|
 |
The dreaded rolled r | ||
Tags: Multilingual | Pronunciation | ||
Share with:
| ||
 Language Learning Forum : General discussion |  | |
| thephantomgoat Groupie United States Joined 5253 days ago 52 posts - 103 votes  | Message 17 of 36 07 November 2010 at 2:25am | IP Logged | ||
|
Absolutely keep trying. Being able to pronounce perfect "r's" is not a make-or-break
thing, and if, as other posters on this topic have mentioned, you are able to pronounce Italian's other sounds in a fashion understandable to native speakers, that should help compensate for those "r's." As mrwarper said in the previous post, get feedback from native speakers. As well, ask advice from other learners who have had trouble with their "r's" in Italian; they might be able to give you some tips on improving your pronunciation. Learning pronunciation, like other aspects of learning a language, takes time. It's not crucial that your pronunciation is perfect now; it'll improve the more you speak, and getting hung up on one sound takes time away from studying, say, conjugations, which may take more time to internalize. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Kounotori Triglot Senior Member Finland Joined 5126 days ago 136 posts - 264 votes Speaks: Finnish*, English, Russian Studies: Mandarin | Message 18 of 36 07 November 2010 at 12:31pm | IP Logged | ||
Of course you should! Even if you can't roll your Rs the first time around, with enough practice you'll learn how to do it eventually. While it's desirable to develop your pronunciation to be as close as possible to a native speaker's, in the end all that matters is that you're understood no matter how much you butcher the sounds of your chosen language. So don't worry about your pronunciation and go on learning Italian. :) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| lynxrunner Bilingual Triglot Senior Member United States crittercryptics.com Joined 5704 days ago 361 posts - 461 votes Speaks: English*, Spanish*, French Studies: Russian, Swedish, Haitian Creole | Message 19 of 36 07 November 2010 at 10:41pm | IP Logged | ||
|
For fourteen years, I could not roll my Rs. And my native language is Spanish. I
thought that it was just something that I would not be able to do ever. However, when I started getting into Russian, I realized how important the rolled R was, and I noticed that it was very prominent in other languages too (at least IE languages). I decided to practice the sound. It was difficult: at first I made something that sounds like the Welsh 'll', and it made my vision jump. However, after a LOT of experimenting (including in public places) with breath control and tongue positions, I managed to roll my Rs. It took at least a few months to be able to get a weak-sounding R, and a few more to be able to roll convincingly. My practice paid off and now I can hold a rolled R for five seconds. The point of this little anecdote was to show that you CAN learn to do it. Will it be easy? No. The rolled R is one of the last sounds children learn in Spanish and there are many Spanish speaking kids that actually can't roll it! The same goes for other languages (Vladimir Lenin, reportedly, could not roll his Rs). Don't give up, however, because you CAN do it. It will probably take a lot of practice - it definitely took me some time. However, it's not impossible - and it is so satisfying to finally be able to make that sound now. I really enjoy rrrrrolling my Rs in Russian (I've noticed that many Russians really exaggerate the Rs), though I don't do it in Spanish because it simply doesn't come naturally to me. Basically, it's possible to learn this sound. And if you can't do it, there are sounds you can substitute for it. In Spanish, I have this weird buzzing noise. It's like a Z made with the middle of my tongue, but it sounds like an R. It's a weird noise, I'm not quite sure how to describe it. In any case, that can serve as a substitute while you practice rolling your Rs. 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| sigiloso Heptaglot Groupie Portugal Joined 6561 days ago 87 posts - 103 votes Speaks: Spanish*, EnglishC2, PortugueseC1, Galician, French, Esperanto, Italian Studies: Russian, Greek | Message 20 of 36 12 November 2010 at 8:32pm | IP Logged | ||
|
I concur with all already said.
Dylanarama, about if comprenhension suffers, the answer is most of the time no. Which in the case of Spanish and Portuguese seems odd, there being two rhotic sounds, clearly distinctive, and heavily used. Simply the context of the other phonemes and a distant similarity generally helps the listener recognize the word, I assume. About how is perceived, well to start with, is like having your passport stuck in your forehead open for everybody to see, you dont need to say where you are from. Then sometimes is not problem, sometimes or in some people may sound a bit comic, or sissy, or stupid as the Finnish forumer above said. Expect leniency though most of the time and a few blank faces sometimes but is not a big problem. Apart from the tricks above, there are something like saying DI DI DI TI TI TI DRI DRI DRI or something. Cant you do a machine gun, or a motorcycle? Look for it, there are tricks and youll get it sooner or later. The question for you is taking the leap from 1 oscillation of the tip of the tongue for the flap, to X (multiple) vibrations for the other. But the point of articulation (the point where the tip is located) IS THE SAME. So no matter what, you are in fact very close, is just waiting for that multiple flapping to come. It is too quick to be done consciously, by action of mind on tip. It is better to hold still the middle of the tongue and relax the tip so that it can move like the flap on your tent in a windy day. Edited by sigiloso on 12 November 2010 at 8:34pm 4 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Levi Pentaglot Senior Member United States Joined 5349 days ago 2268 posts - 3328 votes Speaks: English*, French, Esperanto, German, Spanish Studies: Russian, Dutch, Portuguese, Mandarin, Japanese, Italian | Message 21 of 36 12 November 2010 at 10:33pm | IP Logged | ||
I like that analogy. I just might have to steal it. 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| doviende Diglot Senior Member Canada languagefixatio Joined 5768 days ago 533 posts - 1245 votes Speaks: English*, German Studies: Spanish, Dutch, Mandarin, Esperanto, Hindi, Swedish, Portuguese | Message 22 of 36 16 November 2010 at 9:09pm | IP Logged | ||
|
I spoke with some Bulgarian friends and they said the same things...that some kids learn to roll their Rs much later than others. I also have a friend who just insists that she can't whistle and there must be something wrong with her.
The trick with whistling is not just blowing air randomly, like my friend seems to do...You need the right mouth shape to produce a tone. With R rolling, I find that it's the opposite...you might have the tongue shape right, but not enough air. My theory as to whats happening is that the air-flow is lowering the pressure, and if your tongue is close enough and loose enough, it'll get pulled towards the roof of your mouth. At some point the space is too tight when your tongue touches the roof, and the pressure increases again, pushing your tongue away so that the air can flow out. You don't want your tongue to "rebound" too much, because then it won't get pulled back in a second time to keep vibrating. You need to keep your tongue in the right place, in order for the back-and-forth effect to work. You also need to push enough air through. Not a ton of air like you're blasting a trumpet, but more like the amount of air from an exasperated sigh...or maybe a bit more. You *can* do this, although it might take more practice. If nothing happens at all, you just need to get more crazy with your mouth shape and tongue position. Experiment, and you'll find something reasonably close, like one of the previous posters said. Once you get anything that causes your tongue-tip to do something funny, you can hone in on it by trying similar things. When I was trying to learn some Bulgarian, this was a big problem for me. I practiced hard for days and days and days, and then finally got some tiny vibration, but I found it hard to initiate (especially in the middle of a word). Now I can easily just sit here and vibrate my tongue like that for as long as I have more air to breathe out. Try these approximations: - do the "blowing out the candles" sort of action with a fairly strong breath and an O shaped mouth, and try slowly moving your tongue tip to the spot where a T sound is made. The tongue tip should go fairly close to the back of the teeth. I find it harder to get the vibration when the tongue tip is further back. - try to say "hut" where the T at the end totally stops the air (like what an american football quarterback might stereotypically say, to get the ball snapped back to him). This gets your tongue tip to approximately the right place. The next step after this is to practice not quite touching the tongue there, but just getting it close. You should be trying to hold it nearby as the air goes out, so that it can sort of hover there and flutter. It's not necessary to use voicing...you can start with a completely unvoiced airflow if that makes it easier. I have the feeling that there's something weird about my tongue positioning at the back that is really hard to describe, so try moving your whole tongue around...or try breathing out to make a "hawwww" sound, as if you're fogging up some eyeglasses in preparation for cleaning them, but then put your tongue-tip into the "hover" position. Doing this "haww" sound might prepare you for doing the tongue vibration combined with the "R" sound that is produced with the back of the tongue nearing the top/back of the mouth (like English R). My feeling is that you need this combination in order to make a nice "Rrr" rather than just the "machine gun" noise that others described. I may be wrong in part of my description above, since I've never actually looked this up in a linguistic description, but I'm just trying to describe what I think is happening in my own mouth as I do this. I also don't know if my physics is correct, but the trick really does seem to be the amount of airflow + getting the tip *just* close enough and keeping it in that neighbourhood so it can vibrate. Anyway, don't despair. I thought it was a hopeless task once too, but now it feels easy. If only I could improve my German uvular R more consistently ;) 1 person has voted this message useful | |||
| anders_h Diglot Newbie Sweden Joined 5895 days ago 11 posts - 12 votes Speaks: Swedish*, English Studies: Icelandic | Message 23 of 36 22 November 2010 at 7:52pm | IP Logged | ||
|
The straight answer for Swedish is this: never mind. Prosody, vowel placement and word order are infinitely more important. Go to Youtube and write this in the search field and have a good laugh:
eddie meduza ragga runt There the Swedish singer imitates an American speaking Swedish by only making the r's and l's a little more back in the mouth. But the thing is that it does not degrade comprahension a bit, as any vowel placement or duration problems so often do. If your biggest pronounciation difficulty is 'r' then you must be a true master in vowels and prosody. 2 persons have voted this message useful | |||
| Pilar Triglot Newbie United States Joined 6440 days ago 14 posts - 16 votes Speaks: English*, SpanishC2, Italian | Message 24 of 36 22 November 2010 at 9:44pm | IP Logged | ||
|
Dylan, have you thought about just learning to roll your "r"s instead of worrying that they don't sound right?
Here's how I learned: I practiced in the shower! Honestly, the advantage of practicing in the shower is that no one can hear you, so you don't feel self-conscious. I just said aloud, errrre, errre, errre while washing, and in a couple of days I could say my Spanish rolled R's properly. This might sound a little silly, but it worked for me. It might work for you, too. 1 person has voted this message useful |
|  | 
Printable version
|
| Copyright 2024 FX Micheloud - All rights reserved No part of this website may be copied by any means without my written authorization. |
