an elusive and ambiguous concept phonetically and the same sounds that function as rhotics in some systems may pattern with fricatives, semivowels...

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