An Acoustic Study of Welsh and Slavonic Rhotics

This a recent acoustic study of rhotic sounds of Modern Welsh. Two distinct rhotic phonemes, represented by the and , are posited for Modern Welsh. Both are classified as apical trills distinguished by the feature [Aspirated]. As in many other languages, the Welsh rhotics manifest a trend towards phonetic change that results in a considerable amount of variation with respect to the manner of articulation. This tendency has been confirmed by our analysis of 23 speakers both from North and South Wales. The study revealed that only 21% of the tokens were classified as aspirated trills. The other rhotics are replaced with various fortis fricatives, or with the glottal [h]. In this respect, the Welsh aspirated rhotic resembles the Slavic palatalised /rʲ/ which has been replaced with the fricative /ʒ/ in Polish.