r-sounds

Cross-linguistically, there are a lot of different types of r sound. The Scots trilled r [r], for example, is produced by repeated beating of the tongue tip against the alveolar ridge in intervocalic positions; the French r is usually a uvular fricative , produced by bringing the base of the tongue close to the uvula at the back of the soft palate (a similar variant is used in some Northumbrian English accents). Some Scots use a flapped or tapped r , produced by rapidly striking the hard palate with the tongue tip, in intervocalic positions, e.g. in very: many Americans have the same sound in better or motor.

Many British English speakers have the labio-dental approximant pronunciation  associated notably with TV chat-show host Jonathan Ross and football manager Roy Hodgson: this sound is produced by bringing the bottom lip close to the upper teeth, as for [f] and [v] but not quite letting them touch. This sound does not, as is sometimes thought, result from a speech impediment, unless one believes that an epidemic of speech defects have emerged in the UK in the last 30 years for no apparent reason: this pronunciation is in fact one of the most rapidly advancing changes in British English and there are even credible claims that it’s becoming the majority usage among younger speakers in some English urban areas.

This pronunciation does not appear to have made any headway in North America, though the US singer Billy Joel clearly uses it in the original recording of his 1977 hit Just the Way You Are. It’s not clear why he uses this form, but it may be significant that Bronx-born Joel has the traditionally non-rhotic pronunciation of working-class New York (i.e. he does not pronounce the r sound in clever, colour or hair): the labio-dental variant is rare among rhotic speakers, and most Americans are rhotic. Joel is also of Jewish heritage, and the pronunciation was identified by Wells (1982: 303) as having once been closely associated with the Jewish community in London. We will have more to say about the New York r later.

We now have a framework for describing consonants along three parameters: [p] for example is a voiceless bilabial plosive; its voiced partner is [b]; [z] is a voiced alveolar fricative, and so on. The fundamental economy of the consonant system, which makes it relatively simple for a child to learn, is evident from the diagram above: the consonants are quite few in number and involve a small number of places and manners of articulation. Most consonants come in voiceless/voiced pairs and three positions have voiced, voiceless and nasal articulation.

The consonants of English, of course, represent but a small subset of those used cross-linguistically. The same places and manners of articulation can be combined in other ways: Scots, Dutch and Russian, for example, have a velar fricative [x] (as in Scots loch), while Cockney and many other non-standard varieties of English have a glottal stop [?] pronunciation in, for example, water. Other places of articulation are used, too: Arabic, for example, has a uvular stop [q], which is often represented by q orthographically in English (e.g. in Qatar, Iraq).

Speech sounds

Speech sounds are generally described in articulatory terms. Consonants are described in terms of voicing where relevant, place of articulation and manner of articulation.