Concept
R-colored vowel
Related concepts (15)
English language
English is a West Germanic language in the Indo-European language family. It originated in early medieval England and, today, is the most spoken language in the world and the third most spoken native language, after Mandarin Chinese and Spanish. English is the most widely learned second language and is either the official language or one of the official languages in 59 sovereign states. There are more people who have learned English as a second language than there are native speakers.
Semivowel
In phonetics and phonology, a semivowel, glide or semiconsonant is a sound that is phonetically similar to a vowel sound but functions as the syllable boundary, rather than as the nucleus of a syllable. Examples of semivowels in English are the consonants y and w, in yes and west, respectively. Written j_w in IPA, y and w are near to the vowels ee and oo in seen and moon, written i:_u: in IPA. The term glide may alternatively refer to any type of transitional sound, not necessarily a semivowel.
Nasalization
In phonetics, nasalization (or nasalisation) is the production of a sound while the velum is lowered, so that some air escapes through the nose during the production of the sound by the mouth. An archetypal nasal sound is [n]. In the International Phonetic Alphabet, nasalization is indicated by printing a tilde diacritic above the symbol for the sound to be nasalized: [ã] is the nasalized equivalent of [a], and [ṽ] is the nasalized equivalent of [v].
Beijing dialect
The Beijing dialect (), also known as Pekingese and Beijingese, is the prestige dialect of Mandarin spoken in the urban area of Beijing, China. It is the phonological basis of Standard Chinese, the official language in the People's Republic of China and one of the official languages of Singapore and the Republic of China (Taiwan). Despite the similarity to Standard Chinese, it is characterized by some "iconic" differences, including the addition of a final rhotic -r / 儿 to some words (e.g. 哪儿).
Retroflex consonant
A retroflex (ˈɹɛtɹoʊflɛks or ˈɹɛtɹəflɛks), apico-domal, or cacuminal (kæˈkjuːmᵻnəl) consonant is a coronal consonant where the tongue has a flat, concave, or even curled shape, and is articulated between the alveolar ridge and the hard palate. They are sometimes referred to as cerebral consonants—especially in Indology. The Latin-derived word retroflex means "bent back"; some retroflex consonants are pronounced with the tongue fully curled back so that articulation involves the underside of the tongue tip (subapical).
Standard Chinese
Standard Chinese () is a modern standardized form of Mandarin Chinese that was first codified during the Republican Era (1912‒1949). It is designated as the official language of mainland China and a major language in the United Nations, Singapore, and Taiwan. It is largely based on the Beijing dialect. Standard Chinese is a pluricentric language with local standards in mainland China, Taiwan and Singapore that mainly differ in their lexicon.
Rhotic consonant
In phonetics, rhotic consonants, or "R-like" sounds, are liquid consonants that are traditionally represented orthographically by symbols derived from the Greek letter rho, including , in the Latin script and , in the Cyrillic script. They are transcribed in the International Phonetic Alphabet by upper- or lower-case variants of Roman , : r, ɾ, ɹ, ɻ, ʀ, ʁ, ɽ, and ɺ. Transcriptions for vocalic or semivocalic realisations of underlying rhotics include the ə and ɐ.
Approximant
Approximants are speech sounds that involve the articulators approaching each other but not narrowly enough nor with enough articulatory precision to create turbulent airflow. Therefore, approximants fall between fricatives, which do produce a turbulent airstream, and vowels, which produce no turbulence. This class is composed of sounds like [ɹ] (as in rest) and semivowels like [j] and [w] (as in yes and west, respectively), as well as lateral approximants like [l] (as in less).
General American English
General American English, known in linguistics simply as General American (abbreviated GA or GenAm), is the umbrella accent of American English spoken by a majority of Americans, encompassing a continuum rather than a single unified accent. In the United States it is often perceived as lacking any distinctly regional, ethnic, or socioeconomic characteristics, though Americans with high education, or from the North Midland, Western New England, and Western regions of the country are the most likely to be perceived as using General American speech.
Schwa
In linguistics, specifically phonetics and phonology, schwa (ʃwɑː, rarely ʃwɔː or ʃvɑː; sometimes spelled shwa) is a vowel sound denoted by the IPA symbol ə, placed in the central position of the vowel chart. In English and some other languages, it usually represents the mid central vowel sound (rounded or unrounded), produced when the lips, tongue, and jaw are completely relaxed, such as the vowel sound of the a in the English word about.