Thursday, May 31, 2012

What the fuck is a rolling R?

The phrase "Rolling R" has contradictory connotations and denotations.

Those who have a clue about phonetics treat rolling r as a trill. Then, we got folks like this, selling tap/flap r's as rolling r's. 

Even though every human is capable of producing either an alveolar trill or a uvular trill, Indians don't use trills unless rs are geminated as in rr, rrr, etc.  What they have is a tap.

Wikipedia is a good resource for phonetics related stuff. They note that rolled r's are trills. 


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