Editing Rhotic consonant (section)

{{Short description|Class of consonants}}
{{More citations needed|date=April 2020}}
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In [[phonetics]], '''rhotic consonants''',  or "R-like" sounds, are [[liquid consonant]]s that are traditionally represented [[orthography|orthographically]] by symbols derived from the [[Greek alphabet|Greek]] letter [[Rho (letter)|rho]] (Ρ and ρ), including [[R|{{angle bracket|R}}, {{angle bracket|r}}]] in the [[Latin script]] and [[Er (Cyrillic)|{{angle bracket|Р}}, {{angle bracket|p}}]] in the [[Cyrillic script]]. They are transcribed in the [[International Phonetic Alphabet]] by upper- or lower-case variants of Roman {{angle bracket|R}}, {{angle bracket|r}}:<ref name="ladefoged1996sounds" /> {{angbr IPA|{{IPA link|r}}}},  {{angbr IPA|{{IPA link|ɾ}}}}, {{angbr IPA|{{IPA link|ɹ}}}}, {{angbr IPA|{{IPA link|ɻ}}}}, {{angbr IPA|{{IPA link|ʀ}}}}, {{angbr IPA|{{IPA link|ʁ}}}}, {{angbr IPA|{{IPA link|ɽ}}}}, and {{angbr IPA|{{IPA link|ɺ}}}}. Transcriptions for vocalic or semivocalic realisations of underlying rhotics include the {{angbr IPA|{{IPA link|ə|ə̯}}}} and {{angbr IPA|{{IPA link|ɐ|ɐ̯}}}}.

This class of sounds is difficult to characterise phonetically; from a phonetic standpoint, there is no single articulatory [[correlate]] ([[manner of articulation|manner]] or [[place of articulation|place]]) common to rhotic consonants.<ref name="lindau">{{Cite journal |last=Lindau |first=Mona |date=1978 |title=Vowel features |journal=Language |volume=54 |issue=3 |pages=541–63 |doi=10.2307/412786 |jstor=412786}}</ref> Rhotics have instead been found to carry out similar phonological functions or to have certain similar phonological features across different languages.<ref name="Wiese">{{Cite book |last=Wiese |first=Richard |title=Distinctive Feature Theory |date=2001 |publisher=Mouton de Gruyter |isbn=3-11-017033-7 |editor-last=T Alan Hall |location=Berlin |chapter=The phonology of /r/ |author-link=Richard Wiese (linguist)}}</ref>

Being "R-like" is an elusive and ambiguous concept phonetically and the same sounds that function as rhotics in some systems may pattern with [[fricative]]s, [[semivowel]]s or even stops in others.<ref>{{Cite book |last=Wiese |first=Richard |title=The Blackwell Companion to Phonology |publisher=[[John Wiley & Sons]] |year=2011 |editor-last=van Oostendorp |editor-first=Marc |pages=711–729 |chapter=The representation of rhotics |author-link= |editor-last2=Ewen |editor-first2=Colin |editor-last3=Hume |editor-first3=Elizabeth |editor-last4=Rice |editor-first4=Keren}}</ref> For example, the [[alveolar flap]] is a rhotic consonant in many languages, but in [[North American English]], the alveolar tap is an allophone of the stop phoneme {{IPAslink|t}}, as in ''[[:wikt:water|water]]''. It is likely that rhotics are not a phonetically natural class but a phonological class.<ref name="chabot">{{Cite journal |last=Chabot |first=Alex |date=2019 |title=What's wrong with being a rhotic? |journal=Glossa: A Journal of General Linguistics |volume=4 |issue=(1)38 |pages=1–24 |doi=10.5334/gjgl.618 |doi-access=free}}</ref>

Some languages have '''rhotic''' and '''non-rhotic''' varieties, which differ in the incidence of rhotic consonants. In [[Rhoticity in English|non-rhotic accents of English]], {{IPA|/ɹ/}} is not pronounced unless it is followed directly by a vowel.