Postby Chmury » Mon Oct 08, 2018 9:29 pm
My first language is English and so I had no experience in trilling R’s until I started learning Spanish. I’ve also been pretty severely tongue tied since birth, which doesn’t help things when you’re learning to trill R’s. It probably took me somewhere between 1 and 2 years to be able to pronounce a trilled r semi reliably. R’s at the beginning of words such as in rascacielos I found to be the (relatively) easiest to achieve, then r’s at the end of words such as comenzar, and then finally rr’s within words such as terremoto I found to be trickiest.
I tend to walk a lot, and I remember during my daily walks if I wasn’t listening to a Spanish podcast, I was formulating sentences or translating signs and things that I saw into Spanish and saying them out loud, paying close attention to trilling the r’s. I would even just say words over and over again out loud to understand how it felt to successfully pronounce the trilled Spanish r. What position was my tongue in? The shape of my lips? What vowels came before or after it and how did that effect things? One of the things I would do was simply to try and trill the r with each vowel following it, so ra, re, ri, ro, ru. Then I’d try vowels preceding the r, so ar, er, ir, or, ur. Then double r’s between two vowels and so in. Then I’d repeat tricky sentences like El ferrocarril rojo ronda Cerro Torre over and over again. Also I think another approach which was really helpful was simply to slow everything right down. You don’t need to start off saying everything at native speed, just slow the pronunciation of each word right down. I think this really helped to build muscle memory and understand how pronouncing r’s in various positions within a word felt. I don’t hear this talked about a lot in language learning, but I believe mind-muscle connection is very important in successfully being able to pronounce sounds like a native.
Learning a new language requires a whole new set of muscles, movements, positions, and it takes time until your familiar with them and your body is able to produce them with ease. But it is definitely possible to learn how to trill your r’s, 100%. It’s just a matter of time and practice.
I started learning German maybe 3 weeks ago now, and the biggest thing I’m struggling with is the German r, particularly after consonants like P, B and G, such as in words like sprechen, bringen, and Grund, and also between vowels and silent consonants such as unsere and Lehrerin. At the moment it seems like I will never be able to pronounce the German r, but I’m sure as with many other learners of German, it was just a matter of time, lots of practice, becoming familiar with the feeling of correctly pronouncing it, allowing that mind-muscle connection to form, and giving the muscles involved the necessary time to adapt and become adept at producing it.
3 x
Hindernisse und Schwierigkeiten sind Stufen, auf denen wir in die Höhe steigen