Since the 1960s, the French sonorant /ʀ/ has predominantly been pronounced [ʁ] in common French. Although dictionaries seem to imply that this is a mere phonetic variant (giving [ʀ] or even [r] in their transcription), the phonological behavior has changed too, since the new sound undergoes assimilation rules for fricatives. It is there- fore more consistently described as underlying /ʁ/, not being a sonorant any more even at the phonological level, but an obstruent. On the other hand, when /ʁ/ appears as the context of assimilation rules, it still behaves like a sonorant. Some proposals are made to tackle this problem.