Rhotacism ()
or rhotacization is a
sound change
A sound change, in historical linguistics, is a change in the pronunciation of a language. A sound change can involve the replacement of one speech sound (or, more generally, one phonetic feature value) by a different one (called phonetic chan ...
that converts one consonant (usually a voiced
alveolar consonant
Alveolar (; UK also ) consonants are articulated with the tongue against or close to the superior alveolar ridge, which is called that because it contains the alveoli (the sockets) of the upper teeth. Alveolar consonants may be articulated wit ...
: , , , or ) to a
rhotic consonant
In phonetics, rhotic consonants, or "R-like" sounds, are liquid consonants that are traditionally represented orthographically by symbols derived from the Greek letter rho, including , in the Latin script and , in the Cyrillic script. The ...
in a certain environment. The most common may be of to .
When a dialect or member of a language family resists the change and keeps a sound, this is sometimes known as ''zetacism''.
The term comes from the
Greek letter
The Greek alphabet has been used to write the Greek language since the late 9th or early 8th century BCE. It is derived from the earlier Phoenician alphabet, and was the earliest known alphabetic script to have distinct letters for vowels as ...
''
rho
Rho (uppercase Ρ, lowercase ρ or ; el, ρο or el, ρω, label=none) is the 17th letter of the Greek alphabet. In the system of Greek numerals it has a value of 100. It is derived from Phoenician letter res . Its uppercase form uses the sa ...
'', denoting .
Albanian
The southern,
Tosk dialects, the base of
Standard Albanian
Albanian (endonym: or ) is an Indo-European language and an independent branch of that family of languages. It is spoken by the Albanians in the Balkans and by the Albanian diaspora, which is generally concentrated in the Americas, Europe ...
, changed to , but the northern,
Gheg dialects did not:
* vs. 'the voice'
* vs. 'the knee'
* vs. 'Albania'
* vs. 'cheerful'
* vs. 'lost'
* vs. 'smiling'
* vs. 'broken'
* vs. 'touched'
* vs. 'amazed'
* vs. 'Albania' (older name of the country)
* vs. 'burnt'
* vs. 'drunk'
* vs. 'baked'
* vs. 'wood'
* vs. 'did'
* vs. 'put'
* vs. 'caught'
* vs. 'dust'
* vs. 'happy'
* vs. 'love'
Aramaic
In
Aramaic
The Aramaic languages, short Aramaic ( syc, ܐܪܡܝܐ, Arāmāyā; oar, 𐤀𐤓𐤌𐤉𐤀; arc, 𐡀𐡓𐡌𐡉𐡀; tmr, אֲרָמִית), are a language family containing many varieties (languages and dialects) that originated i ...
,
Proto-Semitic ''n'' changed to ''r'' in a few words:
* ''bar'' "son" as compared to
Hebrew
Hebrew (; ; ) is a Northwest Semitic language of the Afroasiatic language family. Historically, it is one of the spoken languages of the Israelites and their longest-surviving descendants, the Jews and Samaritans. It was largely preserved ...
בֵן ''ben'' (from Proto-Semitic *''bnu'')
* ''trên'' and ''tartên'' "two" (masculine and feminine form respectively) as compared to
Demotic Arabic ''tnēn'' and ''tintēn'', from Proto-Semitic *''ṯnaimi'' and *''ṯnataimi''. Compare also Aramic ''tinyânâ'' "the second one", without the shift.
Basque
Aquitanian *''l'' changed to the
tapped ''r'' between vowels in
Basque. It can be observed in words borrowed from Latin; for example, Latin ''caelum'' (meaning "sky, heaven") became ''zeru'' in Basque (''caelum'' > ''celu'' > ''zeru''; compare ''cielo'' in Spanish). The original ''l'' is preserved in the
Souletin dialect: ''caelum'' > ''celu'' > ''zelü''.
Finnish
Western dialects of
Finnish are characterised by the pronunciation or of the consonant written ''d'' in Standard Finnish ''kahden kesken- kahren kesken'' (two together = one on one). The reconstructed older pronunciation is .
Goidelic languages
In
Manx,
Scottish Gaelic
Scottish Gaelic ( gd, Gàidhlig ), also known as Scots Gaelic and Gaelic, is a Goidelic language (in the Celtic branch of the Indo-European language family) native to the Gaels of Scotland. As a Goidelic language, Scottish Gaelic, as well as ...
and some dialects of
Irish, a cluster developed into , often with nasalization of the following vowel, as in Scottish Gaelic ‘hill’.
Germanic languages
All surviving
Germanic languages
The Germanic languages are a branch of the Indo-European language family spoken natively by a population of about 515 million people mainly in Europe, North America, Oceania and Southern Africa. The most widely spoken Germanic language, ...
, which are members of the
North
North is one of the four compass points or cardinal directions. It is the opposite of south and is perpendicular to east and west. ''North'' is a noun, adjective, or adverb indicating direction or geography.
Etymology
The word ''north ...
and
West Germanic families, changed to , implying a more approximant-like rhotic consonant in
Proto-Germanic
Proto-Germanic (abbreviated PGmc; also called Common Germanic) is the reconstructed proto-language of the Germanic branch of the Indo-European languages.
Proto-Germanic eventually developed from pre-Proto-Germanic into three Germanic br ...
. Some languages later changed all forms to ''r'', but
Gothic
Gothic or Gothics may refer to:
People and languages
*Goths or Gothic people, the ethnonym of a group of East Germanic tribes
**Gothic language, an extinct East Germanic language spoken by the Goths
**Crimean Gothic, the Gothic language spoken b ...
, an extinct
East Germanic language, did not undergo rhotacism.
Note that the Modern German forms have levelled the rhotic consonant to forms that did not originally have it. However, the original sound can still be seen in some nouns such as ''
Wesen'', "being" (from the same root as ''war''/''waren'') as well as ''
Verlust'', "loss" and ''
Verlies'', "dungeon" (both from the same root as ''verlieren''/''verloren'').
Because of the presence of words that did not undergo rhotacisation from the same root as those that did, the result of the process remains visible in a few modern English word pairs:
* ''is'' and ''are'' (PGmc. ''
*isti'' vs ''
*izi'')
* ''was'' and ''were (''PGmc. ''*wesaną'' vs ''*wēz)''
* the comparative and superlative suffixes ''-er'' and ''-est'' (PGmc. ''
*-izô'' vs ''
*-istaz'') and derived words such as ''more'' and ''most'' (''
*maizô'' vs ''
*maistaz''), ''better'' and ''best'' (''
*batizô'' vs ''
*batistaz''), etc
* ''rise'' and ''rear'' (as in 'to bring up'; PGmc. ''
*rīsaną'' vs ''
*raizijaną'')
* ''loss'' and ''forlorn'' (PGmc. ''
*lusą'' vs ''
*fraluzanaz'')
English
Intervocalic and are commonly lenited to in most accents of
North American
North America is a continent in the Northern Hemisphere and almost entirely within the Western Hemisphere. It is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the southeast by South America and the ...
and
Australian English
Australian English (AusE, AusEng, AuE, AuEng, en-AU) is the set of varieties of the English language native to Australia. It is the country's common language and ''de facto'' national language; while Australia has no official language, Eng ...
and some accents of
Irish English
Hiberno-English (from Latin language, Latin ''Hibernia'': "Ireland"), and in ga, Béarla na hÉireann. or Irish English, also formerly Anglo-Irish, is the set of English dialects native to the island of Ireland (including both the Repub ...
and
English English, a process known as tapping or less accurately as
flapping
Flapping or tapping, also known as alveolar flapping, intervocalic flapping, or ''t''-voicing, is a phonological process found in many varieties of English, especially North American, Cardiff, Ulster, Australian and New Zealand English, whereby ...
: ''got a lot of'' becomes . Contrast is usually maintained with , and the sound is rarely perceived as .
German
In
Central German
Central German or Middle German (german: mitteldeutsche Dialekte, mitteldeutsche Mundarten, Mitteldeutsch) is a group of High German dialects spoken from the Rhineland in the west to the former eastern territories of Germany.
Central German d ...
dialects, especially
Rhine Franconian and
Hessian, is frequently realised as in intervocalic position. The change also occurs in
Mecklenburg dialects. Compare ''Borrem'' (Central Hessian) and ''Boden'' (Standard German).
Romance languages and Latin
Latin
Reflecting a highly-regular change in pre-
Classical Latin
Classical Latin is the form of Literary Latin recognized as a literary standard by writers of the late Roman Republic and early Roman Empire. It was used from 75 BC to the 3rd century AD, when it developed into Late Latin. In some later period ...
, intervocalic in
Old Latin
Old Latin, also known as Early Latin or Archaic Latin (Classical la, prīsca Latīnitās, lit=ancient Latinity), was the Latin language in the period before 75 BC, i.e. before the age of Classical Latin. It descends from a common Proto-Italic ...
, which is assumed to have been pronounced , invariably became ''r'', resulting in pairs such as these:
*''flōs'' — ''flōrem'' (
Old Latin
Old Latin, also known as Early Latin or Archaic Latin (Classical la, prīsca Latīnitās, lit=ancient Latinity), was the Latin language in the period before 75 BC, i.e. before the age of Classical Latin. It descends from a common Proto-Italic ...
''flōsem'')
*''genus'' — ''generis'' (from *''geneses'', cf. Sanskrit ''janasas'')
*''rōbus'', ''rōbustus'' — ''rōbur'', ''corrōborāre'' (verb from )
*''jūstus'' — ''de jūre'' (from ''de jouse'')
*''est'' — ''erō'' (from ''esō'')
*''gessī'', ''gestō'' — ''gerō'' (from ''gesō'')
Intervocalic ''s'' in Classical Latin suggests either borrowing (''rosa'') or reduction of an earlier ''ss'' after a long vowel or a diphthong (''pausa'' < ''paussa'', ''vīsum'' < ''*vīssum'' < ''*weid-tom''). The ''s'' was preserved initially (''septum'') and finally and in consonant clusters.
Old Latin
''honos'' became
''honor'' in
Late Latin
Late Latin ( la, Latinitas serior) is the scholarly name for the form of Literary Latin of late antiquity.Roberts (1996), p. 537. English dictionary definitions of Late Latin date this period from the , and continuing into the 7th century in t ...
by analogy with the rhotacised forms in other cases such as genitive, dative and accusative ''honoris'', ''honori'', ''honorem''.
Another form of rhotacism in Latin was
dissimilation
In phonology, particularly within historical linguistics, dissimilation is a phenomenon whereby similar consonants or vowels in a word become less similar. In English, dissimilation is particularly common with liquid consonants such as /r ...
of ''d'' to ''r'' before another ''d'' and dissimilation of ''l'' to ''r'' before another ''l'', resulting in pairs such as these:
*''medius'' — ''merīdiēs'' (instead of *''medi-diēs'')
*''caelum'' — ''caeruleus'' (instead of *''cael-uleus'')
The phenomenon was noted by the Romans themselves:
Neapolitan
In
Neapolitan
Neapolitan means of or pertaining to Naples, a city in Italy; or to:
Geography and history
* Province of Naples, a province in the Campania region of southern Italy that includes the city
* Duchy of Naples, in existence during the Early and Hig ...
, rhotacism affects words that etymologically contained intervocalic or initial , when this is followed by a vowel; and when is followed by another consonant. This last characteristic, however, is not very common in modern speech.
*
LAT. > Neap. "tooth"
*
LAT. > Neap. "foot"
*
LAT. > Neap. (or ) "money"
Portuguese and Galician
In
Galician-Portuguese
Galician-Portuguese ( gl, galego-portugués or ', pt, galego-português or ), also known as Old Portuguese or as Medieval Galician when referring to the history of each modern language, was a West Iberian Romance language spoken in the Middle ...
, rhotacism occurred from to , mainly in consonant clusters ending in such as in the words ''obrigado'', "thank you" (originally from "obliged
n honourably serving my Sir); ''praia'', "beach"; ''prato'', "plate" or "dish"; ''branco'', "white"; ''prazer''/''pracer'', "pleasure"; ''praça''/''praza'', "square". Compare Spanish ''obligado'' (obliged), ''playa, plato, blanco, placer, plaza'' from Latin ''obligatus, plagia, platus, blancus'' (Germanic origin), ''placere'' (verb), ''platea''.
In contemporary
Brazilian Portuguese
Brazilian Portuguese (' ), also Portuguese of Brazil (', ) or South American Portuguese (') is the set of varieties of the Portuguese language native to Brazil and the most influential form of Portuguese worldwide. It is spoken by almost all of ...
, rhotacism of in the
syllable coda
A syllable is a unit of organization for a sequence of speech sounds typically made up of a syllable nucleus (most often a vowel) with optional initial and final margins (typically, consonants). Syllables are often considered the phonological " ...
is characteristic of the
Caipira dialect. Further rhotacism in the nationwide vernacular includes ''planta'', "plant", as , ''lava'', "
lava
Lava is molten or partially molten rock (magma) that has been expelled from the interior of a terrestrial planet (such as Earth) or a moon onto its surface. Lava may be erupted at a volcano or through a fracture in the crust, on land or ...
", as (then homophonous with ''larva'', worm/maggot), ''lagarto'', "lizard", as (in dialects with guttural coda ''r'' instead of a
tap) and ''advogado'', "lawyer", as . The nonstandard patterns are largely marginalised, and rhotacism is regarded as a sign of speech-language pathology or illiteracy.
Romanesco Italian
Rhotacism, in
Romanesco, shifts ''l'' to ''r'' before a consonant, like certain Andalusian dialects of Spanish. Thus, Latin ''altus'' (tall) is ''alto'' in
Italian but becomes ''arto'' in Romanesco. Rhotacism used to happen when ''l'' was preceded by a consonant, as in the word ''ingrese'' (English), but modern speech has lost that characteristic.
Another change related to ''r'' was the shortening of the
geminated
In phonetics and phonology, gemination (), or consonant lengthening (from Latin 'doubling', itself from '' gemini'' 'twins'), is an articulation of a consonant for a longer period of time than that of a singleton consonant. It is distinct fr ...
''rr'', which is not rhotacism. Italian ''errore'', ''guerra'' and ''marrone'' "error", "war", "brown" become ''erore'', ''guera'' and ''marone''.
Romanian
In
Romanian
Romanian may refer to:
*anything of, from, or related to the country and nation of Romania
** Romanians, an ethnic group
**Romanian language, a Romance language
***Romanian dialects, variants of the Romanian language
**Romanian cuisine, traditiona ...
, rhotacism shifted intervocalic ''l'' to ''r'' and ''n'' to ''r''.
Thus, Latin ''caelum'' ‘sky; heaven’ became Romanian ''cer'', Latin ''fenestra'' ‘window’ Romanian ''fereastră'' and Latin ''felicitas'' ‘happiness’ Romanian ''fericire''.
Some northern Romanian dialects and
Istro-Romanian also changed all intervocalic to in words of Latin origin. For example, Latin ''bonus'' became Istro-Romanian ''bur'': compare to standard Daco-Romanian ''bun''.
Other languages
Rhotacism (''mola'' > ''mora'', ''filum'' > ''fir'', ''sal'' > ''sare'') exists in
Gallo-Italic languages
The Gallo-Italic, Gallo-Italian, Gallo-Cisalpine or simply Cisalpine languages constitute the majority of the Romance languages of northern Italy. They are Piedmontese, Lombard, Emilian, Ligurian, and Romagnol. Although most publications def ...
as well in
Lombard,
Western Lombard
Western Lombard is a group of dialects of Lombard, a Romance language spoken in Italy. It is widespread in the Lombard provinces of Milan, Monza, Varese, Como, Lecco, Sondrio, a small part of Cremona (except Crema and its neighbours), ...
,
Alpine Lombard and
Ligurian.
In
Umbrian
Umbrian is an extinct Italic language formerly spoken by the Umbri in the ancient Italian region of Umbria. Within the Italic languages it is closely related to the Oscan group and is therefore associated with it in the group of Osco-Umbrian ...
but not
Oscan
Oscan is an extinct Indo-European language of southern Italy. The language is in the Osco-Umbrian or Sabellic branch of the Italic languages. Oscan is therefore a close relative of Umbrian.
Oscan was spoken by a number of tribes, including t ...
, rhotacism of intervocalic ''s'' occurred as in Latin.
Sicilian
Rhotacism is particularly widespread in the island of
Sicily
(man) it, Siciliana (woman)
, population_note =
, population_blank1_title =
, population_blank1 =
, demographics_type1 = Ethnicity
, demographics1_footnotes =
, demographi ...
, but it is almost completely absent in the
Sicilian varieties of the mainland (
Calabrese and
Salentino
Salentino () is a dialect of the Extreme Southern Italian ( in Italian) spoken in the Salento peninsula, which is the southern part of the region of Apulia at the southern "heel" of the Italian peninsula.
Overview
Salentino is a dialect of the ...
). It affects intervocalic and initial : ''cura'' from Latin
''caudam'', ''peri'' from Latin ''pedem'', ''
'reci'' from Latin ''decem''.
Spanish
In
Andalusian Spanish
The Andalusian dialects of Spanish ( es, andaluz, , ) are spoken in Andalusia, Ceuta, Melilla, and Gibraltar. They include perhaps the most distinct of the southern variants of peninsular Spanish, differing in many respects from northern varieti ...
, particularly in
Seville
Seville (; es, Sevilla, ) is the capital and largest city of the Spanish autonomous community of Andalusia and the province of Seville. It is situated on the lower reaches of the River Guadalquivir, in the southwest of the Iberian Penins ...
, at the end of a syllable before another consonant, ''l'' is replaced with ''r'': ''Huerva'' for ''
Huelva''. The reverse occurs in
Caribbean Spanish
*
Caribbean Spanish ( es, español caribeño, ) is the general name of the Spanish dialects spoken in the Caribbean region. The Spanish language was introduced to the Caribbean in 1492 with the voyages of Christopher Columbus. It resembles the ...
: ''Puelto Rico'' for ''
Puerto Rico
Puerto Rico (; abbreviated PR; tnq, Boriken, ''Borinquen''), officially the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico ( es, link=yes, Estado Libre Asociado de Puerto Rico, lit=Free Associated State of Puerto Rico), is a Caribbean island and unincorporated ...
'' (
lambdacism).
Sanskrit
In
Sanskrit
Sanskrit (; attributively , ; nominally , , ) is a classical language belonging to the Indo-Aryan languages, Indo-Aryan branch of the Indo-European languages. It arose in South Asia after its predecessor languages had Trans-cultural diffusion ...
, words ending in ''-s'' (-สฺ) other than ''-as'' (
��สียงอะ+ สฺ) become ''-r'' (-รฺ) in
sandhi
Sandhi ( sa, सन्धि ' , "joining") is a cover term for a wide variety of sound changes that occur at morpheme or word boundaries. Examples include fusion of sounds across word boundaries and the alteration of one sound depending on near ...
with a
voiced consonant
Voice or voicing is a term used in phonetics and phonology to characterize speech sounds (usually consonants). Speech sounds can be described as either voiceless (otherwise known as ''unvoiced'') or voiced.
The term, however, is used to ref ...
:
*''naus'' (นอุสฺ) (before ''p'', ''t'', ''k'') vs ''naur bharati'' (นอุรฺ ภรติ)
*''agnis'' (อคฺนิสฺ) (before ''p'', ''t'', ''k'') vs ''agnir mata'' (อคฺนิรฺ มต)
That is not properly rhotacism since ''r'' and ''s'' are then simply
allophones.
Turkic
Among the
Turkic languages
The Turkic languages are a language family of over 35 documented languages, spoken by the Turkic peoples of Eurasia from Eastern Europe and Southern Europe to Central Asia, East Asia, North Asia ( Siberia), and Western Asia. The Turki ...
, the
Oghur branch exhibits /r/, opposing to the rest of Turkic, which exhibits /z/. In this case, rhotacism refers to the development of *-/r/, *-/z/, and *-/d/ to /r/,*-/k/,*-/kh/ in this branch.
South Slavic languages
(This section relies on the treatment in Greenberg 1999.
)
In some
South Slavic languages
The South Slavic languages are one of three branches of the Slavic languages. There are approximately 30 million speakers, mainly in the Balkans. These are separated geographically from speakers of the other two Slavic branches ( West and Eas ...
, rhotacism occasionally changes a voiced palatal fricative to a dental or alveolar tap or trill between vowels:
*''moreš'' (
Slovene, dialectal
Serbo-Croatian
Serbo-Croatian () – also called Serbo-Croat (), Serbo-Croat-Bosnian (SCB), Bosnian-Croatian-Serbian (BCS), and Bosnian-Croatian-Montenegrin-Serbian (BCMS) – is a South Slavic language and the primary language of Serbia, Croatia, Bosnia an ...
) 'you can' from earlier ''možešь''
*''kdor'' (Slovene) from earlier ''kъto-že''
The beginning of the change is attested in the
Freising manuscripts
The Freising manuscriptsAlso ''Freising folia'', ''Freising fragments'', or ''Freising monuments''; german: Freisinger Denkmäler, la, Monumenta Frisingensia, sl, Brižinski spomeniki or are the first Latin-script continuous text in a Slavic ...
from the 10th century AD, which show both the archaism (''ise'' 'which' < *''jь-že'') and the innovation (''tere'' 'also' < *''te-že''). The shift is also found in individual lexical items in
Bulgarian dialects, ''дорде'' 'until' (< *''do-že-dĕ'') and
Macedonian
Macedonian most often refers to someone or something from or related to Macedonia.
Macedonian(s) may specifically refer to:
People Modern
* Macedonians (ethnic group), a nation and a South Slavic ethnic group primarily associated with North Ma ...
, ''сеѓере'' (archaic: 'always'). However, the results of the sound change have largely been reversed by lexical replacement in dialects in Serbia and Bosnia from the 14th century.
Dialects in
Croatia
, image_flag = Flag of Croatia.svg
, image_coat = Coat of arms of Croatia.svg
, anthem = " Lijepa naša domovino"("Our Beautiful Homeland")
, image_map =
, map_caption =
, capi ...
and
Slovenia
Slovenia ( ; sl, Slovenija ), officially the Republic of Slovenia (Slovene: , abbr.: ''RS''), is a country in Central Europe. It is bordered by Italy to the west, Austria to the north, Hungary to the northeast, Croatia to the southeast, and ...
have preserved more of the lexical items with the change and have even extended grammatical markers in ''-r'' from many sources that formally merged with the rhotic forms that arose from the sound change: Slovene dialect ''nocor'' 'tonight' (< *''not'ь-sь-ǫ-'' + ''-r-'') on the model of ''večer'' 'evening' (< *''večerъ''). The reversal of the change is evident in dialects in Serbia in which the ''-r-'' formant is systematically removed: Serbian ''veče'' 'evening'.
See also
*
Lambdacism, the related condition or phonetic shift with regard to the sound
References
Bibliography
*
*
*
*
{{LetterR
Phonetics
Sound changes