The alveolar approximant is a type of consonantal sound used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents dental, alveolar, and postalveolar approximants is , and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is r\. The IPA symbol is a turned lowercase letter r.

Features

Features of the alveolar approximant:

• Its manner of articulation is approximant, which means it is produced by bringing one articulator close to another but without the vocal tract being narrowed to such an extent that a turbulent airstream is produced.
• Its place of articulation is alveolar, which means it is articulated with either the tip or the blade of the tongue against the alveolar ridge, termed respectively apical and laminal.
• Its phonation type is voiced, which means the vocal cords are vibrating during the articulation.
• It is an oral consonant, which means air is allowed to escape through the mouth.
• It is a central consonant, which means it is produced by allowing the airstream to flow over the middle of the tongue, rather than the sides.
• The airstream mechanism is pulmonic egressive, which means it is articulated by pushing air out of the lungs and through the vocal tract, rather than from the glottis or the mouth.

In English

Most English dialects use this sound for the letter r and the digraph wr, though many speakers of these dialects have a retroflex rather than alveolar approximant. Originally the wr sound was labialized and the r sound was not, but the distinction has been lost from English, and now both r and wr are labialized at the start of a syllable, as in red .

Some phonemic transcriptions use the /r/ symbol instead of // for the 'r' sound for ease of typesetting, even though that technically represents the alveolar trill.

In other languages

• In some Germanic languages, like Dutch and Swedish this sound is used as the allophonic pronounciation of the letter r (a tap or trill is more common)

• In Armenian it is a separate phoneme, written with the letter ր (reh) as opposed to trilled r, written with a ռ (rra)

• Albanian also makes a distinction between , written "r" and a alveolar trill written "rr"

• In Georgian and Yoruba, it is an allophone of the ^* phoneme

See also

• List of phonetic topics

Alveolar consonants | Approximants

Stimmhafter alveolarer Approximant | Consonne spirante alvéolaire voisée | Aproximante alveolar | Alveolar approximant