R

[noktulo]

I know that r is more of a vowel than consonant sound. Is there any language that has an r sound considered to actually be one of their vowels?

Comments

[me_vs_gutenberg]

A vowel- not that I'm aware of.
But many of the Slavic languages have R as a sonant, which carries the tone in syllables, eg: 'krk' (neck), 'prst' (finger) etc.

[me_vs_gutenberg]

Those were Czech examples, by the way, but I'm pretty sure they're correct in Slovak, Slovene and Serbo-Croatian as well.

[me_vs_gutenberg]

Very close: 'strč prst skrz krk' - 'stick your finger through your neck' (or 'the' or 'a').

[embryomystic]

I seem to remember reading, in a book about the Devanagari script, that in Sanskrit that was a proper syllabic R, but in Hindi, it's not.

[pfctdayelise]

Mandarin Chinese, arguably. Syllables such as 吃，只，日 (in pinyin: chi1, zhi3, ri4). Don't be thrown by the "i" in the pinyin; these syllables all more or less rhyme with "grrr".

Pinyin is only one form of romanization for Mandarin. According to MandarinTools chi zhi ri in pinyin would be represented as chr jr ri in Yale romanization.

[mooose]

I recall seeing somewhere though that the hanyu pinyin 'r' is a fricated [i] in some dialects. (keep saying [i] and constrict the airflow, you get something that sounds like a "drrrr")

Arguably, this makes your tongue curl back as it touches the palate, as in Peter Ladefoged's transcription on his site: http://hctv.humnet.ucla.edu/departments/linguistics/vowelsandconsonants/appendix/languages/chinese/chinese.html

[pfctdayelise]

yeah, they are all called "retroflex" sounds in Mandarin. I agree with Ladefoged.

[gogalucky]

nice icon :D

[noktulo]

Arigato gozaimasu. It's from フリクリ.

[gogalucky]

どういたしまして！
yes yes :DDD i knows

[vilakins]

I have watched far too much Farscape. Your icon so looks like 'banik' to me.

[bayareajenn]

Well, I'm no expert (far, far from it), but I seem to recall Malayalam (the local language of Kerala, India) has several different R sounds, and one of them sounds a lot like a Y. I can only remember a few words now, and one of them was, I think, the Malayalam word for "banana": pronounced "payam" or something like. It really was an R formation of the tongue, only way in the back of the throat (that's how they *tried* to teach it to me).

I only took the language for three months while I was studying there (1996), so forgive me for my craptastic description. :) I'm a native English speaker (born and raised in Wisconsin), and I had a really tough time with all their different L and R sounds.