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Concept
R-colored vowel
Summary
In phonetics, an r-colored or rhotic vowel (also called a retroflex vowel, vocalic r, or a rhotacized vowel) is a vowel that is modified in a way that results in a lowering in frequency of the third formant. R-colored vowels can be articulated in various ways: the tip or blade of the tongue may be turned up during at least part of the articulation of the vowel (a retroflex articulation) or the back of the tongue may be bunched. In addition, the vocal tract may often be constricted in the region of the epiglottis.
R-colored vowels are exceedingly rare, occurring in less than one percent of all languages. However, they occur in two of the most widely spoken languages: North American English and Mandarin Chinese. In North American English, they are found in words such as dollar, butter, third, color, and nurse. They also occur in Canadian French, some varieties of Portuguese, some Jutlandic dialects of Danish, as well as in a few indigenous languages of the Americas and of Asia, including Serrano and Yurok in the United States, Luobohe Miao in China, and Badaga in India.
In the IPA, an r-colored vowel is indicated by a hook diacritic ˞ placed to the right of the regular symbol for the vowel. For example, the IPA symbol for schwa is ə, while the IPA symbol for an r-colored schwa is ɚ. This diacritic is the hook of ɚ, a symbol constructed by John Samuel Kenyon along with ᶔ by adding the retroflex hook (right hook) to ə and ɜ. Both ɚ and ɝ were proposed as IPA symbols by editors of the American Speech in 1939 to distinguish it from [əɹ].
The IPA adopted several ways to transcribe r-colored vowels in its 1947 chart: the turned r ɹ; the superscript turned r əɹ, aɹ, eɹ, ɔɹ, etc.; the retroflex hook ᶕ, ᶏ, ᶒ, ᶗ, etc.; and added ɚ as a variant of ᶕ in its 1951 chart. In 1976 the retroflex hook was dropped due to insufficient usage. In 1989, at the Kiel Convention, the hook of ɚ and ɝ was adopted as a diacritic placed on the right side of the vowel symbol for r-colored vowels, e.g. ɛ˞ o˞ ɔ˞.
Official source
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