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Voiced dental and alveolar taps and flaps

Consonantal sounds represented by ⟨ɾ⟩ in IPA

Summary

Consonantal sounds represented by ⟨ɾ⟩ in IPA

Field	Value
ipa symbol	ɾ
ipa number	124
decimal	638
xsampa	4
braille	!
braille2	r
imagefile	IPA Unicode 0x027E.svg

A voiced alveolar tap or flap is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents a dental, alveolar, or postalveolar tap or flap is .

The terms tap and flap are often used interchangeably. Peter Ladefoged proposed the distinction that a tap strikes its point of contact directly, as a very brief stop, and a flap strikes the point of contact tangentially: "Flaps are most typically made by retracting the tongue tip behind the alveolar ridge and moving it forward so that it strikes the ridge in passing." That distinction between the alveolar tap and flap could be written in non-standard IPA with the tap as and the flap as , the retroflex letter being used for the one that starts with the tongue tip curled back behind the alveolar ridge, though it could be written less ambiguously with the Americanist letter (or IPA ) for the tap and standard IPA for the flap. The distinction is noticeable in the speech of some American English speakers in distinguishing the words "potty" (tap) and "party" (flap).

For linguists who do not make the distinction, alveolars and dentals are typically called taps and other articulations flaps. No language contrasts a tap and a flap at the same place of articulation.

As a phoneme, the sound is analyzed as an rhotic consonant. In languages for which the segment is present but not phonemic, it is often an allophone of either an alveolar stop (, , or both) or a rhotic consonant.

If an alveolar flap is the only rhotic consonant in the language, it may be transcribed with in broad transcription, despite that symbol technically representing a trill.

A voiced alveolar tapped fricative reported from some languages is actually a very brief voiced alveolar non-sibilant fricative.

Voiced alveolar tap and flap

Features

Features of a voiced alveolar tap or flap:

Its manner of articulation is tap or flap, which means it is produced with a single contraction of the muscles so that the tongue makes very brief contact.
Its place of articulation is dental or alveolar, which means it is articulated behind upper front teeth or at the alveolar ridge. It is most often apical, which means that it is pronounced with the tip of the tongue.

Occurrence

Language	Word	IPA	Meaning	Notes
Albanian	Standard	Shqipëri		'Albania'
Arabic	Egyptian	رجل		'leg'
Lebanese	إجر		'wages'
Moroccan	رما / rma		'he threw'
South Iraqi	أريد		'I want'
Aragonese	aragonés		'Aragonese'	Contrasts with .
Armenian	Eastern	րոպե		'minute'
Assyrian	ܪܫܐ / rìsha		'head'
Asturian	hora		'hour'	Contrasts with .
Azerbaijani	qara / قارا		'black'
Basque	begiratu		'look'	Contrasts with . See Basque phonology.
Bengali	ত্রিশ		'dear'	Mostly pronounced []. But may occur some word-medially and finally against . See Bengali phonology.
গাড়ি		'car'	Mazumdar	2000	p=57}} See Bengali phonology.
Catalan	truc		'trick'	Contrasts with . See Catalan phonology.
Danish	nordisk		'Nordic'	Possible realization of intervocalic between phonetic vowels. See Danish phonology.
Dutch	reden		'reason'	Especially in the region of West Frisia. Realization of /r/ varies widely in Dutch. See Dutch phonology.
English	Cockney	better		'better'
Australian		Intervocalic allophone of and . See Australian English phonology, New Zealand English phonology and Flapping.
New Zealand
Dublin		Intervocalic allophone of and , present in many dialects. In Local Dublin it can be instead, unlike New and Mainstream. See English phonology and Flapping.
North America
Ulster
West Country
Irish	three		'three'	Conservative accents. Corresponds to [ ~ ~ ] in other accents.
Scottish	Most speakers. Others use [ ~ ].
Older Received Pronunciation	Allophone of .
Scouse
South African	Broad speakers. Can be [ ~ ] instead.
Esperanto	Esperanto		'one who hopes'	Usually a flap , but can be a trilled , depending on speaker. See Esperanto phonology.
Finnish	rotta		'rat'	Occurs in Häme (Tampere) dialect, contrasts with in standard Finnish. See Finnish phonology.
Greek	μηρός / el		'thigh'	Somewhat retracted. Most common realization of . See Modern Greek phonology.
Gokana	bele		'we'	Apical postalveolar. Allophone of , medially between vowels within the morpheme, and finally in the morpheme before a following vowel in the same word. It can be a postalveolar trill or simply instead.
Hindustani	मेरा/{{nq	میرا}}		'my'	Allophone of in intervocalic position. See Hindustani phonology.
बड़ा/بڑا		'big'	Tiwari	2004	p=?}} See Hindustani phonology.
Hungarian	kar		'arm'	Allophone of . See Hungarian phonology.
Irish	fear		'man'	See Irish phonology.
Italian	Standard	era		'era'
Sicilian	drago		'dragon'
Kinyarwanda	u Rwanda		'Rwanda'
Japanese	心 /こころ kokoro		'heart'	Varies with . See Japanese phonology.
Kazakh	бер / ber		'give'	In free variation with trilled . See Kazakh phonology.
Korean	여름 / yeoreum		'summer'	Allophone of between vowels or between a vowel and an . See Korean phonology.
Kyrgyz	кырк / kyrk		'forty'	See Kyrgyz phonology.
Malay	راتوس / ratus		'hundred'	Common realization of . May be a trilled or postalveolar approximant []. See Malay phonology.
Māori	whare		'house'	Sometimes trilled.
Marathi	वारा		'wind'
Nepali	तारा		'star'	Intervocalic allophone of . See Nepali phonology.
भाड़ा		'rent'	Apical postalveolar flaps; postvocalic allophone of . See Nepali phonology.
Norwegian	bare		'only'	May be realised as a trill , approximant or uvular depending on dialect. See Norwegian phonology.
Odia	ରାତି / or		'night'
ଗାଡ଼ି		'car'	Apical postalveolar flaps; postvocalic allophone of .
Polish	który		'which'	Common realization of . See Polish phonology.
Portuguese	prato		'dish'	Dental to retroflex allophones, varying by dialect. Contrasts only intervocalically with , with its guttural allophones. See Portuguese phonology.
Punjabi	Gurmukhi	ਲਾਰਾ		'false promise'
Shahmukhi	{{nq	لارا}}
Scottish Gaelic	mòr		'big'	Both the lenited and non-initial broad form of r. Often transcribed simply as . The initial unlenited broad form is a trill , while the slender form is ( in some dialects). See Scottish Gaelic phonology.
Shipibo	roro		'to break'	Apical postalveolar; possible realization of .
Spanish	caro		'expensive'	Contrasts with . See Spanish phonology.
Tagalog	biro		'joke'	See Tagalog phonology.
Tamil	மரம் / maram		'tree'	See Tamil phonology.
Thai	Some speakers	พระ / phrá		'monk'
Turkish	ara		'interval'	Intervocalically; may not make full contact elsewhere. See Turkish phonology.
Turkmen	gara		'black'
Uzbek	ёмғир / yomg‘ir / یامغیر		'rain'	Denti-alveolar. See Uzbek phonology.
West Coast Bajau	bara'		'to tell'	Voiced dental flap in intervocalic position.
Wu Chinese	Xuanzhou Wu	銅陵		'Tongling'

Alveolar nasal tap and flap

| x-sampa = 4~ or n_X

Features

Features of an alveolar nasal tap or flap:

Its manner of articulation is tap or flap, which means it is produced with a single contraction of the muscles so that the tongue makes very brief contact.

Occurrence

Language	Word	IPA	Meaning	Notes
English	Estuary	twenty		'twenty'
North American
Guarani	porã		'good'	Nasalized allophone of as a result of nasal harmony. See Guarani language § Nasal harmony

Notes

References

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References

{{Harvcoltxt. Valentin-Marquez. 2008
{{Harvcoltxt. Watson. 2002
{{Harvcoltxt. Dum-Tragut. 2009
{{Harvcoltxt. Mazumdar. 2000
{{Harvcoltxt. Carbonell. Llisterri. 1992
{{Harvcoltxt. Grønnum. 2005
{{Harvcoltxt. Basbøll. 2005
{{Harvcoltxt. Wells. 1982
{{Harvcoltxt. Cox. Palethorpe. 2007
{{Harvcoltxt. Trudgill. Hannah. 2002
"Glossary".
{{Harvcoltxt. Ogden. 2009
{{Harvcoltxt. Ogden. 2009
{{Harvcoltxt. Wise. 1957
{{Harvcoltxt. Arvaniti. 2007
L.F. Brosnahan. "Outlines of the phonology of the Gokana dialect of Ogoni".
{{Harvcoltxt. Tiwari. 2004
Khatiwada, Rajesh. (December 2009). "Nepali". Journal of the International Phonetic Association.
{{Harvcoltxt. Khatiwada. 2009
Kristoffersen, Gjert. (2015). "En innføring i norsk fonologi". [[University of Bergen]].
{{Harvcoltxt. Masica. 1991
{{Harvcoltxt. Cruz-Ferreira. 1995
{{Harvcoltxt. Valenzuela. Márquez Pinedo. Maddieson. 2001
{{Harvcoltxt. Martínez-Celdrán. Fernández-Planas. Carrera-Sabaté. 2003
{{Harvcoltxt. Yavuz. Balcı. 2011
{{Harvcoltxt. Sjoberg. 1963
Miller, Mark T.. (2007). "A Grammar of West Coast Bajau". University of Texas at Arlington.
Jiang, Bingbing. (2003). "吴语宣州片方言音韵研究". East China Normal University Press.
Kwan-Young Oh. "Reanalysis of Flapping on Level Approach".
Tomasz P. Szynalski. "Flap t FAQ".
{{Harvcoltxt. Walker. 2011

Wikipedia Source

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