blaurebell wrote: My husband says my "mierda" sounds a little Cuban, they say something like mielda instead of the trilled R
If coming from a lady I am in love with, I would find that irresistibly cute.
But in everyone else, I do find it absolutely shredding to my ears. But I accept it since that is how, as you say, many (but not all) Cubans speak.
I never had to learn the /r/, but it did have to learn the /R/ of Buhne Deutsch. It was very difficult and I spent quite of few months inside my car trying to get my throat to do it. I failed for many months, and then one day it just happened. Then I could not do it for a while again, and then it happened again. The intervals would get shorter and shorter until one day, I could roll the /R/ as long as a wanted it. I do use this sound in my German, though sometimes it makes it harder for me to say other words if I try too hard to roll, so I just let it come out however it comes out, either a roll, or sometimes a fricative /ʁ/, which is in fact the sound most Germans make. In fact of late when I speak French many of my /ʁ/'s where starting to roll a bit too much for my liking, so I have made a conscious effort to make my French r's very fricative and airy.
The sound that kills me is /t͡ɕ/ and the aspirated version /t͡ɕʰ/. To this day I don't know if I am doing them totally correct, but most of the time whatever sound I do make, it gets a passing grade. I do know my mouth mechanics are in the vicinity of what should be done to pronounce those sounds, but I don't think my /t͡ɕ/ is as crisp as that of Chinese (or Koreans, that also have this sound in their language), so yeah.