The House Carpenter

For the record, here is a recording of me saying words with /r/ in a variety of positions (rat, arrow, law and order, prank, trick, thrush, creak, string, dictionary):

https://vocaroo.com/12xuKNF5E0lE

I used to think my /r/ was a labialized postalveolar approximant [ɹ̠ʷ], which is a pretty normal pronunciation of /r/ for English speakers. However, I've recently come to the conclusion that it's actually something much closer to a labiodental approximant [ʋ], a less normal but well-known pronunciation that is quite common among younger people in England.

One reason I haven't noticed this before is that I thought [ʋ] sounded like something in between /w/ and /v/, and at any rate quite dissimilar to /r/. Indeed, the recording on the Wikipedia page (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Voiced_labiodental_approximant) sounds like that to me, and I get a similar non-rhotic sound when I try to produce a [ʋ] by taking the description "labiodental approximant" literally by vocalizing while raising my lower lip so that it approaches but doesn't touch my teeth.

Moreover, I had read that the [ʋ] realization of /r/ is commonly heard as /w/, hence why people call Jonathan Ross (a British TV presenter who has this realization) "Wossy", based on the way he pronounces his surname. So I thought, since my /r/ doesn't sound at all like /w/ to me, it surely can't be [ʋ]. I've also never had anyone comment that my /r/s sound like /w/s to them, although perhaps I don't talk to people often enough for this to be evidence of much weight.

Curiously, however, despite having watched many TV programmes involving Jonathan Ross, I had never actually noticed this feature of his speech myself---only read about it. In fact, if I listen to clips on YouTube of Ross speaking I don't hear anything odd about his pronunciation of /r/. Even in this clip where he's actually being mocked for his pronunciation, I don't hear any difference between his pronunciation and that of the guy mocking him!

I suspect what's going on here is that my categorical perception of English phonemes places the [ʋ] realization of /r/ in the same category as the more normal realizations of /r/, so that the difference, though it exists, is difficult for me to discern, whereas other English speakers either put it in its own category or in the same category as /w/, and thus do notice something different about Ross's pronunciation of /r/ in the above clip. I would predict that those other English speakers would be either older British English speakers or Americans, who would have had less exposure to the [ʋ] realization as they were growing up.

But if the [ʋ] realization of /r/ sounds like /r/ to me, why does the [ʋ] in the recording on the Wikipedia page for "labiodental approximant" sound so unlike /r/? I think it must be because the [ʋ] realization of /r/ has more going on with it---while it probably is both labiodental and an approximant, there are probably further adjectives that need to be added to precisely pin down its phonetics.

As for my own /r/, if I try to pay attention to what I'm doing when I pronounce it, it's evident that the "labialization" is very strong, and it certainly should be considered a primary articulation rather than a mere secondary articulation. But it's quite clearly bilabial, not labiodental. Is there any coronal co-articulation? I think probably not, although it is a bit hard to tell since I think my resting tongue position is pretty much the same as the position I'd put it in for a non-lateral alveolar or postalveolar laminal approximant. In consonant clusters such as /tr/ or /kr/, I think my tongue just goes straight from the position of the stop to the position of the following vowel, so that would suggest the /r/ is a solely labial gesture.

But "bilabial approximant" isn't quite a full description. Similarly to the labiodental approximant, if I take "bilabial approximant" literally, I just move my lips a bit closer in a vertical direction and produce something kind of like a /w/, although it doesn't really closely resemble any English sound. When I pronounce /w/, in addition to this vertical movement, there's also lip rounding---the corners of my lips move closer to each other, and the lips bend in the middle and protrude outwards a bit to produce an "o" shape. On the other hand, when I pronounce /r/, the corners of my lips get further apart, and while they still protrude outwards, they don't bend in the middle, so the resulting shape is more like a horizontal slit. It could perhaps be described as protrusion with rounding, for /w/, vs. protrusion without rounding, for /r/. I think it's not quite the protruded vs. compressed rounding described on Wikipedia---the picture of protruded rounding on Wikipedia matches what I do for /w/, but the picture of compressed rounding there certainly doesn't match what I do for /r/. Actually, the picture on the Wikipedia page for duck face is pretty similar to what I do for /r/, except my lips would be slightly open rather than fully closed.

This "protrusion without rounding" lip gesture---let's call it spread protrusion---seems to be the main thing responsible for my perception of a labial approximant as /r/ vs. /w/. If I take the basic "bilabial approximant" and add spread protrusion I think that fully reproduces my /r/. If I try to produce a labiodental approximant with spread protrusion of the upper lip, the result also sounds like /r/ to me---so I suspect this is what differentiates the [ʋ] sound used by Jonathan Ross from the [ʋ] in the Wikipedia recording.

With spread protrusion, the bilabial and labiodental sounds are very similar so it wouldn't surprise me if there's variation among speakers with a labial /r/ as to which place of articulation they use. There is an unsourced comment on Wikipedia that "bilabial realizations have also been reported" for English /r/ but that is the only thing I could find on the Internet that suggests a bilabial realization is possible.

Conclusions:

my personal realization of /r/ seems to be a bilabial approximant with spread protrusion

this is probably an instance of the so-called "labiodental r" which is becoming common among younger English speakers in England

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