Alveolar flap

The alveolar flap is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ɾ, and the equivalent X-SAMPA symbol is 4.

Features

Features of the alveolar flap:

• Its manner of articulation is flap or tap, which means it is produced with a single contraction of the muscles so that one articulator is thrown against another.
• Its place of articulation is alveolar which means it is articulated with the tip of the tongue against the alveolar ridge.
• Its phonation type is voiced, which means the vocal cords are vibrating during the articulation.
• It is an oral consonant, which means air is allowed to escape through the mouth.
• It is a central consonant, which means it is produced by allowing the airstream to flow over the middle of the tongue, rather than the sides.
• The airstream mechanism is pulmonic egressive, which means it is articulated by pushing air out of the lungs and through the vocal tract, rather than from the glottis or the mouth.

In English

The alveolar flap is not a phoneme of English, but it occurs as an allophone of [t] and [d] (the voiceless alveolar plosive and voiced alveolar plosive) in North American English and sometimes in Australian English when they occur in unstressed syllables, like in the words rider (/ɹaɪɾɚ/ or /ɹaɪɾəː/) and better (/bɛɾɚ/ or /bɛɾəː/).

Other languages

Spanish

The alveolar flap is the single 'r' sound in Spanish, as in words like pero ("but") and ir ("to go"), but not in perro ("dog") and rana ("frog"), where it is an alveolar trill.

See also

• List of phonetic topics