R

This article is about the eighteenth letter of the Latin alphabet. For the reversed version, see Я. For other uses, see R (disambiguation).

R
R r
Usage
Writing system	Latin script
Type	Alphabetic and Logographic
Language of origin	Latin language
Phonetic usage	[r] [ɾ] [ɹ] [ɻ] [ɺ] [ʀ] [ʁ] [ɽ] (table) (English variations) /ɑːr/
Unicode codepoint	U+0052, U+0072
Alphabetical position	18
History
Development	Ρ ρ 𐌓 R r
Time period	from c. 50 AD
Descendants	℟ ℞ ® Ɍ ᚱ 𐍂 Ꭱ
Sisters	Р ר ر ܪ ࠓ 𐎗 𐡓 ረ Ռ ռ Ր ր ર र
Other
Other letters commonly used with	r(x) rh
Writing direction	Left-to-Right

R, or r, is the eighteenth letter of the Latin alphabet, used in the modern English alphabet, the alphabets of other western European languages and others worldwide. Its name in English is ar (pronounced /ˈɑːr/), plural ars, or in Ireland or /ˈɔːr/.

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

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 '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' (e.g. in Spanish perro 'dog').

In 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.

History

Egyptian	Proto-Sinaitic	Phoenician Resh	Greek Rho	Latin R

Antiquity

The word prognatus as written on the Sarcophagus of Lucius Cornelius Scipio Barbatus (280 BC) reveals the full development of the Latin ⟨R⟩ by that time; the letter ⟨P⟩ at the same time still retains its archaic shape distinguishing it from Greek or Old Italic rho.

The letter ⟨R⟩ is believed to derive ultimately from an image of a head, used in Semitic alphabets for the sound /r/ because the word for 'head' was rêš or similar in most Semitic languages. The word became the name of the letter, as an example of acrophony.

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 c. 50 AD, the letter ⟨P⟩ would be written with its loop fully closed, assuming the shape formerly taken by ⟨R⟩.

Cursive

18th-century example of use of r rotunda in English blackletter typography

Letter ⟨R⟩ from the alphabet by Luca Pacioli, in De divina proportione (1509)

The minuscule 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, known as the Insular r ⟨ꞃ⟩; this variant survives in the Gaelic type popular in Ireland until the mid-20th century, but is now mostly limited to decorative purposes.

Pronunciation and use

Languages given in italics do not use the Latin alphabet, and the table refers to the ⟨R⟩ used in a common romanization system.

See also: Rhotic consonant, R-colored vowel, Non-rhoticity in English, and Guttural R

P ronunciations of ⟨R⟩

Language	Dialect	Pronunciation (IPA)	Environment	Notes
Albanian		/ɾ/		⟨rr⟩ represents a trilled /r/
Arabic	Most dialects	/r/
	North Mesopotamian, Judeo-Iraqi	/ʀ/
	Egyptian	/ɾ/
Aragonese		/r/	Word-initially
		/ɾ/	Usually	⟨rr⟩ represents a trilled /r/
Asturian		/r/	Word-initially
		/ɾ/	Usually	⟨rr⟩ represents a trilled /r/
Basque		/r/	Word-initially
		/ɾ/	Usually	⟨rr⟩ represents a trilled /r/
Catalan		/r/	Word-initially
		/ɾ/	Usually
Danish		/ʀ/
		/r/		Archaic
Dutch	Most dialects	/ɾ/
	Brabantish, Limburgish	/ʀ/
English	Non-rhotic	/ɹ̠/	Before vowels
		∅	After vowels
	Rhotic	/ɻ/	Before vowels
		ʵ	After vowels
Esperanto		/ɾ/
Faroese		/ɹ/
French		/ʁ/
Galician		/ɾ/
German	Standard	/ʀ/	Before vowels
		/ɐ̯/	After vowels
Gutnish		/ɻ/
Haitian		/ɣ/
Hebrew		/ʁ/
		/r/		Archaic
Hopi		/ʐ/
Indonesian	Standard	/r/
	Sumatran dialects	/r/	Before vowels/consonants
		∅	After vowels
Irish		/ɾ/
		/ɻʲ/	After /i/; before /e/ or /i/
Italian		/r/
Japanese	Standard	/ɾ/
Leonese		/ɾ/
Malay	Standard	/r/	Before vowels/consonants
		∅	After vowels
Mandarin	Standard	/ʐ/
Manx		/ɹ/
		∅
Māori		/ɾ/
Norwegian	Most dialects	/r/
	Western and Southern dialects	/ʁ/
	Tromsø	/ʐ/
Portuguese		/ʁ/		In certain environments
		/ɾ/		In certain environments
Scottish Gaelic		/ɾ/	Usually
		/ɾʲ/	After i; before e, i
Sicilian		/ɹ/
Spanish	Some dialects	/l/	After a vowel
	Most dialects	/r/	Word-initially
	All dialects	/ɾ/	Usually
	Puerto Rican	/ʁ/	Word-initially
Swedish	Most dialects	/ɾ/
	Southern dialects	/ʀ/
Turkish		/ɾ/
Venetian	Most dialects	/ɾ/
	Venice	/ʀ/
Vietnamese	Northern dialect	/z/
	Most dialects	/ʐ/, /ɾ/, /r/, /ɹ/

Non-English languages

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

Alveolar trill [r]	Listen	some dialects of British English or in emphatic speech, standard Dutch, Estonian, Finnish, Galician, German in some dialects, Hungarian, Icelandic, Indonesian, Italian, Czech, Javanese, Lithuanian, Latvian, Latin, Norwegian mostly in the northwest, Polish, Portuguese (traditional form), Romanian, Russian, Scots, Slovak, Swedish, Sundanese, Ukrainian, Welsh; also Catalan, Spanish and Albanian ⟨rr⟩
Alveolar approximant [ɹ]	Listen	English (most varieties), Dutch in some Netherlandic dialects (in specific positions of words), Faroese, Sicilian
Alveolar flap / Alveolar tap [ɾ]	Listen	Portuguese, Catalan, Spanish and Albanian ⟨r⟩, Turkish, Dutch, Italian, Venetian, Galician, Leonese, Norwegian, Irish, Māori
Voiced retroflex fricative [ʐ]	Listen	Norwegian around Tromsø; Spanish used as an allophone of /r/ in some South American accents; Hopi used before vowels, as in raana, "toad", from Spanish rana; Hanyu Pinyin transliteration of Standard Chinese.
Retroflex approximant [ɻ]	Listen	some English dialects (in the United States, South West England, and Dublin), Gutnish
Retroflex flap [ɽ]	Listen	Norwegian when followed by <d>, sometimes in Scottish English
Uvular trill [ʀ]	Listen	German stage standard; some Dutch dialects (in Brabant and Limburg, and some city dialects in The Netherlands), Swedish in Southern Sweden, Norwegian in western and southern parts, Venetian only in Venice area.
Voiced uvular fricative [ʁ]	Listen	North Mesopotamian Arabic, Judeo-Iraqi Arabic, German, Danish, French, standard European Portuguese ⟨rr⟩, standard Brazilian Portuguese ⟨rr⟩, Puerto Rican Spanish ⟨rr⟩ and 'r-' in western parts, Norwegian in western and southern parts.

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: 𝼈 ɹ ɺ ɾ ɻ ɽ ʀ ʁ ʶ ˞ ʴ
• IPA superscript letters: 𐞦 𐞧 𐞨 𐞩 𐞪
• 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
• Anthropos phonetic transcription:
  • 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
• Otto Bremer's phonetic transcription:
  • U+AB47 ꭇ LATIN SMALL LETTER R WITHOUT HANDLE
  • U+AB4B ꭋ LATIN SMALL LETTER SCRIPT R
  • U+AB4C ꭌ LATIN SMALL LETTER SCRIPT R WITH RING
• 𝼨 – ⟨R⟩ with mid-height left hook was used by the British and Foreign Bible Society in the early 20th century for romanization of the Malayalam language.
• ⱹ – A turned ⟨r⟩ with a tail is used in the Swedish Dialect Alphabet
• Other variations of R used for phonetic transcription: 𝼕 𝼖 ʳ ʵ

Calligraphic variants in the Latin alphabet

• Ꝛ ꝛ – R rotunda
• Ꞃ ꞃ – Insular r (Gaelic type)
• ᫍ – Combining Insular r, as used in the Ormulum

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
• ® – Registered trademark symbol
• ₹ – Indian rupee sign

= Encoding=

Character information

Preview	R		r
Unicode name	LATIN CAPITAL LETTER R		LATIN SMALL LETTER R
Encodings	decimal	hex	dec	hex
Unicode	82	U+0052	114	U+0072
UTF-8	82	52	114	72
Numeric character reference	R	R	r	r
EBCDIC family	217	D9	153	99
ASCII	82	52	114	72

NATO phonetic	Morse code
Romeo

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

See also

• Guttural R

External links

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