An articulation disorder in 17th-century Germany

Apical trill was regarded as the correct pronunciation of R in 17th-century German, but malarticulations of this difficult sound were widespread. Two of the most common substitutions were the uvular trill and L. The first was satirically described in a novel by Christian Weise (1673), while Rosinus Lentilius (1698), a physician, dealt with the L-substitution in a more scholarly but no less humorous manner. Annotated translations of these texts are presented here along with an introduction. The study suggests there may be more to the earlier history of speech disorders than is generally supposed.