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From: markrose@spss.com (Mark Rosenfelder)
Subject: Re: German and French uvular 'r'
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References: <3ac3ts$oi1@mother.usf.edu> <CzDuvI.G6M@inter.NL.net> <3aeq63$7f0@cville-srv.wam.umd.edu>
Date: Thu, 17 Nov 1994 18:57:20 GMT
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In article <3aeq63$7f0@cville-srv.wam.umd.edu>,
Hung Jung Lu <hlu@wam.umd.edu> wrote:
>But you forgot to explain what the Portugues r is.
>Could anyone describe it?
>
>Anyhow, I got to know an Arab-Brasilian and his name is
>S. Hussein (He refuses to tell anyone what the S. means...
>and actually once he did have trouble with his visa work
>to the USA, around the time of the Gulf war. He does have
>another first name, but I can't remember now.) One of his
>complains is that in Brazil a lot of people spell his
>lastname as Russein, a mistake that wouldn't occur in
>most other languages.

I'm told that an initial r- in the carioca accent is pronounced [h],
and a medial -r- as [R*] (that is, like a French r).  Thus "Rio de Janeiro"
is pronounced [hiu dZi ZaneR*u].  Other parts of Brazil have different
r's; in Sao Paulo a trilled r is common.

Now, I wonder if someone could explain to me the difference between an
English and a (Midwestern) American r?  I learned most of my phonetics from
Catford's book, and he omits to explain an English r.  Given the description
as an alveolar approximant, is it like an American r, but with the tongue
farther forward in the mouth, but not so far forward that one pronounces
a flap (a la Spanish)?
