Do any of you care sharing what your experience with learning the French R has been like? I didn't put much thought into it for many years and just trusted my ears and my ability to imitate what I was hearing. French speakers have recently told me that although I don't have the typical American pronunciation of the R, that my R can still use some work. More specifically I was told that my R is too strong.
From my basic understanding, the letter R can actually represent up to 4 different sounds depending on regional accents, but the two most common are the voiced uvula fricative /ʁ/, and the voiceless uvula fricative /χ/.
The voiced uvula fricative /ʁ/ is typically used at the beginning of words, between vowels, or next to voiced consonants like D, B, V, G, for example.
The voiceless uvula fricative /χ/ is typically used at the end of words and next to voiceless consonants like T, P, F, C , for example.
Personally, I find voiceless /χ/ variant far easier to pronounce (think the r in très , près).
The voiced version is harder for me (the R at the beginning of words or between vowels), but I think I'm getting better at it.
I have a question: if a word ending in R (which would normally be pronounced with the /χ/ ) is followed by a word beginning with a vowel, would the R then become the voiced /ʁ/ variant instead?
For example, take the word pouvoir on its own. It would end with the voiceless uvula fricative /χ/, but if pouvoir is in a sentence like "Il faut tout de même se rajoute d'être en vie et de pouvoir aimer" it's followed by a word beginning with a vowel, so does the R become the voiced uvula fricative /ʁ/ now? Almost more like pouvoi raimer?
I'm probably over thinking this, but I dont know how else to figure it out since apparently nearly a decade of imitating what I hear isn't accurate