Alveolar trill, rolling /r/ success stories

[shandra]

R moscia could be fixed with the aid of a logopedist or through elocution lessons (like actors who want to reduce their accent). Sometimes it is due to a real physical deficit.

It's not very common and I can't associate it to a specific Italian dialect.

In movies the character with R moscia is the stereotypical rich snob. Or the way chosen by the dubbing actor director to play the only French character speaking in Italian to mark her foreign accent.

In The Big Bang Theory Barry Pribke speaks with R moscia, listen to the dubs

[aravinda]

"r is trilled with the tip of the tongue; note though that there are plenty of Italians who cannot roll their r's and pronounce them as v's or as French r's instead!"
From Italian Made Simple (2nd ed) by Christina Mazzoni (Associate Professor of Romance Languages, University of Vermont)
-----------------
Erre Moscia: Dispelling Some Linguistic Myths and Legends

-----------------
EDIT: Found this HOW TO ROLL YOUR R'S: THE DEFINITIVE GUIDE. I haven't tried it though.

[Brun Ugle]

It took me years to learn it, so don't give up. I had struggled with it in Spanish, but for some reason I mastered it pretty easily in Finnish when I first started learning it. I think it was because of the different vowel sounds. Anyway, I was then able to transfer the trilled r from Finnish to Spanish and now I rarely have trouble with it. I mostly only struggle when I'm paying too much attention to it or sometimes after an e or an i.

So my advice is -- learn Finnish. Some other tips would be to try lying on your back because gravity will help your tongue to fall into the right position. The problem with rolled r's is learning to keep the root of your tongue stiff enough to hold the position while have the tip of your tongue relaxed enough to flutter in the breeze. Lying down helps a little with that. Also, as was mentioned, some sounds lead more easily to a trilled r than others and it can be different for different people. I find it easiest to bounce off a d or t into a trill. In FSI they describe saying "tarde" like saying "totter they" (American accent, so more like "todder they") really fast. And that helped a little too though it was a while before I could transfer that to other words.

This is from another thread on the same topic. I would add that it took me a long time before I could do it comfortably, maybe a couple of years even. There was a period when I could do it lying down, but not upright. Then I could do it upright, but only after certain consonants and certain vowels. Then I could do it after any vowel. Now I can do it pretty easily, though sometimes it still gives me trouble after s's and l's. So, don't give up just because you don't get it right away. Do the best you can, mine was a flap-r that occasionally got a few more flaps (ie trilled) and then gradually became more consistently trilled. Practice for a few minutes on a regular basis, every day if possible, but don't stress too much about it. Getting stressed will only make you tense up and then it will be harder.

[MamaPata]

Not really the success story that you are looking for, but I tried to learn for years (and for three languages) and in the end just gave up. It makes remarkably little difference to my life.

[Chmury]

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.

[garyb]

In the 7 or so years I've been learning Italian I've gone from not being able to do it to being able to do it around half the time, which is about as much of a pronunciation success story as you'll get from me! I find it easy enough when it's attached to another consonant (tr, dr, rt, rl, etc.) because that provides a kind of launchpad or landing pad (and that's even found its way into my English at times!), but trickier between vowels (birra, burro, vorrei, etc.) or at the start of a word; in these latter cases it often comes out as either a weak trill or a kind of approximant, like almost hitting the target but not quite. Still better than an English R at least. The French R, on the other hand, has never given me problems although like many learners I've had to avoid pronouncing it too strongly/harshly.

This topic does make me want to put a bit more work into making my R stronger and more consistent, though. It's perhaps the kind of thing where working on it intensely for a few weeks can give noticeable results... I'll try applying some of the advice in here and report back!

[Cainntear]

Some very good advice here. I'd never heard of the "Pdince of Pdussia" approach, and I'd never thought of comparing it to bilabial trills (which to me are sound effects that I always liked doing).

The advice I was going to give was like arthaey's blade of grass, but with trees.

Imagine you're looking at several trees, all of them of different types. In a light breeze, a young birch with its thin, flexible trunk will start to sway, but a thicker tree will not. But as the wind increases, slowly the birch stops swinging back and is held bent by the wind. Meanwhile, the stiffer, thicker trees start to sway like the birch did.

When trees sway, they don't typically shake from side to side -- they are pushed over by the wind and when the tension in the truck is too much they swing back to more-or-less their upright position, at which point the wind hits them with its full force, and bends it again.

A trill works the same. Your tongue is the trunk, your breath the wind. The tenser your tongue, the more pressure you will need to start a trill. When I started trying to trill my Rs, I tried very hard, and that resulted in a lot of muscle tension, which made it really difficult, and if I did get any sound out of it, it would be nothing more than a squeak.

This is why lip trilling (or even blowing raspberries -- laminolabial(?) trilling) works as a good demonstration. Anyone who can trill one or both lips can be asked to now try it with really tense muscles... doesn't work. Et voilà -- tense tongue doesn't work.

[SGP]

I'm sure this question comes up every now and then but I figure there might be some fresh ideas, plus, I'll frame the question differently: who here has a success story with doing the alveolar trill (for Italian, Spanish, etc.)?

It happened after knowing where to move to the tongue to for that R . Places of Articulation.

[garyb]

This topic does make me want to put a bit more work into making my R stronger and more consistent, though. It's perhaps the kind of thing where working on it intensely for a few weeks can give noticeable results... I'll try applying some of the advice in here and report back!

I said I'd report back, so... The "tdip/trip" thing has definitely helped! I've not done loads of speaking recently so it's hard to say how consistent my Rs are in "real life", but when practising alone I'm seeing more strength and consistency.

[reineke]

"tdip/trip"

Can't seem to reverse engineer this one into something useful.

R moscia

You'll hear erre moscia in a few places like Parma and parts of Piedmont however I don't think that this pronunciation is a uniform feature even in those places. Someone's erre moscia can also simply be a case of rhotacism.

Listen to "Eros" in C'era una volta Pollon:

https://youtu.be/rGSslnBQWr4?t=407

Gene Gnocchi:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Sd2VR0dcBK0

Here's one theory abour "r"moscia in Parma (in Italian):

http://corrieredibologna.corriere.it/bo ... 3740.shtml

This one may give you an idea how some people feel about it:

http://magazine.oltreuomo.com/venti-cos ... uo-capire/