This 43rd collection of students’ pearls of wisdom, laboriously digitised from hand-
Use classical phonemic principles to propose an account of the phonemic status of the voiced alveolar trill [r] and the voiced uvular trill [ʀ] in each of the three languages below.
In some varieties of Southern Swedish, [ʀ] occurs in syllable onsets while [r] occurs in syllable codas.
Speakers of some varieties of Dutch prefer [r] for everyday uses, for example in words like [proˈχrɑmaː] ‘programme’, but use [ʀ], e.g. [pʀoˈχʀɑmaː], when announcing programmes on national television.
In Provençal, the word for ‘evening’ is [sɛʀo], and the word for ‘saw (noun)’ is [sɛro].
The difference is phonemic. Same kind of words can be sounded differently.
The difference is used to emphasise certain words. For example, [ʀ] precedes a syllable and in Provençal ‘evening’ is a greeting word.
They are all phonemes, it’s just an imagined manner to pronounce the r, ʀ sounds.
In Swedish, assimilation takes place: r could be following a uvular word which is common at the ending segments of Southern Swedish language.
r is used when the sound need not be too stressed and precised and ʀ is used for a clear distinction of the ʀ sound needed.
In American, [ʀ] is to indicate the beginning of a syllable, while in British [r] is part of the sound of the word at the end. In [sɛʀo] and [sɛro], [ɛ] is used when it is the beginning of the second syllable in a word while [r] is the second sound of the word.
More to come...