This article is about the eighteenth letter of the Latin alphabet. For the reversed version, see
Я
. For other uses, see
R (disambiguation)
.
R
, or
r
, is the eighteenth
letter
of the
Latin alphabet
, used in the
modern English alphabet
, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is
ar
(pronounced
), plural
ars
,
[1]
or in Ireland
or
.
[2]
The letter
?r?
is the eighth most common letter in English and the fourth-most common consonant, after
?t?
,
?n?
, and
?s?
.
[3]
The name of the letter in Latin was
er
(
/?r/
), following the pattern of other letters representing
continuants
, such as
?F?
,
?L?
,
?M?
,
?N?
, and
?S?
. This name is preserved in
French
and many other languages. In
Middle English
, the name of the letter changed from
/?r/
to
/ar/
, following a pattern exhibited in many other words such as
farm
(compare French
ferme
) and
star
(compare German
Stern
).
In
Hiberno-English
, the letter is called
/?r/
or
/?ːr/
, somewhat similar to
oar
,
ore
,
orr
.
[4]
[5]
[6]
The letter R is sometimes referred to as the
littera can?na
'canine letter', often rendered in English as the
dog's letter
. This Latin term referred to the Latin
?R?
that was
trilled
to sound like a growling dog, a spoken style referred to as
v?x can?na
'dog voice' (e.g. in Spanish
perro
'dog').
[7]
In
Romeo and Juliet
, such a reference is made by Juliet's nurse in Act 2, scene 4, when she calls the letter R "the dog's name". The reference is also found in
Ben Jonson
's
English Grammar
.
[8]
Egyptian
|
Proto-Sinaitic
|
Phoenician
Resh
|
Western Greek
Rho
|
Etruscan
R
|
Latin
R
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Antiquity
edit
The letter
?R?
is believed to derive ultimately from an image of a head, used in
Semitic alphabets
for the sound
/r/
because the word for 'head' was
re?
or similar in most
Semitic languages
. The word became the name of the letter, as an example of
acrophony
.
It developed into Greek
?
Ρ
?
??
(
rho
) and Latin
?R?
. The descending diagonal stroke develops as a graphic variant in some
Western Greek alphabets
(writing
rho
as
), but it was not adopted in most
Old Italic alphabets
; most Old Italic alphabets show variants of their
rho
between a
?P?
and a
?D?
shape, but without the Western Greek descending stroke.
Indeed, the oldest known forms of the Latin alphabet itself of the 7th to 6th centuries BC, in the
Duenos
and the
Forum inscription
, still write
?r?
using the
?P?
shape of the letter.
The
Lapis Satricanus
inscription shows the form of the Latin alphabet around 500 BC. Here, the rounded, closing Π shape of the
?p?
and the
?Ρ?
shape of the
?r?
have become difficult to distinguish.
The descending stroke of the Latin letter
?R?
has fully developed by the 3rd century BC, as seen in the
Tomb of the Scipios
sarcophagus inscriptions of that era. From
c.
?50 AD
, the letter
?P?
would be written with its loop fully closed, assuming the shape formerly taken by
?R?
.
The minuscule form
?r?
developed through several variations on the capital form.
Along with Latin minuscule writing in general, it developed ultimately from
Roman cursive
via the
uncial
script of Late Antiquity into the
Carolingian minuscule
of the 9th century.
In handwriting, it was common not to close the bottom of the loop but continue into the leg, saving an extra pen stroke. The loop-leg stroke shortened into the simple arc used in the Carolingian minuscule and until today.
A calligraphic minuscule
?r?
, known as
r rotunda
???
, was used in the sequence
?or?
, bending the shape of the
?r?
to accommodate the bulge of the
?o?
as in
?o??
, as opposed to
?or?
. Later, the same variant was also used where
?r?
followed other lower case letters with a rounded loop towards the right, such as with
?b?
,
?h?
,
?p?
, as well as to write the geminate
?rr?
as
????
. Use of
r rotunda
was mostly tied to
blackletter
typefaces, and the glyph fell out of use along with blackletter fonts in English language contexts mostly by the 18th century.
Insular script
used a minuscule which retained two downward strokes, but which did not close the loop, known as the
Insular r
???
; this variant survives in the
Gaelic type
popular in Ireland until the mid-20th century, but has become largely limited to a decorative function.
Use in writing systems
edit
?R?
represents a
rhotic consonant
in English, such as the
alveolar approximant
(most varieties),
alveolar trill
(some British varieties), or the
retroflex approximant
(some varieties in the
United States
,
South West England
, and
Dublin
).
In
non-rhotic
accents, it is not pronounced in certain positions, but can affect the pronunciation of the vowel that precedes it.
Other languages
edit
?R?
represents a
rhotic consonant
in many languages, as shown in the table below.
Alveolar trill
[r]
|
Listen
|
Standard
Dutch
,
Estonian
,
Finnish
,
Galician
,
German
in some dialects,
Hungarian
,
Icelandic
,
Indonesian
,
Italian
,
Czech
,
Javanese
,
Lithuanian
,
Latvian
,
Latin
,
Norwegian
mostly in the northwest,
Polish
,
Portuguese
(traditional form),
Romanian
,
Russian
,
Scots
,
Slovak
,
Swedish
,
Sundanese
,
Ukrainian
,
Welsh
; also
Catalan
,
Spanish
and
Albanian
?rr?
|
Alveolar approximant
[?]
|
Listen
|
Dutch
in some Netherlandic dialects (in specific positions of words),
Faroese
,
Sicilian
|
Alveolar flap
/
Alveolar tap
[?]
|
Listen
|
Portuguese
,
Catalan
,
Spanish
and
Albanian
?r?
,
Turkish
,
Dutch
,
Italian
,
Venetian
,
Galician
,
Leonese
,
Norwegian
,
Irish
,
M?ori
|
Voiced retroflex fricative
[?]
|
Listen
|
Norwegian
around
Tromsø
;
Spanish
used as an allophone of /r/ in some South American accents;
Hopi
used before vowels, as in
raana
, "toad", from Spanish rana;
Hanyu Pinyin
transliteration of
Standard Chinese
.
|
Retroflex approximant
[?]
|
Listen
|
Gutnish
|
Retroflex flap
[?]
|
Listen
|
Norwegian
when followed by <d>, sometimes in
Scottish English
|
Uvular trill
[?]
|
Listen
|
German
stage standard; some
Dutch
dialects (in Brabant and Limburg, and some city dialects in The Netherlands),
Swedish
in Southern Sweden,
Norwegian
in western and southern parts,
Venetian
only in
Venice
area.
|
Voiced uvular fricative
[?]
|
Listen
|
North Mesopotamian Arabic
,
Judeo-Iraqi Arabic
,
German
,
Danish
,
French
, standard European
Portuguese
?rr?
, standard Brazilian
Portuguese
?rr?
, Puerto Rican Spanish
?rr?
and 'r-' in western parts,
Norwegian
in western and southern parts.
|
Other languages may use the letter
?r?
in their alphabets (or Latin transliterations schemes) to represent rhotic consonants different from the alveolar trill. In
Haitian Creole
, it represents a sound so weak that it is often written interchangeably with
?w?
, e.g. 'Kweyol' for 'Kreyol'.
The doubled
?rr?
represents a trilled
/r/
in
Albanian
,
Aragonese
,
Asturian
,
Basque
,
Catalan
, and
Spanish
.
Brazilian
Portuguese
has a great number of allophones of
/
?
/
such as
[
χ
]
,
[
h
]
,
[
?
]
,
[
x
]
,
[
?
]
,
[
?
]
and
[
r
]
, the latter three ones can be used only in certain contexts (
[
?
]
and
[
r
]
as
?rr?
;
[
?
]
in the syllable coda, as an allophone of
/
?
/
according to the European Portuguese norm and
/
?
/
according to the Brazilian Portuguese norm). Usually at least two of them are present in a single dialect, such as
Rio de Janeiro
's
[
?
]
,
[
χ
]
,
[
?
]
and, for a few speakers,
[
?
]
.
Other systems
edit
The
International Phonetic Alphabet
uses several variations of the letter to represent the different rhotic consonants; ?
r
? represents the
alveolar trill
.
Other uses
edit
- An
R rating
denotes media such as movies that are intended for a restricted audience.
Related characters
edit
Descendants and related characters in the Latin alphabet
edit
Calligraphic variants in the Latin alphabet
edit
Ancestors and siblings in other alphabets
edit
- ?? ?
Semitic
letter
Resh
, from which the following letters derive
- Ρ ρ ?
Greek
letter
Rho
, from which the following letters derive
Abbreviations, signs and symbols
edit
Other representations
edit
Computing
edit
Character information
Preview
|
R
|
r
|
R
|
r
|
Unicode name
|
LATIN CAPITAL LETTER R
|
LATIN SMALL LETTER R
|
FULLWIDTH LATIN CAPITAL LETTER R
|
FULLWIDTH LATIN SMALL LETTER R
|
Encodings
|
decimal
|
hex
|
dec
|
hex
|
dec
|
hex
|
dec
|
hex
|
Unicode
|
82
|
U+0052
|
114
|
U+0072
|
65330
|
U+FF32
|
65362
|
U+FF52
|
UTF-8
|
82
|
52
|
114
|
72
|
239 188 178
|
EF BC B2
|
239 189 146
|
EF BD 92
|
Numeric character reference
|
R
|
R
|
r
|
r
|
R
|
R
|
r
|
r
|
EBCDIC
family
|
217
|
D9
|
153
|
99
|
|
|
|
|
ASCII
|
82
|
52
|
114
|
72
|
|
|
|
|
See also
edit
References
edit
- ^
"R",
Oxford English Dictionary
2nd edition (1989); "ar",
op. cit
- ^
Kromerova, Alena.
Analysis of contemporary Irish dialects
(PDF)
(Thesis). Archived from
the original
(PDF)
on 2017-09-15
. Retrieved
2017-09-15
.
- ^
"Frequency Table"
.
Math.cornell.edu
. Archived from
the original
on 2 November 2017
. Retrieved
7 November
2017
.
- ^
"Analysis of selected contemporary Irish dialects"
(PDF)
.
Digilib.k.utb.cz
.
Archived
(PDF)
from the original on 15 September 2017
. Retrieved
7 November
2017
.
- ^
Hogarty, Steve (November 11, 2013).
"Losing My Voice - This Happened to Me"
.
Medium
. Archived from
the original
on July 15, 2019
. Retrieved
July 15,
2019
.
- ^
"Mind your 'P's and 'Q's ? ore you'll get into trouble!"
.
Irish with Ian
. December 19, 2018.
Archived
from the original on July 15, 2019
. Retrieved
July 15,
2019
.
- ^
"A Word A Day: Dog's letter"
.
Wordsmith.org
.
Archived
from the original on 2012-03-14
. Retrieved
2012-01-17
.
- ^
Shakespeare, William; Horace Howard Furness; Frederick Williams (1913).
Romeo and Juliet
. Lippincott. p.?
189
.
ISBN
9780140620931
.
- ^
a
b
Constable, Peter (2003-09-30).
"L2/03-174R2: Proposal to Encode Phonetic Symbols with Middle Tilde in the UCS"
(PDF)
.
Unicode.org
.
Archived
(PDF)
from the original on 2017-10-11
. Retrieved
2018-03-24
.
- ^
Everson, Michael (2019-05-05).
"L2/19-075R: Proposal to add six phonetic characters for Scots to the UCS"
(PDF)
.
Archived
(PDF)
from the original on 2019-06-13
. Retrieved
2020-03-17
.
- ^
Constable, Peter (2004-04-19).
"L2/04-132 Proposal to add additional phonetic characters to the UCS"
(PDF)
.
Unicode.org
.
Archived
(PDF)
from the original on 2017-10-11
. Retrieved
2018-03-24
.
- ^
a
b
c
Miller, Kirk (2020-07-11).
"L2/20-125R: Unicode request for expected IPA retroflex letters and similar letters with hooks"
(PDF)
.
- ^
a
b
c
Anderson, Deborah (2020-12-07).
"L2/21-021: Reference doc numbers for L2/20-266R "Consolidated code chart of proposed phonetic characters" and IPA etc. code point and name changes"
(PDF)
.
- ^
Miller, Kirk; Ashby, Michael (2020-11-08).
"L2/20-252R: Unicode request for IPA modifier-letters (a), pulmonic"
(PDF)
.
- ^
Everson, Michael
; et?al. (2002-03-20).
"L2/02-141: Uralic Phonetic Alphabet characters for the UCS"
(PDF)
.
Unicode.org
.
Archived
(PDF)
from the original on 2018-02-19
. Retrieved
2018-03-24
.
- ^
a
b
c
Everson, Michael; Dicklberger, Alois; Pentzlin, Karl; Wandl-Vogt, Eveline (2011-06-02).
"L2/11-202: Revised proposal to encode "Teuthonista" phonetic characters in the UCS"
(PDF)
.
Unicode.org
.
Archived
(PDF)
from the original on 2017-10-11
. Retrieved
2018-03-24
.
- ^
Miller, Kirk; Rees, Neil (2021-07-16).
"L2/21-156: Unicode request for legacy Malayalam"
(PDF)
.
- ^
Lemonen, Therese; Ruppel, Klaas; Kolehmainen, Erkki I.; Sandstrom, Caroline (2006-01-26).
"L2/06-036: Proposal to encode characters for Ordbok over Finlands svenska folkmal in the UCS"
(PDF)
.
Unicode.org
.
Archived
(PDF)
from the original on 2017-07-06
. Retrieved
2018-03-24
.
- ^
Everson, Michael; West, Andrew (2020-10-05).
"L2/20-268: Revised proposal to add ten characters for Middle English to the UCS"
(PDF)
.
External links
edit
-
Media related to
R
at Wikimedia Commons
-
The dictionary definition of
R
at Wiktionary
-
The dictionary definition of
r
at Wiktionary