English Phonetics/Liquids

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 is used at the end of the consonants).

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 is Luka, which her [l] phoneme can be used alone and extended without suffer distortion.

Rolling R
Although it is not a 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). However, its addition to the Vocaloid3's English voicebanks seems to be less common.

Nonetheless, the performance of this phoneme may vary between different English Vocaloids. 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].