Rhotacism

Rhotacism is the name for a sound change that creates a rhotic consonant. Examples include:

• *z → /r/ (in the history of the Italic languages, Germanic languages and several others)
• *l → /r/ (found in Indo-Iranian languages)
• *n → /r/ (found in Albanian)
• *ð → /r/ (Ostrobothnian Finnish etc.)
• *ɣ → /r/

A change from a stop such as /d/ to a flap such as /ɾ/ is, however, usually not called rhotacism, but simply flapping.

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