When does /r/ become a trill?


In a video that snailboat pointed out in a comment on [my question about
geminated /r/](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/questions/12893/how-do-you-
geminate-%E3%82%89-line-sounds), at least [one speaker of
Japanese](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Oq-Jg6jT9Og#t=0m6s) sounds to me
like they trill both the /r/s in タリアテッレ.

It's my understanding that, most of the time, /r/ in Japanese is a flap that
freely varies between central and lateral (cf. the answer to [R sound vs L
sound](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/questions/12803/r-sound-vs-l-
sound)). For /r/ to transform into a trill, then, is really quite surprising.

> In what contexts (social, dialectal, grammatical, whatever) does /r/ become
> a trill?

I know that /r/ manifests as a trill (巻き舌) in yakuza speech (cf. [What are the
stereotypical characteristics of yakuza
speech?](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/questions/941/what-are-the-
stereotypical-characteristics-of-yakuza-speech)); where else do we find
trilled /r/?

( **Note:** I may just be mishearing the speaker in the Youtube video linked
above; if so, just ignore that part. Either way, my question about trilled /r/
in Japanese remains.)




To my ear, the native Japanese speaker in the video sounds like saying
/tariatterure/ with the typical Japanese gemination occurring on /t/ and only
on this consonant. So, I focus on when trilled /r/ might typically appear in
Japanese, and post my impression on the /r/ in the video in question to
[here](https://japanese.stackexchange.com/questions/12893/how-do-you-
geminate-%E3%82%89-line-sounds), which OP suggested.

If you're referring to the kind of allophone on /r/ that typically appears in
yakuza speech, as you said yourself, it is called [巻き舌
(まきじた)](http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E5%B7%BB%E3%81%8D%E8%88%8C) in Japanese.
Phonetically speaking, it's the [alveolar
trill](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alveolar_trill).

This is not one of the allophones the average native Japanese speaker would
use when speaking in standard Japanese in normal context. As the [Japanese
Wikipedia article on the alveolar
trill](http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E6%AD%AF%E8%8C%8E%E3%81%B5%E3%82%8B%E3%81%88%E9%9F%B3)
says, this allophone is most typically associated with the dialects(?) called
[べらんめえ調](http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E6%B1%9F%E6%88%B8%E8%A8%80%E8%91%89)
spoken by [江戸っ子 (えどっこ)](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edokko) and
[浜言葉](http://ja.wikipedia.org/wiki/%E6%B5%9C%E8%A8%80%E8%91%89) typically
stereotyped as fishermen's speech, and a certain aggressive, hostile, and
rough register in spoken language (such as typical yakuza speech).

I'm not sure if it's linguistically true that this sound is regularly used as
a major variant of phoneme /r/ in any of the alleged dialects/register. But as
a native Japanese speaker, I do understand these "stereotypes." In fact, as is
exemplified in the other video you linked to in the comment, the stereotypes
are so widespread that this trilled /r/ (or its connotations to a rough,
aggressive or rude manner) can be effectively exploited in fiction. You may
also use it to sound humorous just like any other stereotypical speech. So, at
least it's "widespread" in a sense and is definitely part of the Japanese
language. But as far as I know, it does not appear as a regularly used (free)
allophone in any of the major dialects I know or speak. Then again, I wouldn't
be terribly surprised if someone uses it very often in a regular manner as
part of their natural idiolect, either.

In any case, the examples I can be sure about are the three I mentioned above,
i.e., べらんめえ調, 浜言葉, and yakuza speech, all of which sound "rough." Note that
while べらんめえ調 is informally said to be the same as 江戸言葉, which is one of the
regional dialects in Tokyo, the Wikipedia article of this dialect doesn't
mention trilled /r/. So, it's possible that 江戸言葉 as the real regional dialect
(which is becoming quite obsolete nowadays by the way) doesn't have this
allophone, so perhaps it's just a stereotype thing.

