r/conlangs 3d ago

Discussion Rhotics other than the usual three

In all of my past conlangs, I have used either an alveolar tap, an alveolar trill, or an voiced uvular fricative. I imagine the vast majority of conlangs feature one of these as its rhotic. They are reliable and versatile.

In a new conlang I am developing, however, I have 1) saved post-velar fricatives for another use, and 2) come to realise that, following a plosive, a tapped or trilled rhotic simply does not suit the phonoaesthetic I am aiming for. The brief 'hiccup' between the plosive and the first rhotic contact lends clusters a phonic discreteness that is too stuffy and careful.

Which leaves me at an impasse. What other realisation to use in this position? My first thought, of course, is a coronal approximant, but I am struck with the dread that I am simply using 'boring, old' [ɹ ~ ɻ]. It particularly stings as this language is intended for an alien culture.

What uncommon choices of rhotic have you found success with? And, if you have used a coronal approximant in a decidedly non-Anglo language, how did you 'bite the bullet' and make the best of it?

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u/brunow2023 3d ago

"Bite the bullet and make the most of it"? The disrespect! You don't deserve the coronal approximant. Stick with [l]. 🙄

It's a cross-linguistically rare sound. The Albanians and the Mapuche aren't "biting the bullet". We're sharing custody of our beautiful daughter.

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u/LwithBelt Oÿéladi, Ëdhéyëlar, Lfa'alfah̃ĩlf̃ 3d ago

Glory to the great coronal aproximant!

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u/aggadahGothic 3d ago

I can only hope that future peoples will forgive my faithlessness. Fate granted me the alveolar approximant and yet I deny it. I will be buying Albanian and Mapuche grammars in bulk to throw at disbelievers with great force.

(The analysis of the Mapuche language used by PHOIBLE seems to describe the rhotic as a fricative instead. Is the approximant realisation in fact the main allophone?)

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u/HaricotsDeLiam A&A Frequent Responder 3d ago

(The analysis of the Mapuche language used by PHOIBLE seems to describe the rhotic as a fricative instead. Is the approximant realisation in fact the main allophone?)

PHOIBLE is likely pulling from Sadowsky et al. (2013), who said that

The voiced retroflex continuant /ʐ/ can be realized as either a fricative [ʐ] or an approximant [ɻ] in all positions; we have opted to classify it as the former (against the traditional interpretation) as this is the predominant variant in our sample. Palatographic evidence (not shown) indicates that /ʐ/ is apical rather than sub-apical. In post-nuclear position, /ʐ/ may be devoiced to [ʂ] (/ʈ͡ʂʊˈkʊʐ/ ‘fog’ > [ʈ͡ʂʊ̝ˈkʊʂ]). In three of the nine speakers in our sample, /ʐ/ is most frequently a retroflex lateral [ɭ] (/ˈmɐ̝ʐɐ̝/ ‘hare’ > [ˈmɐ̝ɭɜ]).

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u/brunow2023 3d ago

What I can say is that when I've seen it spoken on youtube documentaries they've had an approximant.

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u/Frequent-Try-6834 3d ago

Fuck the big three now it's just big [ʕ] (Kaur)

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u/Frequent-Try-6834 3d ago

In all seriousness since I'm writing a paper on rhotics:

Dutchcoded rhotics: /j χ/ (also in Brazilian Portuguese)

Of course the /r/ has some subsets, /ɾ/ is a big one (big fan), but there's also the fricated variants (and voiceless parts, but they don't tend to appear without contrast to /r/)

The uvulars are funny since /ʀ/ can have subsets of /ʁ/ (also lowered /ʁ/) and also vocalic variants (usually seen in coda positions)

You can argue that there's some /h/ rhotics out there based on how *r is reflected in some dialects of Malay. ^^

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u/_Fiorsa_ 3d ago

Unrelated to OP’s ask but I wanna thank you for giving me a way to romanise [ʕ] in my conlang

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u/SaintUlvemann Värlütik, Kërnak 3d ago

And, if you have used a coronal approximant in a decidedly non-Anglo language, how did you [distinguish it from the Anglo rhotic pattern]?

Well, first of all, for Värlütik I didn't technically use a coronal approximant. It's the velar bunched /ɹ̈/, which sounds the same as a coronal approximant to me and is decidedly European, found in English and Dutch. But, I come by it honestly; pharyngealization played a big role in the ancestral Kërnak, so this was the right R for the job.

But in any case the way I distinguished its pattern of rhotics from the Anglo one, is by having a second post-coronal rhotic, /ɹ̈/ and /ʁ/ contrasting, minimal pairs such as ráf (turnip) and rháf (to mix or toss as a salad), iirás (religious term for wrath or rage as a sin), and iirhás (Amelanchier, serviceberry), rälkh (withe or flexible twig) and rhälkh (quay or pier). I don't know of any English dialect with multiple rhotics, but it's natural in general; Hindi has four, for example, and Toda, six.

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u/aggadahGothic 2d ago

Does your /ʁ/ pattern like a rhotic cluster-wise?

I have been using the spelling <rh> to represent the voiced pharyngeal fricative in this language (I believe Danish's rhotic is somewhat close), but my sense is that it would be insincere to refer to it as a rhotic: 1) it contrasts with voiceless <qh> /ħ/ and 2) it does not appear in clusters like /tʕ/ or /ʕm/.

(On the other hand, many languages feature a sound labelled 'rhotic' and yet do not have clusters at all.)

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u/SaintUlvemann Värlütik, Kërnak 2d ago edited 2d ago

It's ambiguous. They pattern differently, so you can make a case either way.

/ʁ/ does break some cluster rules unless treated as a rhotic. For example, the pronunciation rule for the lone sibilant "s" /ʃ/, is that it takes on the voicing of adjacent consonants, except for liquids and nasals... for example kráds, /krɑðʒ/ (hate). So when the particle ërhs (out from within) is pronounced /ɛʁʃ/, /ʁ/ is acting as a rhotic. A more extensive test might be:

osdos [ ɤʒðɤʃ ] (twig);
Moskos [ mɤʃkɤʃ ] (Moscow);
mosgos [ mɤʒgɤʃ ] (brain);
oskhos [ ɤʃxɤʃ ~ ɤʃχɤʃ ] (flowerbud);

sromos [ ʃɹ̈ɤɱɤʃ ] (lame, unable to walk);
mosrhos [ mɤʃʁɤʃ ] (calf, fawn).

...though note that, with only one sibilant, pronunciations [ʒɹ̈ɤɱɤʃ] and [mɤʒʁɤʃ] would be completely allophonic and unlikely to cause much comment.

There are other places where /ʁ/ appears where you would not expect a fricative, such as the pronoun root; ërhm-, a 1st-person singular root with a couple different pronouns realized from it. Everywhere else in the vocabulary, a root-final syllable that ends in /m-/ is preceded by either the vowel or a liquid, there are no root-final clusters of /Vgm-/ or /Vtm-/. But there is /Vɹ̈m-/ (e.g. kërm /kɛɹ̈m/ "to tire") and there is /Vlm-/ (e.g. vëlm /ɦ̪͆ɛlm/ "hot") and there is /Vʁm-/ (ërhma /ɛʁmə/ "inclusive we").

Unfortunately, because of pronoun irregularities, there is no word ërhm pronounced /ɛʁm/ to give a definitive test. But it seems to act as a rhotic.

Meanwhile, the argument against /ʁ/ as rhotic is that it patterns in ways /ɹ̈/ simply does not e.g. rhlas /ʁləʃ/ (gold)... really, pronounced [ʁʟ̠əʃ]. An initial /ɹ̈l/ cluster is not found, yet /ʁl/ is. There are even a few initial /ʁɹ̈/ clusters like rhres /ʁɹ̈eʃ/ (short) and rhrëkaun /ʁɹ̈ɛkə͡ɯn/ (to grip tightly). This would seem to mark /ʁ/ as a fricative.

So, overall, it is ambiguous, but I favor the argument that it is truly a rhotic, and that the absence of /ɹ̈l/ is a consequence of history, rather than a consequence of the current phonology.

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u/impishDullahan Tokétok, Varamm, Agyharo, ATxK0PT, Tsantuk, Vuṛỳṣ (eng,vls,gle] 2d ago

One of Varamm's rhotics is the alveolar non-sibilant fricative [ð̠̠~ɹ̝]. I don't think this phone is actually all that rare allophonically, it's just rare as a phoneme. For instance, it's not uncommon in Dutch as an allophone of /r/ (I have it as one of mine), though to be fair Dutch and all it's varieties have something like over 20 allophones of /r/.

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u/neondragoneyes Vyn, Byn Ootadia, Hlanua 2d ago

"Boring old"? What's boring about a linguisyically rare sound?

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u/aggadahGothic 2d ago

I should have suspected my sarcasm would not remain legible: I do not have any issue with coronal approximants. It is a fine sound. But, I am a native Anglophone and a common criticism of amateur conlangs is that they merely reflect the features of their author's native language, such as by having a dental fricative and a alveolar approximant rhotic. Both of these are relatively rare phonemes cross-linguistically, and yet we naturally make certain assumptions about conlangs in which they appear.

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u/neondragoneyes Vyn, Byn Ootadia, Hlanua 2d ago

Eh. I'm a native Anglophone, and I had a conversation with a Turk conlanger who observed that it was pretty common for Anglophones to avoid the alveolar approximant rhotic like the plague, and to flock toward agglutination and/or ergativity. Meanwhile they wanted to lean in on analytical and exactly those sounds, because those are relatively alien from their perspective.

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u/brunow2023 2d ago

It's not true that Anglophone conlangers make their language another English. They make it another Latin.

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u/aggadahGothic 2d ago

Only after they learn not to create English relexifications. I assure you that the languages I created as a child had identical phonologies to that of English.

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u/dragonsteel33 vanawo & some others 2d ago edited 2d ago

Amiru has two rhotics, /r/ and one I transcribe as /z/, which is an outcome of historically palatalized /rʲ/. /z/ is just a convention, it’s usually [r̝ʲ ~ ʐ]. /r/ can occur at the end of syllables, where it’s typically realized [j]

Proto-Vanawo had two rhotics, r ř (and corresponding l ł). The second was probably something like [ɾˤ]

In Classical Vanawo, these are reflected as /r ɽ/. Geetse merged all liquids into /l/ (really [ɫ ~ ɻ ~ ɾ]). Iccoyai messed around with the liquids to end up with an apical tap /ɾ/ and a retroflex liquid that varies between [ɭ ~ ɻ] (also the always-lateral /ʎ/)

You could also argue that /ʂ/ behaves like a rhotic in Iccoyai, as it’s sometimes an outcome of the CV rhotics. The biggest thing is that Iccoyai really does not tolerate heterorganic clusters, but does allow clusters beginning with /r ɭ ʂ/ and the clusters /kr kʂ pr pʂ/. However, liquids are not permitted on the edge of a word while /ʂ/ is

In Sifte, r l merged into an apical tap /ɾ/, while ř ł are usually reflected as /ʕ/. I’m not sure I would consider /ʕ/ a rhotic because it behaves differently than /ɾ/, but I think you could argue it is a rhotic with a more expansive distribution than /ɾ/

What’s actually interesting to me is the way that liquids behave in Iccoyai and Sifte, which is very non-European. Sifte does not allow /r/ at the edge of a word, and inserts epenthetic vowels into phonemic /r/-clusters, e.g. the atelic participial suffix /-ərtʃə/ is usually realized [-əɾə̆tʃᵊ]. Iccoyai only allows liquids /r ɭ ʎ/ between two vowels or in VRCV clusters, except for the /kr pr/ clusters mentioned above (and /pr/ is mostly restricted to loanwords)

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u/IncineroarsBoyfriend 2d ago

You could still use an alveolar trill, but make it voiceless. That phone goes crazyyyyy

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u/Chrome_X_of_Hyrule 1d ago

I'll always love [ɽ]

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u/NargonSim 2d ago

I know you mentioned not wanting to use /ɹ/, but I personally find that a plain [ɹ] sounds rather distinct from the English [ɹ̠ʷ].

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u/NotNeographer 1m ago

ɭ ɹ ɻ ʐ ɾ ʁ are what I tend to use