rhotic

Pronunciation

(UK) IPA ^(key): /ˈrəʊtɪk/, SAMPA: /"r@UtIk/
(US) enPR: rōt'ĭk, IPA ^(key): /ˈroʊtɪk/, SAMPA: /"roUtIk/

Adjective

Positive
rhotic

Comparative
more rhotic

Superlative
most rhotic

If a sound in a word is rhotic, it has the sound the letter r makes in most American, Canadian, and Irish ways of talking.
If a dialect (form of a language) or accent is rhotic, it uses this sound after a vowel: often used in dividing English accents into the rhotic and the non-rhotic. (Note that all accents of English pronounce the rhotic sound if "r" or "rh" is immediately followed by a vowel – which means it is always pronounced at the start of a word.)

Antonym

non-rhotic

Related words

rhoticism

Note

The English rhotic consonant is written as [r] or [ɹ̠] (less precisely [ɹ]) in IPA (the International Phonetic Alphabet), or as the rhotic vowel /ɝ/ or /ɚ/ if no other vowel is there. The IPA symbol [r] represents a trilled R, but /r/ sometimes used for all English pronunciations of R (IPA symbols between // are phonemic transcriptions). This is because the various pronunciations are allophones, i.e. English speakers would hear all of them as R. Trilled /r/ is found in Scottish English and Indian English.