about the origin of guttural "r"

A forum for discussing linguistics or just languages in general.
Post Reply
Nemesis
hieroglyphic
hieroglyphic
Posts: 25
Joined: 10 Oct 2012 23:33
Location: Portugal

about the origin of guttural "r"

Post by Nemesis »

ABOUT THE ORIGIN OF GUTTURAL "R"

In my opinion the appearing of the guttural "r" brings me lots of doubtes and curiosity. Aparently it is said that guttural "r" appeared in Normandy, in France, around the XVII century and spread through all France, expanding then to german, dutch, danish, norwegian, swedish, yiddish, hebrew and portuguese.
Firstly, I don't understand how could we go from an alveolar trill to a uvular trill, it may have to do with some speech defect, and aparently guttural r appeared always out from youths. There are many cases of children that cannot properly articulate the native alveolar trill of their languages (e.g. there have been accounts of this in finnish and spanish) so they shift to a uvular trill until they are able to pronounce the trill correctly.
The spreading of the guttural "r" can certainly be explained by the prestige status it achieved in France, and so it became spreading to other languages of Europe.
But what most intrigues me is how have this sound entered the portuguese language. Let's see: in wikipedia (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guttural_R#Portuguese) we can read that "In the 19th century the voiced uvular fricative [ʁ] penetrated the upper classes in the region of Lisbon in Portugal as the realization of the trill.[citation needed] By the late 20th century, it had replaced the alveolar trill in most of the country's urban areas." Ok I can go with that, because of the social prestige amongst the higher classes, and its spreading across the other social stratus. Allegedly, the guttural r in portuguese came into the language through french. But there are still some evidences that some young speakers of portuguese had already aquired a guttural r in some regions before the 19th century. It does not, however, explains how did the guttural r entered brazilian portuguese. Brazil got independent from Portugal in 1822 and by then probably there were not still so many great french influence in Portugal, so Brazil at that time probably still had the alveolar trill. From 1822 ahead, Brazil ceased most of it's contact with Portugal, but especially in the 20th century, so it is hard to believe that brazilians copied the guttural r from Portugal in the 20th century. In some brazilian disney films, from the 40s, 50s and 60s, the alveolar trill could still be heard very intensely.

But this does not ends up here. I got perplex when discovered a number of languages that are not related with french, linguistically or geographically, and that have some sort of guttual r, and these languages are from very distant places on earth like the malay archipelago or southern inland Africa. Let's see.

Malay dialects - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Guttural_R#Malay_dialects

Although standard Malay uses an alveolar trill /r/ or alveolar flap /ɾ/, and the guttural r was rarely used in Austronesian languages, there are many dialects in Peninsular Malaysia that use the Voiced uvular fricative /ʁ̞/ - similar to the French r. These include:

Perlis Dialect
Kedah Dialect
Kelantanese Dialect
Perak Dialect (the most notable)

Sesotho - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sesotho_phonology

"There is one trill consonant. Originally, this was an alveolar rolled lingual, but today most individuals pronounce it at the back of the tongue, usually at the uvular position. The uvular pronunciation is largely attributed to the influence of French missionaries at Morija in Lesotho. Just like the French version, the position of this consonant is somewhat unstable and often varies even in individuals, but it generally differs from the "r"'s of most other South African language communities. The most stereotypical French-like pronunciations are found in certain rural areas of Lesotho, as well as some areas of Soweto (where this has had an impact on the pronunciation of Tsotsitaal)."

Paiwan language (one of the many formosan or taiwanese aboriginal languages) - http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paiwan_language

"Fricative [ɣ] is characteristic of Mudan village; elsewhere is Southern Paiwan it tends to be a trill [r], though it still varies [r ~ ɣ ~ ʁ ~ h]."

Appart from Sesotho, whose guttural r can be explained by french, I am most intrigued about the guttural r of malay dialects and especially of that only formosan aboriginal language, because neither Malasia nor Taiwan had contacts with french colonisers.

Everything of what I have read drives me to think that the guttural r may develop in younger speakers by a speech deffect, and that's what may have happened to some languages I described above.

Now, I would like you to express your opinions, and comment, please.
:por: :eng: :con: (Docian) :esp: :fra:
User avatar
Xing
MVP
MVP
Posts: 4153
Joined: 22 Aug 2010 18:46

Re: about the origin of guttural "r"

Post by Xing »

Would the development of [ʀ~ʁ] be more strange or unexpected than the development of other sounds? Isn't retraction of consonants a quite common phonetic changes? It could happen spontaneously in many different languages.
Post Reply