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1 The Three Uvular Rs
The uvular trill /ʀ/ (SAMPA /R\/) is used in Parisian French and certain dialects of Arabic for the letter .
The unvoiced uvular fricative /χ/ (SAMPA /X/) is also exceedingly rare. It sounds similar to the voiceless velar fricative /x/ (spelled in Peninsular Spanish, in German or Scots, <х> in Russian, and <χ> in Greek), except that it is articulated on the uvula. Though not a phoneme in French, it can be heard in non-Parisian French as a phone when /ʁ/ follows [t], [c], or [p], as in maître, where it is represented by .
The voiced uvular fricative /ʁ/ is much more common in northern Europe: it is found in many French dialects as the usual value of the letter R. Portuguese uses it as a trill. It also occurs in several Germanic languages to varying extents. Modern Israeli Hebrew also use the voiced uvular fricative as an r.
See Uvular R for more examples of uvular sounds represented by .
Several other languages, including Inuktitut and some varieties of Arabic, have a voiced uvular fricative but do not treat it as an r.
2 See also
Phonetics
