Ротацизм: Изменение звуков в языках мира

Sound change converting an alveolar consonant to a rhotic consonant

Rhotacism ('/r//oʊ//t//ə//s//ɪ//z//əm/ ROHtəsizəm) or rhotacization is a sound change that converts one consonant (usually a voiced alveolar consonant: , , , or ) to a rhotic consonant in a certain environment. The most common may be of to When a dialect or member of a language family resists the change and keeps a sound, this is sometimes known as zetacism. The term comes from the Greek letter rho, denoting .

The southern (Tosk) dialects, the base of Standard Albanian, changed to , but the northern (Gheg) dialects did not: It can be observed in words borrowed from Latin; for example, Latin caelum (meaning "sky, heaven") became zeru in Basque (caelum > celu > zeru; compare cielo in Spanish). The original l is preserved in the Souletin dialect: caelum > celu > zelü.

Western dialects of Finnish are characterised by the pronunciation or of the consonant written d in Standard Finnish kahden kesken kahren kesken (two together = one on one). The reconstructed older pronunciation is .

In Neapolitan, rhotacism affects words that etymologically contained intervocalic or initial , when this is followed by a vowel; and when is followed by another consonant. This last characteristic, however, is not very common in modern speech. LAT. DENTE(M) > Neap. dente "tooth"
LAT. PEDE(M) > Neap. pere "foot"
LAT. SOLDU(M) > Neap. sòrdo (or ) "money"

In Galician Portuguese, rhotacism occurred from to , mainly in consonant clusters ending in such as in the words obrigado, "thank you" (originally from "obliged [in honourably serving my Sir]"); praia, "beach"; prato, "plate" or "dish"; branco, "white"; prazer/pracer, "pleasure"; praça/praza, "square". Compare Spanish obligado (obliged), playa, plato, blanco, placer, plaza from Latin obligatus, plagia, platus, blancus (Germanic origin), placere (verb), platea. In contemporary Brazilian Portuguese, rhotacism of in the syllable coda is characteristic of the Caipira dialect. Further rhotacism in the nationwide vernacular includes planta, "plant", as , lava, "lava", as (then homophonous with larva, worm/maggot), lagarto, "lizard", as (in dialects with guttural coda r instead of a tap) and advogado, "lawyer", as The nonstandard patterns are largely marginalised, and rhotacism is regarded as a sign of speech language pathology or illiteracy.

Rhotacism, in Romanesco, shifts l to r before a consonant, like certain Andalusian dialects of Spanish. Thus, Latin altus (tall) is alto in Italian but becomes arto in Romanesco. Rhotacism used to happen when l was preceded by a consonant, as in the word ingrese (English), but modern speech has lost that characteristic. Another change related to r was the shortening of the geminated rr, which is not rhotacism. Italian errore, guerra and marrone "error", "war", "brown" become erore, guera and marone.

In Romanian, rhotacism shifted intervocalic l to r and n to r.

Thus, Latin caelum ‘sky; heaven’ became Romanian cer, Latin fenestra ‘window’ Romanian fereastră and Latin felicitas ‘happiness’ Romanian fericire. Some northern Romanian dialects and Istro Romanian also changed all intervocalic to in words of Latin origin. For example, Latin bonus became Istro Romanian bur: compare to standard Daco Romanian bun.

Rhotacism is particularly widespread in the island of Sicily, but it is almost completely absent in the Sicilian varieties of the mainland (Calabrese and Salentino). It affects intervocalic and initial : cura from Latin
caudam, peri from Latin pedem, 'reci from Latin decem.

In Andalusian Spanish, particularly in Seville, at the end of a syllable before another consonant, l is replaced with r: Huerva for Huelva. The reverse occurs in Caribbean Spanish: Puelto Rico for Puerto Rico (lambdacism).

Rhotacism (mola > mora, filum > fir, sal > sare) exists in some Gallo Italic languages as well: Lombard (Western and dialetto lombardo alpino) and Ligurian. In Umbrian but not Oscan, rhotacism of intervocalic s occurred as in Latin.

Among the Turkic languages, the Oghur branch exhibits /r/, opposing to the rest of Turkic, which exhibits /z/. In this case, rhotacism refers to the development of * /r/, * /z/, and * /d/ to /r/,* /k/,* /kh/ in this branch.