Re: a small phonological question about the French 'r'.

On Fri, 1 Oct 1999, Sally Caves wrote:

> Christophe Grandsire wrote:
> >
> > For those one the list who are very good at phonology, I have a small
> > question. What is the phonological status of the French 'r'? Can it be
> > better described as an uvular fricative or an uvular trill? Because at
> > this PoA I have difficulties to know what I'm really doing when I
> > pronounce this sound.
>
>
> A uvular trill, to my mind, would be what some German speakers do with
> initial r.  Hard for me to produce without a lot of saliva back there!
> Rath, richtig, roth, etc.  The uvula actually vibrates, like a little
> leaf in the wind.
>
> I have always called what the French do (much easier for me to
> reproduce)
> a "uvular scrape" <G> !
>
I seem to remember it described as an uvular fricative, writting in ipa
as a small-caps upside-down R. ... Just looked it up, yes, according
to Ladefoged (The Sounds of the Worlds Languages), "... and a fricative
uvular rhotic is the most common production of 'r' in French..." (p. 232),
so a 'uvular scrape' is a good description ;-)

Boudewijn Rempt  | http://denden.conlang.org/~bsarempt