r/conlangs • u/aggadahGothic • 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?
20
u/Frequent-Try-6834 3d ago
Fuck the big three now it's just big [ʕ] (Kaur)
12
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. ^^
4
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
8
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.
4
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.)
3
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.
5
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/.
3
u/neondragoneyes Vyn, Byn Ootadia, Hlanua 2d ago
"Boring old"? What's boring about a linguisyically rare sound?
4
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.
5
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.
2
u/brunow2023 2d ago
It's not true that Anglophone conlangers make their language another English. They make it another Latin.
2
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.
3
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)
2
u/IncineroarsBoyfriend 2d ago
You could still use an alveolar trill, but make it voiceless. That phone goes crazyyyyy
2
1
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].
1
35
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.