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Yoruba ⟨r⟩ is not a trill

It seems that the r sound in Yoruba is never actually a trill [r], but a flap [ɾ]. For one, even though the bibliography of this article says it is [r] in IPA, it then goes to describe it as a flap.

Then, when we look at real speakers of Yoruba (i.e. on YouTube), two pronunciations show up: [ɾ] and [ɹ]. This agrees with the information in the main article, which says that [ɾ] is the traditional pronunciation and [ɹ] the Lagosian pronunciation, influenced by English. In any case, I couldn't find a single example of a Yoruba speaker pronuncing ⟨r⟩ as [r].

Examples of pronunciation on YouTube:

• [ɾ]: youtu.be/wpNIOUjOa8c&t=1m3s

• [ɹ]: youtu.be/WGXxt2_Jmjs

Ylmarien (talk) 08:51, 26 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

I made the page originally. The cited article explicitly calls it a trill, so I took them at their word. The main Yoruba article doesn't have a source for the flap/approximant articulations. If you can find a peer-reviewed source that agrees with you, feel free to change things up. Snowman304|talk 23:15, 26 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]

You are right about the cited article, I misread it, sorry. In any case, I found multiple sources for /ɾ/ like Phoible, Campbell (1995, p. 588), Olmsted (1951, p. 241) and Akinlabi (1993, p. 143).

This seems to be a somewhat common mistake in literature. For instance, Okanlawon (2016, p. 8) says it is /r/ while citing Akinlabi (1993) and Olmsted (1951), who state it is a actually flap despite representing it with the symbol r. Ylmarien (talk) 13:16, 27 August 2024 (UTC)[reply]