IPA reference · consonant
ɾ — alveolar tap
A single rapid contact of the tongue tip against the alveolar ridge.
Also called: alveolar flap, single r
How to make the alveolar tap
One quick flick. American English speakers already produce it in "butter", "ladder" and "city" — the sound exists, it is just not filed under "r".
English reference points: butter, ladder (American). 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
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 ɾ, and each one is a minimal-pair drill waiting to happen.
Phonemic contrast in Spanish; length is the difference.
What this means for learners
Japanese r is this sound, which is why it strikes English speakers as somewhere between r, l and d.
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 ɾ attached to the actual words they got wrong, not to an abstract chart.
Frequently asked questions
What sound does the IPA symbol ɾ make?
ɾ is the alveolar tap. A single rapid contact of the tongue tip against the alveolar ridge. In English you can hear it in: butter, ladder (American).
How do you pronounce ɾ?
One quick flick. American English speakers already produce it in "butter", "ladder" and "city" — the sound exists, it is just not filed under "r".
Which languages have the alveolar tap?
Among the languages covered here: Spanish (pero, “but”); Japanese (ら, “ra”); Turkish (bir, “one”).
What is the difference between ɾ and r?
Phonemic contrast in Spanish; length is the difference.