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R, or r, is the eighteenth letter of the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is ''ar'' (pronounced ), plural ''ars''.

The letter is the eighth most common letter in English and the fourth-most common consonant, after , , and .

Name

The name of the letter in Latin was (), following the pattern of other letters representing continuants, such as , , , , and . This name is preserved in French and many other languages. In Middle English, the name of the letter changed from to , following a pattern exhibited in many other words such as ''farm'' (compare French ) and ''star'' (compare German ).

In Hiberno-English, the letter is called or , somewhat similar to ''oar'', ''ore'', ''orr''.

The letter R is sometimes referred to as the 'canine letter', often rendered in English as the dog's letter. This Latin term referred to the Latin that was trilled to sound like a growling dog, a spoken style referred to as 'dog voice' (e.g. in Spanish 'dog').

In ''Romeo and Juliet'', such a reference is made by Juliet's nurse in Act 2, scene 4, when she calls the letter R "the dog's name". The reference is also found in Ben Jonson's ''English Grammar''.

History

Antiquity

The letter is believed to derive ultimately from an image of a head, used in Semitic alphabets for the sound because the word for 'head' was '' rêš'' or similar in most Semitic languages. The word became the name of the letter, as an example of acrophony.

It developed into Greek () and Latin . The descending diagonal stroke develops as a graphic variant in some Western Greek alphabets (writing ''rho'' as ), but it was not adopted in most Old Italic alphabets; most Old Italic alphabets show variants of their ''rho'' between a and a shape, but without the Western Greek descending stroke.
Indeed, the oldest known forms of the Latin alphabet itself of the 7th to 6th centuries BC, in the Duenos and the Forum inscription, still write using the shape of the letter.
The Lapis Satricanus inscription shows the form of the Latin alphabet around 500 BC. Here, the rounded, closing Π shape of the and the shape of the have become difficult to distinguish.
The descending stroke of the Latin letter has fully developed by the 3rd century BC, as seen in the Tomb of the Scipios sarcophagus inscriptions of that era. From , the letter would be written with its loop fully closed, assuming the shape formerly taken by .

Cursive

The minuscule form developed through several variations on the capital form.
Along with Latin minuscule writing in general, it developed ultimately from Roman cursive via the uncial script of Late Antiquity into the Carolingian minuscule of the 9th century.

In handwriting, it was common not to close the bottom of the loop but continue into the leg, saving an extra pen stroke. The loop-leg stroke shortened into the simple arc used in the Carolingian minuscule and until today.

A calligraphic minuscule , known as '' r rotunda'' , was used in the sequence , bending the shape of the to accommodate the bulge of the as in , as opposed to . Later, the same variant was also used where followed other lower case letters with a rounded loop towards the right, such as with , , , as well as to write the geminate as . Use of ''r rotunda'' was mostly tied to blackletter typefaces, and the glyph fell out of use along with blackletter fonts in English language contexts mostly by the 18th century.

Insular script used a minuscule which retained two downward strokes, but which did not close the loop, known as the ''Insular r'' ; this variant survives in the Gaelic type popular in Ireland until the mid-20th century, but has become largely limited to a decorative function.

Use in writing systems

English

represents a rhotic consonant in English, such as the alveolar approximant (most varieties), alveolar trill (some British varieties), or the retroflex approximant (some varieties in the United States, South West England and Dublin).

In non-rhotic accents, it is not pronounced in certain positions, but can affect the pronunciation of the vowel that precedes it.

Other languages

represents a rhotic consonant in many languages, as shown in the table below.

Other languages may use the letter in their alphabets (or Latin transliteration schemes) to represent rhotic consonants different from the alveolar trill. In Haitian Creole, it represents a sound so weak that it is often written interchangeably with , e.g. 'Kweyol' for 'Kreyol'.

The doubled represents a trilled in Albanian, Aragonese, Asturian, Basque, Catalan and Spanish.

Brazilian Portuguese has a great number of allophones of , such as , , , , , and . The latter three ones can be used only in certain contexts ( and as ; in the syllable coda, as an allophone of according to the European Portuguese norm and according to the Brazilian Portuguese norm). Usually at least two of them are present in a single dialect, such as Rio de Janeiro's , , and, for a few speakers, .

Other systems

The International Phonetic Alphabet uses several variations of the letter to represent the different rhotic consonants; represents the alveolar trill.

Other uses

* An R rating of the Motion Picture Association film rating system denotes media, such as movies, that are intended for a restricted audience.

Related characters

Descendants and related characters in the Latin alphabet

* R with diacritics: Ŕ ŕ Ɍ ɍ Ř ř Ŗ ŗ Ṙ ṙ Ȑ ȑ Ȓ ȓ Ṛ ṛ Ṝ ṝ Ṟ ṟ Ꞧ ꞧ Ɽ ɽ R̃ r̃ ᵲ ꭨ ᵳ ᶉ
* International Phonetic Alphabet-specific symbols related to R: ʶ ˞ ʴ
* IPA superscript letters: 𐞦 𐞧 𐞨 𐞩 𐞪
* Obsolete and nonstandard symbols in the International Phonetic Alphabet: ɼ ɿ
* Uralic Phonetic Alphabet-specific symbols related to R:
**
**
**
**
* Teuthonista phonetic transcription-specific symbols related to R:
**
**
* '' Anthropos'' phonetic transcription:
**
**
**
* Otto Bremer's phonetic transcription:
**
**
**
* 𝼨 – with mid-height left hook was used by the British and Foreign Bible Society in the early 20th century for romanization of the Malayalam language.
* ⱹ – A turned with a tail is used in the Swedish Dialect Alphabet
* Other variations of R used for phonetic transcription: 𝼕 𝼖

Calligraphic variants in the Latin alphabet

* Ꝛ ꝛ – '' R rotunda''
* Ꞃ ꞃ – ''Insular r'' ( Gaelic type)
* ᫍ – Combining ''Insular r'', as used in the '' Ormulum''

Ancestors and siblings in other alphabets

* 𐤓 – Semitic letter Resh, from which the following letters derive:
** Ρ ρ – Greek letter Rho, from which the following letters derive:
*** 𐌓 – Old Italic letter R, the ancestor of modern Latin
**** ᚱ – Runic letter Raido
*** Р р – Cyrillic letter Er
*** 𐍂 – Gothic letter Reda

Abbreviations, signs and symbols

* ℟ – symbol for response in liturgy
* – Medical prescription
* ® – Registered trademark symbol
* ₹ – Indian rupee sign

Other representations

Computing

Other

See also

* Guttural R

References

External links

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{{Latin alphabet, R}

ISO basic Latin letters