This Quiz Made Possible by the Letter "R"

Answer: Rhotics

This category of speech sounds is rather odd, because these sounds are produced in completely different ways, as you shall soon see! They are classed together because people think they sound similar, and people learning a second language will tend to replace a foreign-sounding rhotic with the rhotic from their native language.

Answer: Trilling the tongue against the bony ridge behind the front teeth.

This kind of R is called an "alveolar trill." It's produced by trilling the tip of your tongue against the "alveolar ridge," that ridge of bone behind your front teeth. This is the most common rhotic in the world's languages. Spanish has another rhotic, the "alveolar tap." It is produced by striking the tip of the tongue very rapidly against the alveolar ridge.

Interestingly, in Standard American, the alveolar tap is an allophone of /t/. For fun, contrast your pronunciation of the "T" in "Ted" with the "tt" in "Betty." The first is a normal "T," while the second is an alveolar tap in some dialects of English.

Answer: Back of the tongue body against the uvula.

It's called a "uvular fricative." It can be either voiced (using your vocal cords, like the sound "z") like in French "rouge," or unvoiced (without using your vocal chords, like the sound "s") like in French "lettre." The French and German "R" can also be produced as a uvular trill-- you trill the back of your tongue against your uvula. Sound complicated? You haven't made it very far in this quiz, have you?

Answer: Czech

Truly a rare sound in the world's languages. The IPA transcription is a lower-case "r" with a small upside-down capital "T" under it.

Answer: Actually, you could use different combinations of these features and still get the same sound.

Wonder how anyone figured this out? In the days before X-rays were found to be so dangerous, linguists took X-rays of volunteers saying different consonants and vowels, so they could see what their test subjects were doing with the different parts of their mouth. Soft tissue doesn't show up very well in X-rays, so they would make their volunteers drink barium or hang a chain of metal beads along their tongue and down their throat (just far enough down that it wouldn't trigger their gag reflex.) Yuck.

Anyway, nobody produced "R" exactly the same. The set of constrictions they would make with the tongue were consistent. But, there seems to be some acoustic trade-off between them-- if you exaggerate the constriction in one area, you can lessen the constriction in another area, and still produce the same sound. Weird, huh?

Answer: After several years, but even school-age kids may not yet have it completely mastered.

R is one of the last sounds to be learned--in any language-- just because it's so enormously difficult.

Sounds which children learn last tend to be rare in the world's languages. For instance, the English "R" takes many years for children to master fully, and it is extremely rare in the world's languages. The only other "major" language in which it occurs is Mandarin Chinese. This isn't because children are born knowing the distribution of sounds in the world's languages-- it's because sounds learned late are the most likely not to be learned at all. If a generation of children never learns that sound, then it drops out of the language.

Answer: Can be a consonant or a vowel.

"R" can be a consonant, of course. A little-known fact is that "R" can also be a vowel. So, what is a vowel? A vowel is the most acoustically prominent sound in its syllable. That "R" can be a vowel is more obvious from a language like Czech, which has wonderful tongue-twisters like "Strch prst skrz krk" ("stick a finger down your throat"). Sanskrit, really Sanskrt, the ancient Indian language, even had a distinction between long and short "R." Now, the shocker: English has vocalic "R"! In the General American dialect of English, the word "burger" is pronounced like "brgr," with two vocalic R's. So there.

Answer: Yes

For most of its history, the Greek alphabet was not the single unified entity that math books and modern editions of ancient Greek texts would have you believe. In Classical Greece, each city-state had its own version of the alphabet. The two versions of rho, the "P-version" and the "R-version," co-existed happily, and sometimes both versions were even used in the same city-state.

The Etruscans adopted the Greek alphabet for their language and gave it to the Romans. The Etruscans, and, hence, the early Romans, used the "P-version." By Rome's Republican period (3rd century BCE), the Roman alphabet had taken its current form, and they had switched to the "R-version" of "R," and the "P-version" came to be used for the sound "P."

Answer: Boston

America was settled in the 17th century by British colonists who grew up speaking English in Britain. Once in America, these people, especially the ones living in rural areas, had little or no contact with speech communities back in Britain, and their accents began to diverge.

In the 18th century, upper-class British English developed a new phonological rule. "R" could be pronounced at the beginning of syllables, but syllabic and syllable-final "R" were strictly forbidden. Americans living in cities that were important seaports and in close contact with British traders (like Boston) picked up the new British English phonological rule because they thought it was something fashionable. Voila, the R-less Boston accent. Americans living everywhere else did not pick up this new rule, so the General American accent had no limitations on where in a word R's may be pronounced.

Answer: Yes

The R-lessness of RP (Received Pronunciation, that is, "The Queen's English," or the accent you'd have to have to work at the BBC) began in the 18th century as an affectation among London's elite. Before that time, "R" was pronounced in British English just like it is pronounced in today's Standard American.

The pronunciation of Standard American has changed since Shakespeare's day, too. So, it's wrong to think that British English or American English, or any dialect of English, for that matter, is the "correct" or "authentic" dialect for performing Shakespeare.