Rhotacism
Sound change converting an alveolar consonant to a rhotic consonant / From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia
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This article is about the sound change. For the speech errors, see Speech sound disorder § Rhotacism. For other uses, see Rhotic.
Rhotacism (/ˈroʊtəsɪzəm/ ROH-tə-siz-əm)[1] or rhotacization is a sound change that converts one consonant (usually a voiced alveolar consonant: /z/, /d/, /l/, or /n/) to a rhotic consonant in a certain environment. The most common may be of /z/ to /r/.[2] When a dialect or member of a language family resists the change and keeps a /z/ sound, this is sometimes known as zetacism.
The term comes from the Greek letter rho, denoting /r/.