Guttural R

In linguistics, guttural R (sometimes known as French R) refers to pronunciation of a rhotic consonant as a guttural consonant. These consonants are usually uvular. Speakers of languages with "French R" typically regard the guttural and alveolar /r/ to be alternative pronunciations of the same phoneme, despite the articulatory differences. A similar consonant is found in other parts of the world, but in most other places it has little or no cultural association nor interchangeability with coronal rhotics (alveolar trill, alveolar flap, or alveolar approximant).

The guttural rhotic is the usual form of the rhotic consonant in most of what is now France, Belgium, Germany, Denmark and the southernmost parts of Sweden and Norway, and is frequent in the Netherlands. It also occurs as the normal pronunciation of one of two rhotic phonemes (usually replacing an older alveolar trill) in most of Portugal, all of Brazil, Puerto Rico, and parts of Cuba and the Dominican Republic.