R

R
ISO basic Laitin alphabet

Cursive script 'r' and capital 'R' in the U.S. D'Nealian script style

R (named ar /ˈɑːr/^[1]) is the aichteent letter o the ISO basic Latin alphabet.

History

Egyptian hieroglyph
t

Phoenician
Resh

Etruscan
R

Greek
Rho

Later Etruscan R

The oreeginal Semitic letter mey hae been inspired bi an Egyptian hieroglyph for tp, "head". It wis uised for /r/ bi Semites acause in thair leid, the wird for "heid" wis rêš (an aa the name o the letter). It developed intae Greek 'Ρ' ῥῶ (rhô) an Latin R. It is likely that some Etruscan an Wastren Greek fairms o the letter addit the extra stroke tae distinguish it frae a later fairm o the letter P.

The name o the letter in Latin wis er (/ɛr/), follaein the pattern o ither letters representin continuants, sic as F, L, M, N, an S. This name is preserved in French an mony ither leids. In Middlin Inglis, the name o the letter chynged frae /ɛr/ tae /ar/, follaein a pattern exhibitit in mony ither wirds sic as farm (compare French ferme), an star (compare German Stern).

The minuscule (lowercase) fairm as 'r' developed throu several variations on the caipital fairm. In haundwritin it wis common nae tae close the bottom o the luip but continue intae the leg, savin an extra pen stroke. The luip-leg stroke shortened intae the semple arc uised the day. Anither minuscule, r rotunda (ꝛ), kept the luip-leg stroke but dropped the vertical stroke, altho it fell oot o uise aroond the 18t century.

Uisage

In science, the letter R is a seembol for the gas constant. Mathematicians uise 'R' or $\mathbb {R}$ (an R in blackboard bold, displayed as ℝ in Unicode) for the set o aw real nummers.

R represents a rhotic consonant in mony leids, as shawn in the table ablo. The Internaitional Phonetic Alphabet uises several variations o the letter tae represent the different rhotic consonants; [r] represents the alveolar trill.

Alveolar trill [r]	Listen	some dialects o Breetish Inglis or in emphatic speech, staundart Dutch, Finnish, Galician, German in some dialects, Hungarian, Icelandic, Italian, Czech, Lithuanie, Latvian, Latin, Norwegian maistly in the northwast, Polish, Catalan, Portuguese (tradeetional fairm), Romanian, Scots, Spaingie an Albanie 'rr', Swadish, Welsh
Alveolar approximant [ɹ]	Listen	Inglis (maist varieties), Dutch in some Dutch dialects (in specific poseetions o wirds), Swadish, Faroese, Sicilian
Alveolar flap / Alveolar tap [ɾ]	Listen	Portuguese, Catalan, Spainyie an Albanian 'r', Turkish, Dutch, Italian, Venetian, Galician, Leonese, Norwegian, Erse
Voiced retroflex fricative [ʐ]	Listen	Norwegian aroond Tromsø, Spainyie uised as an allophone o /r/ in some Sooth American accents; Staundart Cheenese (in pinyin); Vietnamese (soothren dialects)
Retroflex approximant [ɻ]	Listen	some varieties o American Inglis; Staundart Cheenese (in pinyin); an Gutnish
Retroflex flap [ɽ]	Listen	Norwegian when follaeed bi <d>, whiles in Scottis Inglis
Uvular trill [ʀ]	Listen	German stage staundart; some Dutch dialects (in Brabant an Limburg, an some ceety dialects in The Netherlands), Swadish in Soothren Swaden, Norwegian in wastren an soothren pairts
Voiced uvular fricative [ʁ]	Listen	German, Danish, French, staundart European Portuguese 'rr', staundart Brazilian Portuguese 'rr', Puerto Rican Spainyie 'rr' an 'r-', Norwegian in wastren an soothren pairts.

Ither leids mey uise the letter 'r' in thair alphabets (or Latin transleeterations schemes) tae represent rhotic consonants different frae the alveolar trill. In Haitian Creole, it represents a soond sae weak that it is eften written interchyngeably wi 'w', e.g. 'Kweyol' for 'Kreyol'.

Brazilian Portuguese haes a great nummer o allophones o /ʁ/ sic as [χ], [h], [ɦ], [x], [ɣ], [ɹ] an [r], the latter three anes can be uised anly in certaint contexts ([ɣ] an [r] as 'rr'; [ɹ] in the syllable coda, as an allophone o /ɾ/ accordin tae the European Portuguese norm an /ʁ/ accordin tae the Brazilian Portuguese norm). Uisually at least twa o them are present in a single dialect, sic as Rio de Janeiro's [ʁ], [χ], [ɦ] an, for a few speakers, [ɣ].

Relatit letters an ither similar characters

Ρ ρ/ϱ : Greek letter Rho
Р р : Cyrillic letter Er
Я я : Cyrillic letter Ya
ℛ : Script caipital R

Computin codes

Character	R		r
Unicode name	LATIN CAIPITAL LETTER R		LATIN SMAA LETTER R
Encodins	decimal	hex	decimal	hex
Unicode	82	U+0052	114	U+0072
UTF-8	82	52	114	72
Numeric chairacter reference	R	R	r	r
EBCDIC faimily	217	D9	153	99
ASCII ¹	82	52	114	72

¹ An aa for encodins based on ASCII, includin the DOS, Windows, ISO-8859 an Macintosh faimilies o encodins.

Ither representations

NATO phonetic	Morse code
Romeo	·–·

		[[File:Sign language {{{fingerspelling}}}.svg\|90px]]
Seegnal banner	Banner semaphore	American manual alphabet (ASL fingerspellin)	Braille dots-1235

References

↑ "R", Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edition (1989); "ar", op. cit.

Freemit airtins

Media relatit tae R at Wikimedia Commons
The dictionar defineetion o R at Wiktionary
The dictionar defineetion o r at Wiktionary

The ISO basic Laitin alphabet v t e
Aa	Bb	Cc	Dd	Ee	Ff	Gg	Hh	Ii	Jj	Kk	Ll	Mm	Nn	Oo	Pp	Qq	Rr	Ss	Tt	Uu	Vv	Ww	Xx	Yy	Zz
Letter R with diacritics
Ŕŕ	Řř	Ṙṙ	Ŗŗ	Ȑȑ	Ȓȓ	Ṛṛ	Ṝṝ	Ṟṟ	Ɍɍ	Ɽɽ	ᵲ	ᶉ	ɼ	ɾ	ᵳ
Related
Derivations Diacritics History ISO/IEC 646 Leet o letters Numerals Palaeography Punctuation Unicode

[1] "R", Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edition (1989); "ar", op. cit.

[1]