I can only speak for intuitively-understood German here, but /ʁ/ has no phonological (or phonetic?) affinity to /g/ at all. Intervocalically it is a sound of its own with no overt affinity to any other, and in syllable coda it is vocalised to a schwa. Furthermore, the rise of /ʁ/ is very recent.

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Eh, ‘r’ clearly does things that fricatives don’t in these languages, like in terms of phonotactics or patterns like coda vocalization. Not everything is about surface realization, including in orthography design.

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Hebraist during liminal afternoon walk (between teaching beginner's Hebrew – absolute infinitives and participles today - and Advanced, where we will be reading Psalms 29 and 48).

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Typically, the cognate to Hittite paḫur⁠, Greek pū̑r, Armenian hur, English fȳr, Agnæan por, etc. ‘fire’ is thought lost in Indo-Iranian. But it actually survives at the Indic–Nuristani border in a handful of dialects. E.g., Ẓonćigal Kalaṣë (Nur.) pūṛ̆ ‘embers’, Dara-i Nur Pashai (IA) pōr ‘bonfire’.

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We're one week from the upcoming creolistics conference. My inbox is showing a constant flow of messages from colleagues inviting each other to join activities they're planning for any single minute not covered by the official programme. Such a wonderfully sociable bunch of people.

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