Rhotacism
Rhotacism () 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 . Albanian. The southern, Tosk dialects, the base of Standard Albanian, changed to , but the northern, Gheg dialects did not: Aramaic. In Aramaic, Proto-Semitic "n" changed to "r" in a few words: Basque. Aquitanian *"l" changed  to the tapped "r" between vowels in Basque. 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". Finnish. 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 . Goidelic languages. In Manx, Scottish Gaelic and some dialects of Irish, a cluster developed into  , often with nasalization of the following vowel, as in Scottish Gaelic ‘hill’. Germanic languages. All surviving Germanic languages, which are members of the North and West Germanic families, changed to , implying a more approximant-like rhotic consonant in Proto-Germanic. Some languages later changed all forms to "r", but Gothic, an extinct East Germanic language, did not undergo rhotacism. Note that the Modern German forms have levelled the rhotic consonant to forms that did not originally have it. However, the original sound can still be seen in some nouns such as "Wesen", "being" (from the same root as "war"/"waren") and  Verlust, "loss" (from the same root as "verlieren"/"verloren"). Because of the presence of words that did not undergo rhotacisation from the same root as those that did, the result of the process remains visible in a few modern English word pairs: English. Intervocalic and are commonly lenited to in most accents of North American and Australian English and some accents of Irish English and English English, a process known as tapping or less accurately as flapping: "got a lot of" becomes . Contrast is usually maintained with , and the [ɾ] sound is rarely perceived as /r/. German. In Central German dialects , especially Rhine Franconian and Hessian, is frequently realised as in intervocalic position. The change also occurs in Mecklenburg dialects. Compare "Borrem" (Central Hessian) and "Boden" (Standard German). Romance languages and Latin. Latin. Reflecting a highly-regular change in pre-Classical Latin, intervocalic in Old Latin, which is assumed to have been pronounced , invariably became "r", resulting in pairs such as these: Intervocalic "s" in Classical Latin suggests either borrowing ("rosa") or reduction of an earlier "ss" after a long vowel or a diphthong ("pausa" < "paussa", "vīsum" < "*vīssum" < "*weid-tom"). The "s" was preserved initially ("septum") and finally  and in consonant clusters. Old Latin "honos" became "honor" in Late Latin by analogy with the rhotacised forms in other cases such as genitive, dative and accusative "honoris", "honori", "honorem". Another form of rhotacism in Latin was dissimilation of "d" to "r" before another "d" and dissimilation of "l" to "r" before another "l", resulting in pairs such as these: The phenomenon was noted by the Romans themselves: Neapolitan. 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. Portuguese and Galician. 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. Romanesco Italian. 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". Romanian. 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". Other languages. Rhotacism ("mola" > "mora", "filum" > "fir", "sal" > "sare") exists  in Gallo-Italic languages as well in Lombard, Western Lombard, Alpine Lombard and Ligurian. In Umbrian but not Oscan, rhotacism of intervocalic "s" occurred as in Latin. Sicilian. 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". Spanish. 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). Sanskrit. In Sanskrit, words ending in "-s" (-สฺ) other than "-as" ([เสียงอะ] + สฺ) become "-r" (-รฺ) in sandhi with a voiced consonant: That is not properly rhotacism since "r" and "s" are then simply allophones. South Slavic languages. In some South Slavic languages, rhotacism occasionally changes a voiced palatal fricative to a dental or alveolar tap or trill between vowels: The beginning of the change is attested in the Freising manuscripts from the 10th century AD, which show both the archaism ("ise" 'which' < *"jь-že") and the innovation ("tere" 'also' < *"te -že"). The shift is also found in individual lexical items in Bulgarian dialects, "дорде" 'until' (< *"do-že-dĕ") and Macedonian, "сеѓере" (archaic: 'always'). However, the results of the sound change have largely been reversed by lexical replacement in dialects in Serbia and Bosnia from the 14th century. Dialects in Croatia and Slovenia have preserved more of the lexical items with the change and have even extended grammatical markers in "-r" from many sources that formally merged with the rhotic forms that arose from the sound change: Slovene dialect "nocor" 'tonight' (< *"not'ь-sь-ǫ-" + "-r-") on the model  of "večer" 'evening' (< *"večerъ"). The reversal of the change is evident in dialects in Serbia in which the "-r-" formant is systematically removed: Serbian "veče" 'evening'.