rhotic

adj

1. (not-comparable)That allows the phoneme /ɹ/ even when not followed by a vowel, as in bar (/bɑːɹ/) and bard or barred (/bɑːɹd/); (of an English speaker) who speaks with such an accent.

   “Rhotic speech is common in Ireland, Scotland, much of the United States, Canada, West Country England, and many parts of the north and west of England.”

   “2009, Ingrid Rosenfelder, Rhoticity in educated Jamaican English, Thomas Hoffmann, Licia Siebers, World Englishes – Problems, Properties and Prospects: Selected Papers from the 13th IAWE Conference, John Benjamins Publishing Company, Contrary to “traditional” descriptions in the literature, Jamaican English cannot be characterized as predominantly rhotic, exhibiting an overall degree of rhoticity of approximately 20 per cent.”

2. (not-comparable)Having a sound quality associated with the letter R; having the sound of any of certain IPA symbols, including /ɹ/, /ɻ/, /ɚ/, /ɝ/ and /r/.

   “Near-synonym: retroflex”

   “In the IPA, a rhotic vowel (aka R-coloured vowel, retroflex vowel, vocalic r or rhotacised vowel) is indicated by the affixing of a hook diacritic ( ˞ ) to the right of the regular symbol for the vowel. The rhotic consonants are /r/, /ɾ/, /ɹ/, /ɻ/, /ʀ/, /ʁ/, /ɽ/ and /ɺ/.”

   “What is normally understood by the term "trill" is a rhotic consonant of the type seen in the Spanish word perro 'dog', or the usual pronunciation of the phoneme /r/ in Parisian French.”

   “The rhotic tokens were analyzed as /r/-ful on both occasions. In addition, the researcher conducting the acoustic analysis of F₃ also held the impression that all analyzed tokens were rhotic. Some tokens were highly constricted and others were more weakly rhotic.”

   “The articulatory description of rhotic diphthongs and triphthongs involves the onglide vowel followed by the rhotic or r-colored offglide.”

noun

1. A rhotic consonant or rhotic vowel (R-coloured vowel).

   “It is well known that the phonetic realization of rhotics varies considerably from language to language, even from dialect to dialect. Rhotics can be realized as flaps, taps, trills (uvular, coronal or bilabial), or as assibilated or fricative variants.”

   “2012, Rebeka Campos-Astorkiza, 5: The Phonemes of Spanish, José Ignacio Hualde, Antxon Olarrea, Erin O'Rourke (editors), The Handbook of Hispanic Linguistics, John Wiley & Sons (Wiley-Blackwell), page 100, Spanish also has two rhotics, a tap /ɾ/(vibrante simple) and a trill /r/(vibrante múltiple).”

   “Phonetic transcription of rhotics differs depending on whether the rhotic is a steady-state or dynamic vowel.”