Rhotacism ( ) or rhotacization is a sound change that converts one consonant (usually a voiced alveolar consonant: , , , or ) to a rhotic consonant in a certain environment. The most common may be of to . When a dialect or member of a language family resists the change and keeps a sound, this is sometimes known as zetacism.
The term comes from the Greek letter rho, denoting .
The southern (Tosk) dialects, the base of Standard Albanian, changed to , but the northern (Gheg) dialects did not:
In Aramaic, Proto-Semitic n changed to r in a few words:
Aquitanian *l changed to the tapped r between vowels in Basque. It can be observed in words borrowed from Latin; for example, Latin caelum (meaning "sky, heaven") became zeru in Basque (caelum > celu > zeru; compare cielo in Spanish). The original l is preserved in the Souletin dialect: caelum > celu > zelü.
Western dialects of Finnish are characterised by the pronunciation or of the consonant written d in Standard Finnish kahden kesken- kahren kesken (two together = one on one). The reconstructed older pronunciation is .
In Manx, Scottish Gaelic and some dialects of Irish, becomes in a variety of consonant clusters, often with nasalization of the following vowel. For example, the cluster developed into , as in Scottish Gaelic âÂÂhillâÂÂ. Within Ireland, this phenomenon is most prevalent in northern dialects and absent from the most southern dialects. Some examples of rhotacized clusters include (cnó), (mná), (gnó), and (tnáith), while (snámh) is never rhotacized even in the most innovative dialects. This can lead to interesting pairs such as nominative an sneachta versus genitive an tsneachta .
All surviving Germanic languages, which are members of the North and West Germanic families, changed to , implying a more approximant-like rhotic consonant in Proto-Germanic. As attested by runes, the shift affected Old Norse later than the Continental Germanic languages. Some languages later changed all forms to r, but Gothic, an extinct East Germanic language, did not undergo rhotacism.
Note that the Modern German forms have levelled the rhotic consonant to forms that did not originally have it. However, the original sound can still be seen in some nouns such as ', "being" (from the same root as war/waren) as well as ', "loss" and ', "dungeon" (both from the same root as verlieren/verloren).
Because of the presence of words that did not undergo rhotacisation from the same root as those that did, the result of the process remains visible in a few modern English word pairs:
Intervocalic and are commonly lenited to in most accents of North American and Australian English and some accents of Irish English and English English, a process known as tapping or less accurately as flapping: got a lot of becomes . Contrast is usually maintained with , and the sound is rarely perceived as .
In Central German dialects, especially Rhine Franconian and Hessian, is frequently realised as in intervocalic position. The change also occurs in Mecklenburg dialects. Compare Borrem (Central Hessian) and Boden (Standard German).
Reflecting a highly-regular change in pre-Classical Latin, intervocalic in Old Latin, which is assumed to have been pronounced , invariably became r, resulting in pairs such as these:
Intervocalic s in Classical Latin suggests either borrowing (rosa) or reduction of an earlier ss after a long vowel or a diphthong (pausa < paussa, vësum < *vëssum < *weid-tom). The s was preserved initially (septum) and finally and in consonant clusters.
Old Latin became in Late Latin by analogy with the rhotacised forms in other cases such as genitive, dative and accusative honoris, honori, honorem.
Another form of rhotacism in Latin was dissimilation of d to r before another d and dissimilation of l to r before another l, resulting in pairs such as these:
The phenomenon was noted by the Romans themselves:
In Neapolitan, rhotacism affects words that etymologically contained singleton intervocalic or initial , but also when followed by some other consonant.
In Galician-Portuguese, rhotacism occurred from to , mainly in consonant clusters ending in such as in the words obrigado, "thank you" (originally "obliged"), praia, "beach"; prato, "plate" or "dish", branco, "white", prazer/pracer, "pleasure", praça/praza, "square" from Latin obligatus, plagia, platus, blancus (Germanic origin), placere (verb), platea. Compare Spanish obligado (obliged), playa, plato, blanco, placer, plaza.
In contemporary Brazilian Portuguese, rhotacism of in the syllable coda is characteristic of the Caipira dialect. Further rhotacism in the nationwide vernacular includes planta, "plant", as , lava, "lava", as (then homophonous with larva, worm/maggot), lagarto, "lizard", as (in dialects with guttural coda r instead of a tap) and advogado, "lawyer", as . The nonstandard patterns are largely marginalised, and rhotacism is regarded as a sign of speech-language pathology or illiteracy.
Rhotacism, in Romanesco, shifts l to r before a consonant, like certain Andalusian dialects of Spanish. Thus, Latin altus (tall) is alto in Italian but becomes arto in Romanesco. Rhotacism used to happen when l was preceded by a consonant, as in the word ingrese (English), but modern speech has lost that characteristic.
Another change related to r was the shortening of the geminated rr, which is not rhotacism. Italian errore, guerra and marrone "error", "war", "brown" become erore, guera and marone.
In Romanian, rhotacism shifted intervocalic l to r and n to r.
Thus, Latin caelum âÂÂsky; heavenâ became Romanian cer, Latin fenestra âÂÂwindowâ Romanian fereastràand Latin felicitas âÂÂhappinessâ Romanian fericire.
Some northern Romanian dialects and Istro-Romanian also changed all intervocalic to in words of Latin origin. For example, Latin bonus became Istro-Romanian bur: compare to standard Daco-Romanian bun.
The phenomenon does not appear to be systemic in Sicilian, as rhotacism is particularly widespread on the island of Sicily and in Cilento, but it is almost completely absent throughout Calabria and in Salento. It affects singleton intervocalic and initial which is realized as a single flap: peri from Latin pedem, reci from Latin deces. Yet it also acts upon when followed by some other consonant: urmu from Latin ulmum.
In Andalusian Spanish, particularly in Seville, at the end of a syllable before another consonant, l is replaced with r: Huerva for Huelva. The reverse occurs in Caribbean Spanish: Puelto Rico for Puerto Rico (lambdacism).
Rhotacism (mola > mora, filum > fir, sal > sare) exists in some Gallo-Italic languages as well: Lombard (Western and ) and Ligurian.
In Umbrian but not Oscan, rhotacism of intervocalic s occurred as in Latin.
Among the Turkic languages, the Oghur branch exhibits , opposing to the rest of Turkic, which exhibits . In this case, rhotacism refers to the development of , , and to , , in this branch.
(This section relies on the treatment in Greenberg 1999.)
In some South Slavic languages, rhotacism occasionally changes a voiced palatal fricative to a dental or alveolar tap or trill between vowels:
The beginning of the change is attested in the Freising manuscripts from the 10th century AD, which show both the archaism (ise 'which' < *jÃÂ-à ¾e) and the innovation (tere 'also' < *te-). The shift is also found in individual lexical items in Bulgarian dialects, ôþÃÂôõ 'until' (< *--dÃÂ) and Macedonian, ÃÂõÃÂõÃÂõ (archaic: 'always' <*-'). However, the results of the sound change have largely been reversed by lexical replacement in dialects in Serbia from the 14th century.
Dialects in Croatia and Slovenia have preserved more of the lexical items with the change and have even extended grammatical markers in -r from many sources that formally merged with the rhotic forms that arose from the sound change: Slovene dialect nocor 'tonight' (< *not'ÃÂ-sÃÂ-ë- + -r-) on the model of veÃÂer 'evening' (< *veÃÂerÃÂ). The reversal of the change is evident in dialects in Serbia in which the -r- formant is systematically removed: Serbian veÃÂe 'evening'.