R

Egyptian hieroglyph t	Phoenician Resh	Etruscan R	Greek Rho	Later Etruscan R

The oreeginal Semitic letter mey hae been inspired bi an Egyptian hieroglyph for tp, "head". It wis uised for /r/ bi Semites acause in thair leid, the wird for "heid" wis rêš (an aa the name o the letter). It developed intae Greek 'Ρ' ῥῶ (rhô) an Latin R. It is likely that some Etruscan an Wastren Greek fairms o the letter addit the extra stroke tae distinguish it frae a later fairm o the letter P.

The name o the letter in Latin wis er (/ɛr/), follaein the pattern o ither letters representin continuants, sic as F, L, M, N, an S. This name is preserved in French an mony ither leids. In Middlin Inglis, the name o the letter chynged frae /ɛr/ tae /ar/, follaein a pattern exhibitit in mony ither wirds sic as farm (compare French ferme), an star (compare German Stern).

The minuscule (lowercase) fairm as 'r' developed throu several variations on the caipital fairm. In haundwritin it wis common nae tae close the bottom o the luip but continue intae the leg, savin an extra pen stroke. The luip-leg stroke shortened intae the semple arc uised the day. Anither minuscule, r rotunda (ꝛ), kept the luip-leg stroke but dropped the vertical stroke, altho it fell oot o uise aroond the 18t century.

In science, the letter R is a seembol for the gas constant. Mathematicians uise 'R' or ${\displaystyle \mathbb {R} }$ (an R in blackboard bold, displayed as ℝ in Unicode) for the set o aw real nummers.

R represents a rhotic consonant in mony leids, as shawn in the table ablo. The Internaitional Phonetic Alphabet uises several variations o the letter tae represent the different rhotic consonants; [r] represents the alveolar trill.

Ither leids mey uise the letter 'r' in thair alphabets (or Latin transleeterations schemes) tae represent rhotic consonants different frae the alveolar trill. In Haitian Creole, it represents a soond sae weak that it is eften written interchyngeably wi 'w', e.g. 'Kweyol' for 'Kreyol'.

Brazilian Portuguese haes a great nummer o allophones o /ʁ/ sic as [χ], [h], [ɦ], [x], [ɣ], [ɹ] an [r], the latter three anes can be uised anly in certaint contexts ([ɣ] an [r] as 'rr'; [ɹ] in the syllable coda, as an allophone o /ɾ/ accordin tae the European Portuguese norm an /ʁ/ accordin tae the Brazilian Portuguese norm). Uisually at least twa o them are present in a single dialect, sic as Rio de Janeiro's [ʁ], [χ], [ɦ] an, for a few speakers, [ɣ].

• Ρ ρ/ϱ : Greek letter Rho
• Р р : Cyrillic letter Er
• Я я : Cyrillic letter Ya
• ℛ : Script caipital R

¹ An aa for encodins based on ASCII, includin the DOS, Windows, ISO-8859 an Macintosh faimilies o encodins.

• Media relatit tae R at Wikimedia Commons
• The dictionar defineetion o R at Wiktionary
• The dictionar defineetion o r at Wiktionary