The English Phonetic system includes an array of 3 to 4 liquid consonants. These ones includes to both English's allophones of the L. The English R usually is used at the beginning of the syllables, as the 'R's after a vowel, are included in the R-colored vowels.
Additionally, it can include the non-native English phoneme, the Rolling R. This one is mainly used for loan words, for sing in other languages or for some particular genres as the case of the opera.
Dark L and Clear L
The system includes both allophones for the L in the English, the [l0] or alveolar lateral approximant, also known as Clear L (used at the beginning of the syllables); and the [l] phoneme or velarized alveolar lateral approximant, also known as Dark L (which it's used at the end of the syllables).
These phonemes aren't designed to be encoded alone; however, the [l0] seems to handle better to be reproduced without a vowel in comparison to the [l] phoneme. The former results in audio loop, while the latter generates electronic buzzing or doesn't produce sound at all without a vowel. The only exception to this was Luka, which her [l] phoneme behaves as a syllabic consonant, so it can be used alone and extended without suffer distortion.[1]The lack of proper syllabic Dark L was a minor issue that finally was adressed with the release of Cyber Songman, which it included a its own phonetic symbol [@l] for said allophone, allowing a more colloquial pronunciation if the user requires it.
Rolling R
Although it isn't a native phoneme of the English language, the alveolar trill or rolling R was included to the English phonetic system to increase the Opera singing capabilities of Prima. After this, it became a common phoneme in the VOCALOID2's English voicebanks released after Prima (with exception of Luka).[2] However, its addition to the VOCALOID3's English voicebanks seems to be deprecated.
Nonetheless, the performance of this phoneme may vary between different English VOCALOID. For example, it is known that Big Al is capable of using it only at the end of words and requires some techniques and further edition to use it in the beginning or middle of a word.
The symbol which represents it in the English Phonetic System is the phoneme [R].
- ↑ link
- ↑ VocaloidOtaku - Rolling Tongue