Rhotacism ( ) or rhotacization is a sound change that converts one consonant (usually a voiced alveolar consonant: , , , or ) to a rhotic consonant in a certain environment. The most common may be of to . When a dialect or member of a language family resists the change and keeps a sound, this is sometimes known as zetacism. The term comes from the Greek letter rho, denoting . Albanian The southern, Tosk dialects, the base of Standard Albanian, changed to , but the northern, Gheg dialects did not: vs. 'the voice' vs. 'the knee' vs. 'Albania' vs. 'cheerful' vs. 'lost' vs. 'smiling' vs. 'broken' vs. 'touched' vs. 'amazed' vs. 'Albania' (older name of the country) vs. 'burnt' vs. 'drunk' vs. 'baked' vs. 'wood' vs. 'did' vs. 'put' vs. 'caught' vs. 'dust' vs. 'happy' vs. 'love' Aramaic In Aramaic, Proto-Semitic n changed to r in a few words: bar "son" as compared to Hebrew בֵן ben (from Proto-Semitic *bnu) trên and tartên "two" (masculine and feminine form respectively) as compared to Demotic Arabic tnēn and tintēn, from Proto-Semitic *ṯnaimi and *ṯnataimi. Compare also Aramic tinyânâ "the second one", without the shift. Basque Aquitanian *l changed to the tapped r between vowels in Basque. It can be observed in words borrowed from Latin; for example, Latin caelum (meaning "sky, heaven") became zeru in Basque (caelum > celu > zeru; compare cielo in Spanish). The original l is preserved in the Souletin dialect: caelum > celu > zelü. Finnish Western dialects of Finnish are characterised by the pronunciation or of the consonant written d in Standard Finnish kahden kesken- kahren kesken (two together = one on one). The reconstructed older pronunciation is . Goidelic languages In Manx, Scottish Gaelic and some dialects of Irish, a cluster developed into , often with nasalization of the following vowel, as in Scottish Gaelic ‘hill’. Germanic languages All surviving Germanic languages, which are members of the North and West Germanic families, changed to , implying a more approximant-like rhotic consonant in Proto-Germanic. Some languages later changed all forms to r, but Gothic, an extinct East Germanic language, did not undergo rhotacism. Note that the Modern German forms have levelled the rhotic consonant to forms that did not originally have it. However, the original sound can still be seen in some nouns such as Wesen, "being" (from the same root as war/waren) as well as