This article is about the letter R. For other uses, see R (disambiguation). Look up R or r in Wiktionary, the free dictionary. Basic Latin alphabet 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 R ( /ˈɑr/, Hiberno-English: /ˈɔr/citation needed; named ar or or)1 is the eighteenth letter of the basic modern Latin alphabet. Contents 1 History 2 Usage 3 Shape 3.1 Dog's letter 4 Codes for computing 5 See also 6 References // History Egyptian hieroglyph tp Proto-Semitic head Phoenician resh Etruscan R Greek Rho Later Etruscan R The original Semitic letter was probably inspired by an Egyptian hieroglyph for "head", pronounced t-p in Egyptian, but it was used for /r/ by Semites because in their language, the word for "head" was Rêš (also the name of the letter). It developed into Greek Ρ ῥῶ (Rhô) and Latin R. It is likely that some Etruscan and Western Greek forms of the letter added the extra stroke to distinguish it from a later form of the letter P.

The minuscule (lower-case) form of r developed through several variations on the capital form. In handwriting it was common not to close the bottom of the loop but continue into the leg, saving an extra pen stroke. The loop-leg stroke shortened into the simple arc used today. Another minuscule, r rotunda (ꝛ), kept the loop-leg stroke but dropped the vertical stroke, although it fell out of use around the 18th century. Usage See also: rhotic consonant, r-colored vowel, and guttural R In science, the letter R is a symbol for the gas constant. Mathematicians use R or (an R in blackboard bold, displayed as ℝ in Unicode) to refer to the set of all real numbers.

R represents a rhotic consonant in many languages, as shown in the table below. The International Phonetic Alphabet uses several variations of the letter to represent the different rhotic consonsants; [r] represents the alveolar trill. Alveolar trill [r] Listen some dialects of British English or in emphatic speech, Finnish, German in some dialects, Hungarian, Icelandic, Italian, Czech, Lithuanian, Latin, Norwegian, Polish, Catalan, Portuguese (traditional European form), Romanian, Scots, Spanish and Albanian 'rr', Swedish, Welsh, in standard Dutch, Galician Alveolar approximant [ɹ] Listen English (most varieties), Dutch in some Dutch dialects (in specific positions of words), Swedish, , Faroese, Sicilian Alveolar flap / Alveolar tap [ɾ] Listen Portuguese, Catalan, Spanish and Albanian 'r', Turkish, Dutch, Italian, Venetian, Galician, Leonese Voiced retroflex fricative [ʐ] Listen Spanish used as an allophone of [r] in some South American accents. Retroflex approximant [ɻ] Listen some varieties of American English Retroflex flap [ɽ] Listen sometimes Scottish English Uvular trill [ʀ] Listen German stage standard; some Dutch dialects (in Brabant and Limburg, and some city dialects in The Netherlands), Swedish in Southern Sweden, Norwegian in western and southern parts Voiced uvular fricative [ʁ] Listen German, Danish, French, European Portuguese 'rr' Voiceless uvular fricative [χ] Listen Brazilian Portuguese 'rr' Voiceless glottal fricative [h] Listen some Brazilian Portuguese 'rr'

Other languages may use the letter r in their alphabets (or Latin transliterations schemes) to represent rhotic consonants different from the alveolar trill. In Haitian Creole, it represents a sound so weak that it is often written interchangeably with w, e.g. Kweyol for Kreyol. Shape The letter R is the only letter in the basic modern Latin alphabet in which the upper case has a closed section and the lower case does not. Dog's letter The letter R is sometimes referred to as the littera canina (canine letter). This phrase has Latin origins: the Latin R was trilled to sound like a growling dog. A good example of a trilling R is the Spanish word for dog, perro.2

In William Shakespeare's Romeo and Juliet, such a reference is made by Juliet's nurse in Act 2, scene 4, when she calls the letter R "the dog's name." The reference is also found in Ben Jonson's English Grammar.3 Codes for computing Alternative representations of R NATO phonetic Morse code Romeo ·–· Signal flag Flag semaphore Braille In Unicode, the capital R is codepoint U+0052 and the lower case r is U+0072. The ASCII code for capital R is 82 and for lowercase r is 114; or in binary 01010010 and 01110010, correspondingly. The EBCDIC code for capital R is 217 and for lowercase r is 153. The numeric character references in HTML and XML are "R" and "r" for upper and lower case respectively. See also Р, р – Er (Cyrillic) Ρ, ρ or ϱ – Rho (Greek) Я, я – (Cyrillic Ya) Raidô Vocalic r Vox Canina Wikimedia Commons has media related to: R References ^ "R" Oxford English Dictionary, 2nd edition (1989); "ar," op. cit. ^ A Word A Day: Dog's letter ^ Shakespeare, William; Horace Howard Furness, Frederick Williams (1913). Romeo and Juliet. Lippincott. p. 189. http://books.google.com/books?id=Wj0OAAAAIAAJ&client=firefox-a.  v · d · eThe Letter "R" General The letter R · Rhotic consonants (R-like sounds) · Rhotic and non-rhotic accents · R-colored vowels · Guttural R · Linking and intrusive R Pronunciations Alveolar trill [r] · Alveolar approximant [ɹ] · Alveolar tap [ɾ] · Alveolar lateral flap [ɺ] · Retroflex approximant [ɻ] · Retroflex flap [ɽ] · Uvular trill [ʀ] · Voiced uvular fricative [ʁ] · Labialized [ʋ] Variations ꝛ (R rotunda) · Ɍɍ · Ʀʀ · Ȑȑ · Ŕŕ · Ŗŗ · Řř · Ȓȓ · Ṙṙ · Ṛṛ · Ṝṝ · Ṟṟ · Rd · Rh · Rl · Rn · Rr · Rt · Rnd · ᚱ (Raidô) · ℛ (Riemann integral) · ℜ (Real part) · ℝ (Real number) · ® (Registered trademark symbol) · Ⓡ (Enclosed R) The ISO basic Latin alphabetv · d · 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 ŔŕŘřṘṙŖŗȐȑȒȓṚṛṜṝṞṟɌɍⱤɽᵲᶉɼɾᵳ

history • palaeography • derivations • diacritics • punctuation • numerals • Unicode • list of letters • ISO/IEC 646

history • palaeography • derivations • diacritics • punctuation • numerals • Unicode • list of letters • ISO/IEC 646

history • palaeography • derivations • diacritics • punctuation • numerals • Unicode • list of letters • ISO/IEC 646

history • palaeography • derivations • diacritics • punctuation • numerals • Unicode • list of letters • ISO/IEC 646

history • palaeography • derivations • diacritics • punctuation • numerals • Unicode • list of letters • ISO/IEC 646