This ridged area is where your tongue needs to be when making the rolled r sound. Then, start moving your tongue toward the back of your mouth.Įventually, you’ll feel where the roof of your mouth stops being smooth and starts having ridges. To find the right tongue placement, put your tongue directly behind your top front teeth. So, try to get English pronunciation out of your head and make sure your tongue is in the right place. Since, as we’ve mentioned, the rolled r requires vibration between the tongue and the roof of the mouth, this won’t do at all! Many English speakers get tripped up trying to roll their r’s because they’re too hung up on how they pronounce an English r, in which the tongue doesn’t touch the roof of the mouth at all. If you make the soft r sound many times in a row as fast as you can, you’re very likely to roll your r without even realizing it. The actual rolled r sound involves using your breath to create a vibration between your tongue and the roof of your mouth. Then three times, then four times-as quickly as you can. Make the unrolled r sound twice in a row. Second, it’s the building block for the next tip: 2. So, how will this help you with the trilled r? First of all, it’ll help you get the tongue placement down, since it’s the same for both. Congrats-you’re basically making a soft r sound. Practice saying the word “butter” and pay attention to where your tongue lands in your mouth on the tt sound.Īnother easy way to learn to make the soft r sound is to pronounce an English d, but with a slightly different tongue placement.ĭo you notice that when you say d, the broad middle part of your tongue touches the roof of your mouth? Try to say d again, but instead, touch the tip of your tongue to the roof of your mouth. We’ve already talked about the hard r, but what about the soft r? That’s the sound that you’ll encounter when there’s a single r anywhere in the middle or at the end of a word.īelieve it or not, it’s the same sound as the tt sound in the English word “butter” (pronounced with an American accent). Start with a soft (un-rolled) r sound and work from there.Īs I mentioned earlier, Spanish contains two r sounds. So remember this when you feel stuck or frustrated: You can make this sound! Just keep at it! How to Make the Spanish rr Sound: 7 Steps to Rolled r “Perrfection” 1. It takes practice even for kids who grow up listening to it. Plus, the rolled r sound isn’t always easy for native Spanish speakers, either! When I lived in Spain and worked as an English teacher, several of my younger students had still not fully mastered the sound. It becomes more difficult to learn new sounds as one gets older, but there’s absolutely no genetic reason why you (yes, you!) can’t learn to roll your r’s. That’s why she calls them “language universalists.” Patricia Kuhl, a linguist at the University of Warwick, infants are born with the genetic ability to learn any sound in any language. Well, I’m here to tell you that this isn’t true! According to Dr. I’ve seen a lot of misinformation on language-learning forums stating that the rolled r sound is “genetic” and that some native English speakers are simply incapable of making it. Rosa (Rose) A Word of Encouragement: Anyone Can Make the Spanish rr Sound You’ll also find the rolled r sound in Spanish any time a word begins with the letter r. Here are some examples (click on any of these words to hear pronunciations by a native speaker):Ģ. The first and most common place you’ll encounter the sound is in the form of a double-r in the middle of a word. In Spanish, you’ll find a trilled r sound in two situations:ġ. In fancy linguistics terms, it’s called an alveolar trill and it’s produced by a vibration of the tongue against the roof of the mouth. The trilled r sound (also called a hard r or a rolled r, as previously mentioned) is the subject of this article. Both of these sounds can be difficult for native English speakers who are learning Spanish, since neither sound exists in English. The letter r can make two different sounds in Spanish. (Download) What Is the Spanish Trilled rr Sound? This blog post is available as a convenient and portable PDF that youĬlick here to get a copy. Listen to people making the trilled rr sound. Start with a soft (un-rolled) r sound and work from there.
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