Talk:Rhotacism

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This article should be split into two.[edit]

Rhotacism the speech disorder is a different thing from rhotacism the phenomenon of linguistic phonetic change. Even though both articles would be short, there should be a different article for each of those subjects. Suggestions:

rhotacism (speech disorder) rhotacism (language change) —Preceding unsigned comment added by Mark Foskey (talk • contribs) 19:51, 15 July 2008 (UTC)[reply]

I agree with that completely. It's distracting and peculiar that this article begins with Elmer Fudd and Homestar Runner and then delves into comparative linguistics. 24.27.25.87 (talk) 07:39, 29 December 2010 (UTC) Eric[reply]

Question[edit]

I am not a linguist, but, is this an example of this? In Spanish, the word cárcel (jail) comes from Latin carcer. I think there may be other r -> l shifts in the history Spanish, but I am not sure. – Andyluciano 04:55, 1 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]

Hm, it would appear that I was thinking backwards. –Andyluciano 04:57, 1 May 2006 (UTC)[reply]
Cognate with English incarcerate, too, of course. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 07:06, 27 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I am not a linguist either, but I don't think the "-r" to "-l" shift you talk about is a good example of rhotacism. Maybe if some L. words with "-l" had changed to "-r" in Spanish, that would have been a case of rhotacism (as a shift to "r") in Spanish.
Eng. "were" ("you were", "they were", etc.) from Old English verb wesan, from Proto-Germanic *wesanan is a better example of rhotacism. "Was" ("I was", "she was", etc.) retains the primitive "s".
There's some Verner's Law which explains this changes. An "s" to "z" shift takes place, followed by a "z" to "r" shift. That "z" to "r" shift is an example of rhotacism. Cf. "rear" with "raise"/"rise", from the same root.
About the "-r" / "-l" shift you talk about, there IS another example in Spanish:

Spanish "árbol", from L. "arbor". The shift is apparently particular to Spanish, because French, Catalan, Italian, Portuguese, Galician... all of them retain the "r". Spanish "encarcelar" (to put in prison, incarcerate) is cognate with French "encarcérer".

Whether linguists consider this as a "kind of shift" or as some Spanish peculiarity or not, I don't know. --Quinceps 08:42, 21 August 2006 (UTC)Quinceps 3:11, 21 August 2006[reply]
Unless there is or soon will be an article about -r to -l shifts, that should be covered here too, in a new section (and it should obviously include Chinese. The article (or maybe it was Rhotic and non-rhotic accents) already covers -r/-l to -w shifts (Elmer Fudd), and so it should also cover this phenomenon in Korean, where it is quite common - some famous Koreans who speak English do this very consistently (e.g. Nancy Qwan's "Owientaw Peaw Cweam" TV ads from the 80s).
Also on the less strictly rhotacistic side, it should also be noted (from just about any in-depth work on the Irish language) that Irish Gaelic in some dialects, especially northern ones, often turns lenited -r (i.e. -r immediately before or after the short vowels -i/i-/-i- and -e/e-/-e-) into a possibly unique consonant, very difficult to learn perfectly for non-natives, that is about half-way between a radically non-frontal -z and an uvular -r. One of the most prevalent examples is in the pronunciation of the overwhelmingly common Irish female given name Máire (Mary), as something like [ˈmɑː{zʁ}ʌ], if I may just make up a "{zʁ}" symbol for this odd, mostly guttural but slightly buzzing sound. — SMcCandlish [talk] [cont] ‹(-¿-)› 07:06, 27 June 2008 (UTC)[reply]
I don't know if Korean is a good example, since the language doesn't have an alveolar approximant to begin with, only an alveolar lateral approximant and a flap, with no phonemic difference. 惑乱 Wakuran (talk) 14:44, 10 April 2009 (UTC)[reply]

German[edit]

The article says: 

   * war vs gewesen (from Germanic *was vs *wēzun)

Doesn't this contradict the general rule that the z (result of Verner's Law) devolopes into r, while the s doesn't? Is it possible that the forms in parenthesis are wrong and that gewesen comes from a form with s and not from *wēzun, which should be past plural and not participle (cf. English and Dutch), while war comes from one with z or maybe is just formed in analogy with plural waren? Wikijens (talk) 08:44, 12 February 2009 (UTC)[reply]

I don't get why Dutch and English are categorized with Germanic languages. —Preceding unsigned comment added by 64.150.16.1 (talk) 21:37, 7 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
They're both descended from Proto-Germanic. — Ƶ§œš¹ [aɪm ˈfɹ̠ˤʷɛ̃ɾ̃ˡi] 23:45, 7 January 2010 (UTC)[reply]
According to the reconstructions found on Wiktionary, Proto-Germanic *wesana- and Proto-West-Germanic *wesan did not actually have a past participle, so Old High German giwesan may have been formed after the model of lesan : gilesan as the infinitive form was still wesan. Of course, one wonders why gilesan in turn does not show the effect of rhotacism – presumably yet another analogy but I'm not completely sure of the details. --Florian Blaschke (talk) 00:05, 22 December 2022 (UTC)[reply]

Dutch[edit]

This section seems to only give instances of the fact that was already mentioned as holding for all Germanic languages, so should the Dutch section be removed entirely?

Easwaran (talk) 12:46, 14 September 2009 (UTC)[reply]

Brazilian Portuguese[edit]

/l/ exists in the syllable coda?? Not even in careful or read speech. As a non-native speaker, but someone who resided near Vitoria, ES, I will tell you that /l/ in the coda becomes an off-glide, ex: Brasil > [bra.ziw], pulga > [puw.ga]. However, from my interaction with less educated or rural speakers, rhotacism of /l/ in the onset can be common: ingles /i~.glez/ > [i~.grez] or through a sort of metathesis: problema /pro.ble.ma/ > [po.bre.ma] —Preceding unsigned comment added by 131.91.153.106 (talk) 17:47, 8 December 2009 (UTC)[reply]

L-vocalizing in Portuguese[edit]

I removed the "L-vocalizing" example in Portuguese. Old Portuguese didn't undergo L-vocalizing, the example given was actually a case of L-dropping, which was fairly common in Old Portuguese: celo > ceo > céu (compare to palo > pao > pau and salir > sair). Recently, Brazilian Portuguese has vocalized syllable-final Ls though, which is a different phonomenon. I would have added an actual example of L-vocalizing in modern Portuguese, but it is not what this article is about. — Preceding unsigned comment added by Matheus de Aguilar (talk • contribs) 03:52, 24 May 2013 (UTC)[reply]

The English, even the Aussies, pronounce their r's[edit]

At least they do when the r is prevocalic. The statement under "English" that "[p]ronouncing the letter "r" is common in many dialects of American, Canadian, Irish, Welsh and Scottish English and less common in the English of most of England, Australia, and New Zealand" is not helpful. It is only postvocalic r that tends to be silent in England, Australia, and New Zealand. Seems to me this is really a matter of rhotacization, not rhotacism, however. --Haruo (talk) 22:55, 20 March 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Mocking people with speech impediments[edit]

Why is the first example of rhotacism a Looney Tunes character? It suggests that rhotacism is simply a suitable subject for comedy rather than a serious speech impediment. We wouldn't refer to other disabilities in the same way. Headhitter (talk) 08:14, 6 May 2012 (UTC)[reply]

Elmer Fudd, the character, may represent a mockery of a speech disorder: the placement of the character here as an illustration of a speech disorder is, in my opinion a) not and b) the best choice for the article. I cannot think of a clearer, more widely-known single instance (even if parodic) to offer a reader to whom textual description hasn't sufficed. It doesn't suggest to me that we should laugh at the rhotically-afflicted, but if it suggests it to you, I'd find a comparably well-known non-comedic replacement more than welcome.  • Lainagier • talk • 00:33, 1 June 2012 (UTC)[reply]

I have Down syndrome and always pronounce my r's as w's. I have a rhotacism. It's not an impediment, it's my Down syndrome accent! When I speak, I pronounce things like, "I have Down syndwome. Thewefowe I have a wotacism when I pwonounce words." — Preceding unsigned comment added by 72.70.202.28 (talk) 17:20, 30 January 2013 (UTC)[reply]


Less common among those from England???[edit]

The article says: Pronouncing the letter "r" is common in many dialects of American, Canadian, Irish, Welsh and Scottish English and less common in the English of most of England, Australia, and New Zealand.

This seems to be the opposite of my experience. I'm not quite sure to make of it, and there is no inline reference for this. A casual look at the most famous people with speech impediments reveals most famous people with rhotacism are from a region where a non-rhotic dialect of English predominates[1]:

For every other Canadian or non-rhotic American speaker I can think of, there are several more non-rhotic Americans or Brits. Tom Brokaw, yes, of course - he is from the Midwest U.S. But then there's Roy Hodgson (of the BBC) and Terry Jones (of Monty Python).

Others have also noticed the trend being common among people from the British Isles, [2], with a video, and mentioning traces of this in others from the UK, even Catherine Zeta-Jones on occasion.

I don't know what kind of source could be found to support the original assertion, but I don't even think it is true. Ufwuct (talk) 14:09, 18 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

Are you taking the sentence you quote as speaking about people with speech disorders, or as speaking about whether a dialect pronounces r after a vowel? — Eru·tuon 16:30, 18 March 2013 (UTC)[reply]

This is a London and S.E. England fashion. For about the last decade ALL the young women weather presenters on British TV have adopted this style. 86.168.57.181 (talk) 01:39, 15 April 2015 (UTC)[reply]

English[edit]

In Lancashire and much of the Southwest of the UK 'r' is pronounced much as it is in many parts of the USA. Pamour (talk) 18:23, 16 February 2014 (UTC)[reply]

What specifically do you mean? Without clarification and an example, the comment is meaningless. — Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.255.168.119 (talk) 03:27, 5 March 2014 (UTC)[reply]

Greek[edit]

Sometime in the history of Greek, Ancient Greek ἀδελφός changed to αδερφός, which Wiktionary says is used in about 22% of cases in the Hellenic National Corpus. This change also occurred in Arvanitika as opposed to αλβανικά and Albania. Not sure when or in what form of the language it happened, but with a source it could be mentioned. — Eru·tuon 06:17, 15 February 2015 (UTC)[reply]

An indo-european issue?[edit]

The list of languages suggests that rhotacism is an issue in the Indo-European languages. The only example that is non-IE is Korean. Is that the mere lack of sources, or are other issues relevant here? --2607:EA00:107:3C01:1968:AEB4:1079:7DD (talk) 20:23, 24 May 2016 (UTC)[reply]

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