Voiced alveolar approximant

The alveolar approximant is a consonant. It is used in some languages. It is used in English where the letter "r" is used for the sound, as in run or brick. The International Phonetic Alphabet represents the alveolar and postalveolar approximants as ⟨ɹ⟩. International Phonetic Alphabet represents it as a lowercase letter r rotated 180 degrees, or in broad transcription ⟨r⟩; the X-SAMPA symbol of this is ⟨r\⟩.

Alveolar approximant
ɹ
ð̠˕
Image
IPA number	151
Encoding
Entity (decimal)	ɹ
Unicode (hex)	U+0279
X-SAMPA	r\ or D_r_o
Kirshenbaum	r
Sound

Many times the symbol is written as ⟨r⟩ instead of ⟨ɹ⟩ because typing ⟨r⟩ is easier.

Features

• The airstream mechanism is pulmonic. It means that we produce this sound by pushing air solely with the lungs and diaphragm, as in most sounds.
• Its phonation is voiced. It means that the vocal cords vibrate during the articulation.
• We produce it at alveolar. It means that we produce this sound with the tip of the tongue(apical) or the blade of the tongue at the alveolar ridge (laminal).
• Its behavior is approximant. It means that we produce this sound by narrowing the vocal tract at the place we produce this sound, but not narrowing to much to produce a turbulent airstream.

Examples

Language		Word	IPA	Meaning
Armenian	Eastern	սուրճ	[suɹtʃʰ]	'coffee'
Chukchi		ңирэк	[ŋiɹek]	'two'
Dutch	Goois	door	[doəɹ]	'through'
	Leiden dialect	rat	[ɹat]	'rat'
English	American dialects	red	[ɹ̠ˤʷɛd]	'red'
	Australian
	Received Pronunciation
Faroese		róður	[ɹɔuwʊɹ]	'rudder'
German	Westerwald	Rebe	[ɹeːbə]	'vine shoot'
	Siegerland
	Upper Lusatian
Portuguese	Many Central-Southern Brazilian dialects	verde	[ˈveɹdʒɪ]	'green'
	Some countryside Central-Southern Brazilian dialects	temporal	[tẽjpoˈɾaɹ]	'rainstorm'
Spanish	Some dialects	doscientos	[do̞ɹˈθje̞nto̞s]	'two hundred'
Vietnamese		rơ	[ɹəː]	'to clean'
Zapotec	Tilquiapan	rdɨ	[ɹd̪ɨ]	'pass'

Voiced Alveolar Approximant Media

• 

  A schematic mid-sagittal section of an articulation of a voiced alveolar approximant [ɹ].

• 

  A schematic mid-sagittal section of an articulation of a voiced postalveolar approximant [ɹ̠].

References

• Boyce, S.; Espy-Wilson, C. (1997), "Coarticulatory stability in American English /r/", Journal of the Acoustical Society of America, 101 (6): 3741–3753, Bibcode:1997ASAJ..101.3741B, doi:10.1121/1.418333, PMID 9193061
• Browman, L.; Goldstein (1995), "Gestural syllable position in American English", in Bell-Berti, F.; Raphael, L.J. (eds.), Producing Speech: Contemporary issues for K Harris, New York: AIP, pp. 9–33
• Delattre, P.; Freeman, D.C. (1968), "A dialect study of American R's by x-ray motion picture", Linguistics, 44: 29–68
• Fougeron, C (1999), "Prosodically conditioned articulatory variation: A Review", UCLA Working Papers in Phonetics, vol. 97, pp. 1–73
• Hallé, Pierre A.; Best, Catherine T.; Levitt, Andrea; Andrea (1999), "Phonetic vs. phonological influences on French listeners' perception of American English approximants", Journal of Phonetics, 27 (3): 281–306, doi:10.1006/jpho.1999.0097
• Kohler, Klaus (1995), Einführung in die Phonetik des Deutschen, Berlin: Erich Schmidt Verlag
• Merrill, Elizabeth (2008), "Tilquiapan Zapotec", Journal of the International Phonetic Association, 38 (1): 107–114, doi:10.1017/S0025100308003344, S2CID 232350024
• Recasens, Daniel (2004), "The effect of syllable position on consonant reduction (evidence fromCatalan consonant clusters)", Journal of Phonetics, 32 (3): 435–453, doi:10.1016/j.wocn.2004.02.001
• Zawadski, P.A.; Kuehn, D.P. (1980), "A cineradiographic study of static and dynamic aspects of American English /r/", Phonetica, 37 (4): 253–266, doi:10.1159/000259995, PMID 7443796, S2CID 46760239