Re: Spanish and Italian _r_ and _rr_ -- for my Romlang #3

Benct Philip Jonsson wrote:
I know that Spanish and Italian /4/ and /r/ contrast only between vowels;
elsewhere the single spelling _r_ represents both phonenes, distributed
according to rule. I *seem* to remember that the rule is [r] before vowels
and [4] after vowels, but I'm not sure, especially not about what applies
word-finally. Also I don't know whether the same rules apply in both languages.
>
>And what about Catalan, Provençal and Portuguese? I think that in the
first two only /r/ has become /R/ while /4/ remains, and IIRC the same is
the case in some dialects of Portuguese. How is the actual case with this,
and again what is the distribution?
_________________________________________________
Grrr!  Wrote a big long answer for you, Benct, only to have it erase itself
when I posted it.  Let’s try again:

I speak Spanish, Italian and Portuguese, have spent my whole life hearing
Spanish almost daily (I live in California and watch Spanish-language
television about twice weekly), have spent a cumulative total of about ten
weeks in Italy, have spent three weeks in Portugal (the southern half),
lived for about two years in a San Francisco Bay Area neighborhood
containing a large number of Brazilians who spoke the Carioca dialect, and
worked with two Brazilians who spoke the Paulista dialect.  So based on
that, my observations about Spanish, Italian, and Portuguese /4/ and /r/ are
as follows:

Spanish:  Word-initial _r_ is always /r/, pronounced [r].  _r_ is also /r/
after /n/ and, in some dialects, after /l/.  After all other consonants, it
is /4/.  In word-final position, it is /4/ in normal speech, but /r/ in
emphatic or hyper-enunciated speech.

Italian is the same as for Spanish except I’m uncertain about the /r/
pronunciation after /n/ and /l/, and in word-final position (not common
other than “per” and elided infinitives like “far niente”) it is /4/, not /r/.

Portuguese:  distribution same as Spanish.  Actual pronunciation of the
phonemes depends on the dialect:  In Lisbon-area Continental Portuguese, /4/
is [4] while /r/ is in free variation between [r] and [R], often in the same
speaker.  I’ve yet to discern a predictable pattern to the variation, even
in the recordings of fado singers I collect.  In Carioca dialect /4/ is [4]
and /r/ is [h] in normal speech, but voiceless uvular [X] in emphatic or
hyper-enunciated speech.  In Paulista dialect, /4/ is [r] but /r/ seems to
be [h] for some speakers and [r] for others; when emphatic or
hyper-enunciated, Paulistas pronounce /r/ as [r], not [X].

I don’t speak much Catalan (although I read it passably), but the three
times I’ve been in Barcelona, I’ve never heard any Catalan pronounce /r/
uvularly, only as [r].

--John Quijada

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