Voiced alveolar and postalveolar approximants


The voiced alveolar approximant is a type of consonantal sound used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents the alveolar and postalveolar approximants is, a lowercase letter r rotated 180 degrees. The equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is r\.
The most common sound represented by the letter r in English is the voiced postalveolar approximant, pronounced a little more back and transcribed more precisely in IPA as, but is often used for convenience in its place. For further ease of typesetting, English phonemic transcriptions might use the symbol even though this symbol represents the alveolar trill in phonetic transcription.

Features

Features of the voiced alveolar approximant:

Occurrence

Alveolar

Postalveolar

As an allophone of other rhotic sounds, occurs in Edo, Fula, Murinh-patha, and Palauan.