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I happen to notice that non-prevocalic R could or could not be vocalized (realized as an a-schwa) after short vowels. Examples:

wirken, lernen, hart, Ort, Furcht, durch

Which way is better to pronounce it? Which is more common in everyday speech?

  • Your examples all have the a-Schwa. I cannot think of any dialect which does represent those r by a consonant instead. – Janka Sep 07 '18 at 20:28
  • I correct myself, people may pronounce Ort with both an a-Schwa and a following ch (the hushed r sound.) – Janka Sep 07 '18 at 20:35
  • @Janka that's a relief. I have 3 speaking dictionaries with a human voice, and all three of them do not vocalize it. The dictionaries are Langescheidt, Duden, and PONS. Even in the phonetic transcription, they do not use the a-schwa in any of my examples. –  Sep 07 '18 at 20:51
  • I always hear a-schwa in such cases, but what keeps me a little bit confused is the dictionaries' pronunciation. –  Sep 07 '18 at 20:54
  • I think it's a compromise to transcribe it as ʁ though it sounds not different from ɐ after short vowels. Sometimes even for long vowels: Das Haar has just a very long a at the end, while the plural die Haare has the "ch"-alike fricative! – Janka Sep 07 '18 at 22:09
  • About the audio, do you have samples? Sometimes, they hypercorrect. – Janka Sep 07 '18 at 22:21
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    @Janka: Ever been in Frankonia? An r is an r. Or nothing. Example: "hart" without using dialect is pronounced "hart". Using dialect, it's pronounced like "hat". – mic Sep 08 '18 at 00:12
  • @Janka It is not only about my own perception of this phoneme. In H. Reinke paper Einführung in die Phonetik, she mentions that /R/ is to be vocalized after long vowels and does not mention 'after short vowels' in the situations where to be vocalized . In Wikipedia, it is written besonders nach langen Vokalen. In Phonothek intensiv Aussprachetraining it is said "Nach kurzem Vokal und den A-Lauten wird es nur bei sehr deutlicher Aussprache gebildet, sonst wird es in dieser Position vokalisiert, z.B gern". However, according to many other sources, it is vocalized in our case. –  Sep 08 '18 at 00:23
  • For more examples, you can check any of the above mentioned dictionaries online, even Wikitionary and you can listen or better read the phonetic transcription and compare with other words where /R/ occurs after long vowels. –  Sep 08 '18 at 00:25
  • @Janka In the swabian dialect the r ist often pronounced like the arabic ʿayn, see https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Schw%C3%A4bischer_Dialekt#Konsonanten. And in the bavarian dialect at least "Furcht" and "durch" is pronounced like the arabic rāʾ, see https://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bairische_Dialekte#Konsonanten . – Javatasse Sep 08 '18 at 02:56

1 Answers1

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In German the phones [r], [ʀ] and [ʁ] are free allophones of the phoneme /r/.

  • phone
    A phone is a distinct sound, i.e. noticeable different from other sounds, that is used to speak.
  • phoneme
    An abstract class of sounds that is able to distinguish a word from another in a certain language, i.e. if the pronunciation of two words is equal except of only one sound, then those sounds are representatives of different phonemes in a certain language if the two words have different meanings. The two sounds are representatives of the same phoneme in this language if the two pronunciations are just variations of the same word.
  • allophone
    Allophones are two or more different phones that belong to the same phoneme in a certain language.

Allophones again are departed in two groups:

  • allophones with free variation (sometimes also: free allophones)
    When the phones that belong to the same phoneme can be interchanged without having to obey any other rules, then they are free allophones. This means, that in each word where one of those phones is used, it can always can be replaced by another allophone.
    Since in German [r], [ʀ] and [ʁ] are free allophones, all of the following pronunciations are correct and have the same meaning:

    rot = [roːt], [ʀoːt], [ʁoːt]
    kurz = [kʊrʦ], [kʊʀʦ], [kʊʁʦ]

  • allophones with combinatoric variation (sometimes also: bound allophones)
    Examples for this kind of allophones are in German: [ç] and [χ] which are used to pronounce the digraph »ch« (like in »dich« or »doch«). After bright vowels like /ɪ/ only [ç] can appear, after dark vowels like /ɔ/ only [χ].

    dich = [dɪç]
    doch = [dɔχ]

The fact, that German has three freely interchangeable phones ([r], [ʀ] and [ʁ]) that can realize the same phonem (/r/) does not mean, that you will hear all of them in all words. This highly depends on the speaker. Lots of German native speakers are not able to produce the sound [r] (»gerolltes R«), so they only can use the other two phones.

The most often used realization of the phoneme /r/ in German language is the phone [ʁ].

description of [r], [ʀ] and [ʁ]

  • [r]
    Voiced alveolar trill
    The tip of the tongue touches the teeth-ridge (the bulge behind the incisors) and air flows through this gap, so that the tip of the tongue vibrates.
  • [ʀ]
    Voiced ulvular trill
    Here the back (dorsum) of the tongue and the uvula forma gap, and air flowing through this gap lets the uvula vibrate.
  • [ʁ]
    Voiced uvular fricative
    Also here its the back of the tongue and the uvula that form a gap. But the air doesn't make the uvula vibrate, so there is no trill sound. But the air flows turbulent through this gap, which produces a fricative sound.
Hubert Schölnast
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  • Thank you a lot. I also think it is dependent on regions. In standard German, both or the 3 varieties are correct and it is also dependent on the region where Hochdeutsch is spoken. In my case, I find vocalized /R/ to be more common relatively. –  Sep 08 '18 at 09:00