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Rhotic consonants, or "R"-like sounds, are non-lateral liquid consonants. This class of sounds is difficult to characterise phonetically, though most of them share some acoustic peculiarities, most notably a lowered third formant in their sound spectrum. However, "being r-like" is a strangely elusive feature, and the very same sounds that function as rhotics in some systems may pattern with fricatives, semivowels or even stops in others. The most typical rhotic sounds found in the world's languages are the following: