The French R in Rouge vs. The English R in Red vs. The Spanish R in Carro

Silas, a 10th-grader in Madison, Wisconsin, is working on his own conlang, or constructed language. He wonders how and why the French uvular R sound, as in the French word rouge, came about, as opposed to the rolled Spanish R in carro. As Trask’s Historical Linguistics (Bookshop|Amazon) notes, this sound continues to spread throughout eight European languages in what’s called a phonemic shift. Western European languages have a coronal R formed along the alveolar ridge at the front of the mouth. Around the 17th or 18th century, this uvular R developed as a characteristic of the speech of the elite, and as such, was increasingly imitated. This is part of a complete episode.