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The trilled R, and how I learned to do it | ||
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 Language Learning Forum : Language Learning Log |  | |
| screamadelics Newbie United States Joined 6769 days ago 34 posts - 35 votes | Message 1 of 5 14 October 2005 at 5:55pm | IP Logged |
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(first post, by the way)
Today I was able to say "he arche" (beginning; rule, office; realm, domain (from which we get "monarchy", for example)) perfectly in Ancient Greek for the first time in my life. The chi in Greek is the German "ch" sound, and the rho in Greek is trilled. I don't have much trouble with the chi, but they're particularly difficult in combination because I just learned to roll my Rs last week. That's the milestone I'm writing about: I can now pursue the Slavic and Romance languages fearlessly, but two weeks ago I'd have had a serious speech impediment. It took me eight years for me, as an English speaker, to figure out how to roll an R in the first place (French R came naturally but the alveolar remained elusive). A year later, I can finally pronounce it in a word! Before, I could do it only in isolation or after certain vowels or consonants, and about one time in ten I'd whiff completely and just churn up a bunch of air or make an R-colored H sound. But now it sounds like the real thing! I still can't do the simple alveolar tap correctly: it seems impossible, unless I'm actually doing it right. Mine is basically a half-moon with the tongue, very quickly up to the palate and all the way down past the teeth, where it rests, and it's all very aspirated so it sounds more like "hr" than "r" (actually more like "hrr-uh", with the last "uh" the puff of air escaping that was previously being held beind the tongue). The "hr" leads me to believe that I'm doing it totally wrong, but at least I can do that damned trill. I can imagine how foreigners feel when they can't make a simple "th" sound to save their lives; the simple rolled R is the English speaker's equivalent (in Indo-European, that is). In my experience, of course; some people have more trouble with the French R (how?) or the German umlauted vowels. On an unrelated note, I'm very glad that I took French instead of Spanish in high school because it exposed me to many, many more phonemes than Spanish would have. Tips for the would-be R-roller, from one who couldn't for eight or nine years: 1) Above all: BE PATIENT 2) Forget all that stuff you heard about "just purr like a cat" or "say 'pot of tea' over and over and it will come naturally". If we can't roll our Rs, we can't purr like a cat; and repeating "pot of tea" doesn't make R-rolling come naturally. 3) Play around with your tongue. You'll have a hard time getting it to vibrate (which is why you can't trill to begin with), so blow raspberries like you did when you were young. Buzz your lips and try to make your mouth and parts around it vibrate as much as possible. Just play; have fun. 4) Once you get the muscular feel of being able to shake and rattle around, you probably still won't be able to trill unless, by a stroke of luck, you happened upon it while playing. No matter. With your buzzing session in mind, imitate a large truck engine with your whole mouth. Vibrate your lips and stick your tongue out between them so you can feel them flapping on your tongue. The lips' vibration will carry over to the tongue and you'll feel what it's like to vibrate your tongue. 5) Try to reproduce that sensation. DO IT VOICELESSLY. You don't want to concentrate on too many things at once. Don't aim for accuracy or usage; just play. The first time I did it was like a machine-gun, with spit flying out of my mouth and with my tongue totally out of control but madly trilling nonetheless (although never on the same part of the mouth twice!), blowing air all over the place and generally sounding like a lunatic. 6) Congratulations! You can sort-of-almost make a trilled R if you vibrate the tongue while voicing. But for most people (including me), it's a bit like rubbing your belly and patting your head at first. Practice, practice, practice, and when you can get a voiced buzzing-tongue, try to control your tongue a bit. It's also very important to turn down the heat a little bit on the tongue... at the beginning the tongue will likely go wildly up and down. Once you have a little bit of control over it, make the movement softer and more controlled. 7) Say "pot of tea" over and over. The dentals are where you should try to aim. You'll still be doing it way too forcefully, but if you keep trying for the "pot of tea" place with voicing, you've more or less got it. 8) This is most important of all: FORGET THAT IT'S CALLED AN R. It's not pronounced as one, it just sounds like it is. Don't try to pronounce an R at all while doing it; just treat it another consonant altogether and not as an R. Its articulation bears no resemblence whatsoever to anything we think of as an R. It's an alveolar consonant and you'll screw it up if you try to pull it to a "natural" position for an R. 9) Now look at your vocabulary list, find a word that uses a trilled R, and say it over and over and over and over and over and over and then say it some more. I mean 50-100 times over. You'll naturally correct yourself; you'll no longer do it as forcefully, you'll find where to breathe from, you'll find out how to say the word in context, you'll find out how not to overextend it (very difficult at first; it's like roping a bull), et cetera. You won't be perfect, but you're now able to make the rolled R sound! 10) Find as many vocabulary words as possible and repeat #9: you really should get more practice so you can get better at the sound and also be able to say it in a variety of contexts (after and before as many consonants as possible, its interactions with vowels, etc.). I hope you all find this useful: I tried to look for a guide on the internet but they all boiled down to "say 'pot of tea' over and over" or "purr like a cat". There were also a few precise descriptions of a well-trilled R, but a beginner isn't going to learn how to roll an R well straightaway. I say start with the crude, uncontrollable machine-gun rat-a-tatting and work your way from there. It's how I did it, and it worked far better than anything else. Edited by screamadelics on 15 October 2005 at 12:02am 2 persons have voted this message useful | |
| Miri-chan Tetraglot Groupie United States crimsonietta.ne Joined 6790 days ago 59 posts - 60 votes  2 sounds Speaks: Cantonese, English*, French, Mandarin Studies: Japanese, Spanish, Portuguese, German, Thai | Message 2 of 5 14 October 2005 at 11:45pm | IP Logged |
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Hey, that was pretty helpful! (I can't roll R's in Spanish to save my life). Thanks for the tips, and congrats!
1 person has voted this message useful | |
| maxb Diglot Senior Member Sweden Joined 6965 days ago 536 posts - 589 votes 7 sounds Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: Mandarin | Message 3 of 5 15 October 2005 at 4:34am | IP Logged |
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I guess I'm lucky to be Swedish, so I don't have to learn to roll my Rs. :-) Seems tough. The "th" sound is comparatively easy to learn since it just involves finding the right position for the tongue. Edited by maxb on 15 October 2005 at 4:35am 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| Sir Nigel Senior Member United States Joined 6886 days ago 1126 posts - 1102 votes 2 sounds | Message 4 of 5 15 October 2005 at 12:58pm | IP Logged |
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I was pretty young when I learnt to roll my Rs, I didn't have that much difficulty either. Learning the French R was a little tricky at first, mainly because if sounded odd.
As far as teaching people, I've told ones to just make growl like sound and then tell them to put their tongue to the roof of the mouth and that usually causes a slight equivalent sound. After that you just need to prefect it and be able to produce it with little effort. Edited by Sir Nigel on 15 October 2005 at 12:59pm 1 person has voted this message useful | |
| patuco Diglot Moderator Gibraltar Joined 6797 days ago 3795 posts - 4268 votes Speaks: Spanish, English* Personal Language Map | Message 5 of 5 16 October 2005 at 7:51am | IP Logged |
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I have grown up speaking both Spanish and English, but I sometimes have problems pronouncing English words which start with "consonant-r" precisely because of my ability to roll my Rs when I'm speaking Spanish.
Maybe it's just a slight speech impediment on my part but I would be interested to hear if anyone else has this problem. 1 person has voted this message useful |
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