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=                                 R                                  =
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                            Introduction
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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 ), plural 'ars'.

The letter  is the eighth most common letter in English and the
fourth-most common consonant, after , , and .


                                Name
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The name of the letter in Latin was  (), following the pattern of
other letters representing continuants, such as , , , , and .  This
name is preserved in French and many other languages. In Middle
English, the name of the letter changed from  to , following a pattern
exhibited in many other words such as 'farm' (compare French ) and
'star' (compare German ).

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


The letter R is sometimes referred to as the  'canine letter', often
rendered in English as the dog's letter. This Latin term referred to
the Latin  that was trilled to sound like a growling dog, a spoken
style referred to as  'dog voice' (e.g. in Spanish  '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
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Egyptian        Proto-Sinaitic  Phoenician Resh Western Greek Rho       Etruscan R
Latin R
|D1     |x40px  x30px   x40px   x30px   x30px


Antiquity
===========
The letter  is believed to derive ultimately from an image of a head,
used in Semitic alphabets for the sound  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   () and Latin . 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  and a  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  using the  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   and the
shape of the  have become difficult to distinguish.
The descending stroke of the Latin letter  has fully developed by the
3rd century BC, as seen in the Tomb of the Scipios sarcophagus
inscriptions of that era. From , the letter  would be written with its
loop fully closed, assuming the shape formerly taken by .


Cursive
=========
The minuscule form  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 , known as 'r rotunda' , was used in the
sequence , bending the shape of the  to accommodate the bulge of the
as in , as opposed to . Later, the same variant was also used where
followed other lower case letters with a rounded loop towards the
right, such as with , , , as well as to write the geminate  as . 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' ; this
variant survives in the Gaelic type popular in Ireland until the
mid-20th century, but has become largely limited to a decorative
function.


                       Use in writing systems
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Pronunciation of  by language
Orthography     Phonemes
Albanian
Arabic romanization      or  or
Aragonese       ,
Asturian        ,
Basque  ,
Catalan ,
(Pinyin)
Danish  , 'silent'
Dutch
English
Esperanto
Faroese
French  ,
Galician
German  , ,
Gutnish
Haitian
Hebrew romanization
Hopi
Indonesian
Irish   ,
Italian
Japanese (Hepburn)
Leonese
Malay
Manx
Māori
Norwegian        or  or
Portuguese      ,
Scottish Gaelic ,
Sicilian
Spanish ,
Swedish   or  or  or  or  or
Turkish
Venetian
Vietnamese       or


English
=========
represents a rhotic consonant in English, such as the alveolar
approximant (most varieties), alveolar trill (some British varieties),
or the retroflex approximant (some varieties in the United States,
South West England and Dublin).

In non-rhotic accents, it is not pronounced in certain positions, but
can affect the pronunciation of the vowel that precedes it.


Other languages
=================
represents a rhotic consonant in many languages, as shown in the table
below.

Alveolar trill  File:Alveolar trill.ogg 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 more frequent in
northern and western dialects, as well as in Finland Swedish;
Sundanese, Ukrainian, Welsh; also Catalan, Spanish and Albanian
Alveolar approximant    File:Alveolar approximant.ogg   Dutch in some
Netherlandic dialects (in specific positions of words), Faroese,
Sicilian and Swedish, especially when in weakly articulated positions,
such as word-final
Alveolar flap / Alveolar tap    File:Alveolar tap.ogg   Portuguese,
Catalan, Spanish and Albanian ; Turkish, Dutch, Italian, Venetian,
Galician, Leonese, Norwegian, Irish, Swedish and Māori
Voiced retroflex fricative      File:Voiced retroflex sibilant.ogg
Norwegian around Tromsø; Spanish used as an allophone of /r/ in some
South American accents; Swedish especially in Central Swedish
dialects, such as the dialect in/around Stockholm; Hopi used before
vowels, as in 'raana', "toad", from Spanish rana
Retroflex approximant   File:Retroflex approximant.ogg  Gutnish; Hanyu
Pinyin transliteration of Standard Chinese
Retroflex flap  File:Retroflex flap.ogg Norwegian when followed by
⟨d⟩; Scottish English on occasion; Swedish when followed by ⟨d⟩
Uvular trill    File:Uvular trill.ogg   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 the Venice area.
Voiced uvular fricative         File:Voiced uvular fricative.ogg        North
Mesopotamian Arabic, Judeo-Iraqi Arabic, German, Danish, French,
standard European Portuguese , standard Brazilian Portuguese , Puerto
Rican Spanish  and 'r-' in western parts; Norwegian in western and
southern parts; Swedish in southern dialects

Other languages may use the letter  in their alphabets (or Latin
transliteration 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 , e.g. 'Kweyol' for
'Kreyol'.

The doubled  represents a trilled  in Albanian, Aragonese, Asturian,
Basque, Catalan and Spanish.

Brazilian Portuguese has a great number of allophones of , such as , ,
, , ,  and . The latter three ones can be used only in certain
contexts ( and  as ;  in the syllable coda, as an allophone of
according to the European Portuguese norm and  according to the
Brazilian Portuguese norm). Usually at least two of them are present
in a single dialect, such as Rio de Janeiro's , ,  and, for a few
speakers, .


Other systems
===============
The International Phonetic Alphabet uses several variations of the
letter to represent the different rhotic consonants;  represents the
alveolar trill.


                             Other uses
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* An R rating of the Motion Picture Association film rating system
denotes media, such as movies, that are intended for a restricted
audience.


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:
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:
**
**
**
**
* Teuthonista phonetic transcription-specific symbols related to R:
**
**
* 'Anthropos' phonetic transcription:
**
**
**
* Otto Bremer's phonetic transcription:
**
**
**
* 𝼨 -  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  with a tail is used in the Swedish Dialect Alphabet
* Other variations of R used for phonetic transcription: 𝼕 𝼖


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
**** 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


                       Other representations
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===Computing ===


                              See also
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* Guttural R


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=========
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