Voiced uvular fricative

Voiced uvular fricative
ʁ
IPA number	143
Audio sample
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Encoding
Entity (decimal)	ʁ
Unicode (hex)	U+0281
X-SAMPA	R
Braille
Image

Voiced uvular approximant
ʁ̞
IPA number	144
Audio sample
source · help
Encoding
X-SAMPA	R_o
Image

The voiced uvular fricative is a type of consonantal sound, used in some spoken languages. The symbol in the International Phonetic Alphabet that represents this sound is ⟨ʁ⟩, an inverted small uppercase letter ⟨ʀ⟩, or in broad transcription ⟨r⟩ if rhotic. This consonant is one of the several collectively called guttural R when found in European languages.

The voiced uvular approximant is also found interchangeably with the fricative, and may also be transcribed as ⟨ʁ⟩. Because the IPA symbol stands for the uvular fricative, the approximant may be specified by adding the downtack: ⟨ʁ̞⟩, though some writings^[1] use a superscript ⟨ʶ⟩, which is not an official IPA practice.

For a voiced pre-uvular fricative (also called post-velar), see voiced velar fricative.