Editing Guttural R (section)

{{Short description|Type of rhotic consonant ("r sound")}}
{{Use dmy dates|date=August 2021}}
{{more citations needed|date=December 2015}}
[[File:Guttural R used in Western Europe 2000s.png|thumb|The language areas in Europe where some kind of guttural R may be heard by some local natives. Guttural R is not necessarily predominant in all of these areas.]]
[[File:Uvular rhotics in Europe.png|thumb|300px|Distribution of guttural R (e.g. {{IPA|[ʁ ʀ χ]|cat=no}}) in northwestern Europe in the mid-20th century.<ref>Map based on {{Harvcoltxt|Trudgill|1974|p=220}}</ref>{{legend|#8A7248|not usual}}{{legend|#A88A8E|only in some educated speech}}{{legend|#B893CB|usual in educated speech}}{{legend|#73488A|general}}]]

{{IPA notice}}
'''Guttural R''' is the phenomenon whereby a [[rhotic consonant]] (an "R-like" sound) is produced in the back of the [[vocal tract]] (usually [[uvular consonant|with the uvula]]) rather than in the front portion thereof and thus as a [[guttural]] consonant. Speakers of languages with guttural R typically regard guttural and [[coronal consonant|coronal]] rhotics (throat-back-R and tongue-tip-R) to be alternative pronunciations of the same [[phoneme]] (conceptual sound), despite [[articulatory phonetics|articulatory]] differences. Similar consonants are found in other parts of the world, but they often have little to no cultural association or interchangeability with coronal rhotics (such as {{IPAblink|r}}, {{IPAblink|ɾ}}, and {{IPAblink|ɹ}}) and [[#Rhotic-agnostic_guttural_consonants_written_as_rhotics|are (perhaps) not rhotics at all]].

The guttural realization of a lone rhotic consonant is typical in most of what is now France, French-speaking [[Belgium]], most of Germany, large parts of the [[Netherlands]], [[Denmark]], the southern parts of Sweden and southwestern parts of [[Norway]]. It is also frequent in [[Flanders]], eastern [[Austria]], [[Yiddish]] (and hence [[Ashkenazi Jews|Ashkenazi]] [[Hebrew language|Hebrew]]), [[Luxembourgish]], and among all French and some German speakers in [[Switzerland]].

Outside of central Europe, it also occurs as the normal pronunciation of one of two rhotic phonemes (usually replacing an older [[alveolar trill]]) in standard European Portuguese and in other parts of [[Portugal]], particularly the Azores, various parts of Brazil, among minorities of other Portuguese-speaking regions, and in parts of [[Puerto Rico]], [[Cuba]] and the [[Dominican Republic]].