IPA reference · consonant
ɹ — alveolar approximant
The tongue approaches the roof of the mouth without contact, and the lips are usually slightly rounded.
Also called: English r
How to make the alveolar approximant
Either curl the tip back or bunch the tongue body up — both produce an acceptable English r. Nothing touches anything.
English reference points: red, around. If you speak English natively you already produce this sound — the work is recognising it and placing it where the target language wants it.
Languages that use it
| Language | Example | Meaning |
|---|---|---|
| English | car | car (rhotic accents) |
Sounds it gets confused with
Most pronunciation errors are not random — they are a substitution of the nearest sound the speaker already owns. These are the usual substitutions for ɹ, and each one is a minimal-pair drill waiting to happen.
Learners of English from Spanish, Italian and Russian substitute a trill or tap.
What this means for learners
Whether it is pronounced after a vowel is the main accent split in English: General American keeps it, Received Pronunciation and Australian drop it.
Teaching this sound
Describing a sound in words gets a student roughly half the way there. The other half is hearing it produced correctly, immediately after producing it incorrectly, with both versions available to replay. That is the argument for recording during the lesson rather than after it: the student leaves with your model of ɹ attached to the actual words they got wrong, not to an abstract chart.
Frequently asked questions
What sound does the IPA symbol ɹ make?
ɹ is the alveolar approximant. The tongue approaches the roof of the mouth without contact, and the lips are usually slightly rounded. In English you can hear it in: red, around.
How do you pronounce ɹ?
Either curl the tip back or bunch the tongue body up — both produce an acceptable English r. Nothing touches anything.
Which languages have the alveolar approximant?
Among the languages covered here: English (car, “car (rhotic accents)”).
What is the difference between ɹ and r?
Learners of English from Spanish, Italian and Russian substitute a trill or tap.