Letter ‘r’

The letter r was avoided in Schleyer’s original Volapük, on the principle that it would be difficult for Chinese speakers to pronounce, and in the adoption of foreign roots r was generally changed to l. For example, English rose becomes lol. However, other uncommon phonemes, such as ö /ø/ and ü /y/, were not avoided, and Arie de Jong added /r/ in his 1929 revision of the language. Modern Volapük has minimal l-r pairs such as rel “religion” vs lel “iron”.