Voiceless uvular trill

The voiceless uvular trill is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. It is less common than its voiced counterpart. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ⟨ʀ̥⟩, a small capital version of the Latin letter r with a ring diacritic indicating voicelessness.

Voiceless uvular trill
ʀ̥
IPA number	123 402A
Audio sample
source · help
Encoding
X-SAMPA	R\_0

Features

Features of the voiceless uvular trill:

• Its manner of articulation is trill, which means it is produced by directing air over an articulator so that it vibrates.
• Its place of articulation is uvular, which means it is articulated with the back of the tongue (the dorsum) at the uvula.
• Its phonation is voiceless, which means it is produced without vibrations of the vocal cords. In some languages the vocal cords are actively separated, so it is always voiceless; in others the cords are lax, so that it may take on the voicing of adjacent sounds.
• It is an oral consonant, which means air is allowed to escape through the mouth only.
• It is a central consonant, which means it is produced by directing the airstream along the center of the tongue, rather than to the sides.
• Its airstream mechanism is pulmonic, which means it is articulated by pushing air solely with the intercostal muscles and abdominal muscles, as in most sounds.

Occurrence

Language		Word	IPA	Meaning	Notes
Baïnounk Gubëeher	Some speakers[1]	[example needed]			Word-final allophone of /ɾ/.
French	Belgian[2]	triste	[t̪ʀ̥is̪t̪œ]	'sad'	Allophone of /ʁ/ after voiceless consonants; can be a fricative [χ] instead.[2] See French phonology
German	Standard[3]	treten	[ˈtʀ̥eːtn̩]	'to step'	Possible allophone of /r/ after voiceless consonants for speakers that realize /r/ as a uvular trill [ʀ].[3] See Standard German phonology
	Chemnitz dialect[4]	Rock	[ʀ̥ɔkʰ]	'skirt'	In free variation with [ʁ̞], [ʁ], [χ] and [q]. Does not occur in the coda.[4]
Limburgish	Hasselt dialect[5]	geer	[ɣeːʀ̥]	'odour'	Possible word-final allophone of /ʀ/; may be alveolar [r̥] instead.[6] See Hasselt dialect phonology
Spanish	Ponce dialect[7][full citation needed]	perro	[ˈpe̞ʀ̥o̞]	'dog'	This and [χ] are the primary realizations of /r/ in this dialect.[7] See Spanish phonology
	Central and northern Spain[8]	ojo	[ˈo̞ʀ̥o̞]	'eye'	This and [χ] are the primary realizations of /x/ in this dialect.[8]

See also

• Index of phonetics articles
• Uvular trill