Re: rhotics (was: Hellenish oddities)

On Sat, 25 Nov 2000, BP Jonsson wrote:

> Keith Alasdair Mylchreest wrote on how to trill r's:
>
> >Try saying [tr] or perhaps [tDr], I think that's how I finally got there.
>
> That won't help those many Americans whose /tr/ and /dr/ are in fact [.t.s]
> and [.d.z], i.e. retroflex affricates...
<wry g>  I honestly don't know how I figured out the flap, except lots of
torturing people around me while I choked on my own tongue trying to
learn it.

A friend suggested repeating [d] rapidly.  Occasionally it *almost*
works.  <wry look>

And no, I can't whistle properly.  I can't throat-sing either, despite
trying those websites; I do seem to remember that one of them said it's
harder for women to learn.  It's not fair.  <sigh>

[snip]
> I wonder how widespread lgs with more than one "r" phoneme are?  Spanish is
> famous for its r/rr, Portuguese and Occitan have r/R, but beyond
> that?  What about people's conlangs?  Wanic has a slew of laterals but only
> one rhotic.
Korean has some form of r that I *can* produce, which sounds kind of but
not quite like a tap.  (The American approximant? also suffices,
considering the number of Americans in and around Seoul.)  In
syllable-final position the r manifests as an [l], I think.

My conlang has a single rhotic, and I figure that different "r" sounds
are used by different dialects, but I haven't worked this out yet.

YHL