PHONETICS MANUAL.indd - HumBox

For a TRILL, the uvula itself vibrates against the back of the tongue (this is the converse
of the alveolar trill, for which it’s the tongue, or at least the tip of it, that vibrates).
The IPA symbol for the uvular trill is [R] (read “small capital r”). This symbol is the
one customarily used in transcribing French, since the uvula trill is the traditional way
of pronouncing standard French r. Thus [RaR] for rare, [ReEl] for réel, etc. Nowadays
though, French uvular [R] tends to be pronounced with little or no vibration or
trilling, being “weakened” to a FRICATIVE, with the back of the tongue simply in
loose contact with the uvula. This sound is represented by [] (“inverted capital r”): it
can either be voiced [] (as in [ab] arbre), or else voiceless [] (as in [tt] traître),
depending on whether neighbouring consonants are voiced or voiceless.
Parallel to the alveolar approximant characteristic of English is the uvular
APPROXIMANT: a vowel-like sound with “back r colouring”. The IPA represents
this as []. The diacritic [4] indicates that the tongue is lowered slightly relative to the
uvular fricative [] — enough to rule out any friction, but remaining sufficiently
close to the uvula for an approximant to be possible. This sound is to be heard
increasingly often in contemporary French, particularly at the end of a word ([œ]
heure), or between vowels ([pai] Paris). In the latter case, though, it is still considered
a somewhat “vulgar” pronunciation.
In northern pronunciations of German, a trilled [R] is possible at the beginning of
words, after consonants and between vowels (rot, treffen, waren); but, as in French, the
usual tendency is to weaken the trill, and to use a fricative [] or [] instead. Between
vowels an approximant [] may also occur (Ehre). After vowels (as in wird, Uhr) any r-
quality is lost altogether and []/[]/[]/[] is replaced by a lowish central vowel, not
unlike RP [], for which the IPA and many dictionaries use the symbol [] (“turned
a”). Thus: [vit] wird, [u] Uhr. Here it is on the vowel chart:
e
o
@
E
O
a
Fig. 38
a
A
Unstressed er in the spelling (hundert, höher) corresponds to [·] not to [@], the erstwhile
r having absorbed the e altogether: [hund·t], [hø:·]. The difference between [·] (low
central) as in bitter and [@] (mid central) as in bitte, is quite an important one: think of
the [ˆ] of S. English up, rather than the [@] of rather and you’ll be on the right track.
Consonants
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