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R
R r
(See below)
Usage
Writing system	Latin script
Type	Alphabetic and Logographic
Language of origin	Latin language
Sound values	(Table) (English variations) /ɑːr/
In Unicode	U+0052, U+0072
Alphabetical position	18
History
Development	Ρ ρ 𐌓 R r
Time period	~50 to present
Descendants	• ℟  • ℞  • ®  • Ɍ  • ᚱ  • 𐍂  • Ꭱ
Sisters	Р ר ر ܪ ࠓ 𐎗 𐡓 ረ Ռ ռ Ր ր ર र
Variations	(See below)
Other
Associated graphs	r(x), rh
Writing direction	Left-to-Right
This article contains phonetic transcriptions in the International Phonetic Alphabet (IPA). For an introductory guide on IPA symbols, see Help:IPA. For the distinction between , / / and ⟨ ⟩, see IPA § Brackets and transcription delimiters.

ISO basic Latin alphabet
AaBbCcDdEeFfGgHhIiJjKkLlMmNnOoPpQqRrSsTtUuVvWwXxYyZz
v t e

R (or r) is the eighteenth letter of the modern English alphabet and the ISO basic Latin alphabet. Its name in English is ar (pronounced /ˈɑːr/), plural ars, or in Ireland or /ˈɔːr/.

History

Egyptian hieroglyph tp (D1)	Phoenician Resh	Archaic Greek/Old Italic Rho	Roman square capital R	15th century Florentine inscriptional capital	blackletter (Fraktur)	German kurrent	modern cursive (D'Nealian 1978)

Antiquity

The original Semitic letter may have been inspired by an Egyptian hieroglyph for tp, "head". It was used for /r/ by Semites because in their language, the word for "head" was rêš (also the name of the letter). It developed into Greek 'Ρ' ῥῶ (rhô) and Latin R.

The descending diagonal stroke develops as a graphic variant in some Western Greek alphabets (writing rho as ), but it was not adopted in most Old Italic alphabets; most Old Italic alphabets show variants of their rho between a "P" and a "D" shape, but without the Western Greek descending stroke. Indeed, the oldest known forms of the Latin alphabet itself of the 7th to 6th centuries BC, in the Duenos and the Forum inscription, still write r using the "P" shape of the letter. The Lapis Satricanus inscription shows the form of the Latin alphabet around 500 BC. Here, the rounded, closing Π shape of the p and the Ρ shape of the r have become difficult to distinguish. The descending stroke of the Latin letter R has fully developed by the 3rd century BC, as seen in the Tomb of the Scipios sarcophagus inscriptions of that era. From around 50 AD, the letter P would be written with its loop fully closed, assuming the shape formerly taken by R.

Cursive

The minuscule (lowercase) form (r) developed through several variations on the capital form. Along with Latin minuscule writing in general, it developed ultimately from Roman cursive via the uncial script of Late Antiquity into the Carolingian minuscule of the 9th century.

In handwriting, it was common not to close the bottom of the loop but continue into the leg, saving an extra pen stroke. The loop-leg stroke shortened into the simple arc used in the Carolingian minuscule and until today.

A calligraphic minuscule r, known as r rotunda (ꝛ), was used in the sequence or, bending the shape of the r to accommodate the bulge of the o (as in oꝛ as opposed to or). Later, the same variant was also used where r followed other lower case letters with a rounded loop towards the right (such as b, h, p) and to write the geminate rr (as ꝛꝛ). Use of r rotunda was mostly tied to blackletter typefaces, and the glyph fell out of use along with blackletter fonts in English language contexts mostly by the 18th century.

Insular script used a minuscule which retained two downward strokes, but which did not close the loop ("Insular r", ꞃ); this variant survives in the Gaelic type popular in Ireland until the mid-20th century (but now mostly limited to decorative purposes).

Name

The name of the letter in Latin was er (/ɛr/), following the pattern of other letters representing continuants, such as F, L, M, N and S. This name is preserved in French and many other languages. In Middle English, the name of the letter changed from /ɛr/ to /ar/, following a pattern exhibited in many other words such as farm (compare French ferme) and star (compare German Stern).

In Hiberno-English the letter is called /ɒr/ or /ɔːr/, somewhat similar to oar, ore, orr.

The letter R is sometimes referred to as the littera canīna (literally 'canine letter', often rendered in English as the dog's letter). This Latin term referred to the Latin R that was trilled to sound like a growling dog, a spoken style referred to as vōx canīna ('dog voice'). A good example of a trilled R is in the Spanish word for dog, perro.

In William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, such a reference is made by Juliet's nurse in Act 2, scene 4, when she calls the letter R "the dog's name". The reference is also found in Ben Jonson's English Grammar.

Pronunciation and use

English

The letter ⟨r⟩ is the eighth most common letter in English and the fourth-most common consonant (after ⟨t⟩, ⟨n⟩, and ⟨s⟩).

The letter ⟨r⟩ is used to form the ending "-re", which is used in certain words such as centre in some varieties of English spelling, such as British English. Canadian English also uses the "-re" ending, unlike American English, where the ending is usually replaced by "-er" (center). This does not affect pronunciation.

Other languages

⟨r⟩ represents a rhotic consonant in many languages, as shown in the table below.

Other languages may use the letter ⟨r⟩ in their alphabets (or Latin transliterations schemes) to represent rhotic consonants different from the alveolar trill. In Haitian Creole, it represents a sound so weak that it is often written interchangeably with ⟨w⟩, e.g. 'Kweyol' for 'Kreyol'.

Brazilian Portuguese has a great number of allophones of /ʁ/ such as [χ], [h], [ɦ], [x], [ɣ], [ɹ] and [r], the latter three ones can be used only in certain contexts ([ɣ] and [r] as ⟨rr⟩; [ɹ] in the syllable coda, as an allophone of /ɾ/ according to the European Portuguese norm and /ʁ/ according to the Brazilian Portuguese norm). Usually at least two of them are present in a single dialect, such as Rio de Janeiro's [ʁ], [χ], [ɦ] and, for a few speakers, [ɣ].

Other systems

The International Phonetic Alphabet uses several variations of the letter to represent the different rhotic consonants; ⟨r⟩ represents the alveolar trill.

Related characters

Descendants and related characters in the Latin alphabet

• R with diacritics: Ŕ ŕ Ɍ ɍ Ř ř Ŗ ŗ Ṙ ṙ Ȑ ȑ Ȓ ȓ Ṛ ṛ Ṝ ṝ Ṟ ṟ Ꞧ ꞧ Ɽ ɽ R̃ r̃ ᵲ ꭨ ᵳ ᶉ
• International Phonetic Alphabet-specific symbols related to R: ɹ ɺ ɾ ɻ ɽ ʀ ʁ ʶ ˞ ʴ
• Obsolete and nonstandard symbols in the International Phonetic Alphabet: ɼ ɿ
• Uralic Phonetic Alphabet-specific symbols related to R:
  • U+1D19 ᴙ LATIN LETTER SMALL CAPITAL REVERSED R
  • U+1D1A ᴚ LATIN LETTER SMALL CAPITAL TURNED R
  • U+1D3F ᴿ MODIFIER LETTER CAPITAL R
  • U+1D63 ᵣ LATIN SUBSCRIPT SMALL LETTER R
• Teuthonista phonetic transcription-specific symbols related to R:
  • U+AB45 ꭅ LATIN SMALL LETTER STIRRUP R
  • U+AB46 ꭆ LATIN LETTER SMALL CAPITAL R WITH RIGHT LEG
  • U+AB47 ꭇ LATIN SMALL LETTER R WITHOUT HANDLE
  • U+AB48 ꭈ LATIN SMALL LETTER DOUBLE R
  • U+AB49 ꭉ LATIN SMALL LETTER R WITH CROSSED-TAIL
  • U+AB4A ꭊ LATIN SMALL LETTER DOUBLE R WITH CROSSED-TAIL
  • U+AB4B ꭋ LATIN SMALL LETTER SCRIPT R
  • U+AB4C ꭌ LATIN SMALL LETTER SCRIPT R WITH RING
• ⱹ : Turned r with tail is used in the Swedish Dialect Alphabet
• Other variations of R used for phonetic transcription: ʳ ʵ

Calligraphic variants in the Latin alphabet

• Ꝛ ꝛ : R rotunda
• Ꞃ ꞃ : "Insular" R (Gaelic type)

Ancestors and siblings in other alphabets

• 𐤓 : Semitic letter Resh, from which the following letters derive
  • Ρ ρ : Greek letter Rho, from which the following letters derive
    • 𐌓 : Old Italic letter R, the ancestor of modern Latin R
      • ᚱ : Runic letter Raido
    • Р р : Cyrillic letter Er
    • 𐍂 : Gothic letter Reda

Abbreviations, signs and symbols

• ℟: symbol for "response" in liturgy
• ℞ : Medical prescription Rx
• ₽ : Ruble symbol
• ® : Registered trademark symbol

Physics

Chemistry

• In a chemical formula, used to indicate a substituent, also known as an "R group". For example, "Na(OR)".
• In the preferred IUPAC name for a chemical, used to indicate a specific enantiomer. For example, "(R)-2-(4-Chloro-2-methylphenoxy)propanoic acid" is one of the enantiomers of mecoprop.

Encoding

Also for encodings based on ASCII, including the DOS, Windows, ISO-8859 and Macintosh families of encodings.

Other representations

Signal flag	Flag semaphore	American manual alphabet (ASL fingerspelling)	British manual alphabet (BSL fingerspelling)	Braille dots-1235 Unified English Braille

See also

• Guttural R

References

1. "R", Oxford English Dictionary 2nd edition (1989); "ar", op. cit
3. "Analysis of selected contemporary Irish dialects" (PDF). Digilib.k.utb.cz. Retrieved 7 November 2017.
4. Hogarty, Steve (November 11, 2013). "Losing My Voice - This Happened to Me". Medium.
5. "Mind your 'P's and 'Q's – ore you'll get into trouble!". December 19, 2018.
6. "A Word A Day: Dog's letter". Wordsmith.org. Retrieved 2012-01-17.
7. Shakespeare, William; Horace Howard Furness; Frederick Williams (1913). Romeo and Juliet. Lippincott. p. 189.
8. "Frequency Table". Math.cornell.edu. Retrieved 7 November 2017.
9. ^ Constable, Peter (2003-09-30). "L2/03-174R2: Proposal to Encode Phonetic Symbols with Middle Tilde in the UCS" (PDF). Unicode.org.
10. Everson, Michael (2019-05-05). "L2/19-075R: Proposal to add six phonetic characters for Scots to the UCS" (PDF).
11. Constable, Peter (2004-04-19). "L2/04-132 Proposal to add additional phonetic characters to the UCS" (PDF). Unicode.org.
12. Everson, Michael; et al. (2002-03-20). "L2/02-141: Uralic Phonetic Alphabet characters for the UCS" (PDF). Unicode.org.
13. Everson, Michael; Dicklberger, Alois; Pentzlin, Karl; Wandl-Vogt, Eveline (2011-06-02). "L2/11-202: Revised proposal to encode "Teuthonista" phonetic characters in the UCS" (PDF). Unicode.org.
14. Lemonen, Therese; Ruppel, Klaas; Kolehmainen, Erkki I.; Sandström, Caroline (2006-01-26). "L2/06-036: Proposal to encode characters for Ordbok över Finlands svenska folkmål in the UCS" (PDF). Unicode.org.

External links

• Media related to R at Wikimedia Commons
• The dictionary definition of R at Wiktionary
• The dictionary definition of r at Wiktionary

• ISO basic Latin letters